I know it's been a (long) while. I've not really been playing much. Tonight, though, I got a beta invite for Wrath of the Lich King. Hopefully this will re-peak my interest. I'll make sure to take some screenshots along the way. I'm also hoping to get back into developing the site once Wrath time comes around.

Unbarc showed up on my doorstep yesterday (after waiting 2.5 months or so). First: the (semi) bad. Someone on Twitter asked me if it was my camera / lighting / flash that made the colors seemed washed out, or if they're just like that. It's a combination of both, actually; I have a simple point-shoot camera, and it was pretty close to the figure while I was taking photos. The flash did wash out some of the colors (my hand isn't quite good enough to turn the flash off), but some of the colors are just like that.

The Good: it's Unbarc for reals! I really love the look of all the gear he's wearing, and it's great to have something to remember this game with (since I've been playing it for the past 3 years). Click the picture to see more in the gallery.

In-game, there hasn't been much since my last post. With the 4th of July holiday, I haven't played much lately. I did join an arena team named Fire and Slice. Only played a few matches (and lost them all [need some arena gear]). Out-of-game, I've been spending a lot of time playing with the new puppy, and she's still taking a lot of my time.

I've gone and done it again... Unbarc is packing his bags and moving to the Earthen Ring realm. It's been an odd and busy month in real life, and things have made it so I can't play as much. I got another puppy, so she's getting most of my attention. Also, for the past 2 weeks, my wife's been sick so I've been taking care of her.

Here's my character transfers to date:
07/21/2006 - Stormrage -> Kael'thas
11/29/2006 - Kael'thas -> Runetotem
03/06/2007 - Runetotem -> Kael'thas
05/23/2008 - Kael'thas -> Earthen Ring

So, why Earthen Ring? Well a couple of weeks ago I started an alt over there, and got accepted into the guild <alea iacta est>. AIE is a big guild... at the time of writing this, they almost have 2300 members. Currently, every time I get the chance to log on to Kael'thas, 90% of the guild is in a 25man instance, and most of my friends are either in that guild, or other big raiding guilds. AIE always has people on, and are some of the friendliest people I've met in the game. It's sad that I'm leaving my friends back on Kael'thas, but their play styles / plans are different than mine right now, and no sense paying monthly to be unhappy.

Earthen Ring is an RP server. Since I've never done any Roleplaying before, I figured I'd start off by giving Unbarc a last name. After clearing the cobwebs out of the creative gears, I came up with the name Unbarc Nightfire.

I'm really looking forward to becoming part of the AIE family, and can't wait to level to 80 with everybody else once the expansion comes out. Farewell my DD friends, I'll be in touch; come to Earthen Ring, I'll be in our channel.

Dang, as it almost been 3 months since my last update? Since I don't have a developer's version of the site on my work laptop, I guess I let this site slip past me a bit. Hopefully I'll get back into doing updates (news and site-wise). Well, let's get to it.

Loot

Here's my most recent loots:
[Reins of the Onyx Netherwing Drake]
[Collar of the Aldor]
[Spellstrike Pants]
[Gladiator's Touch of Defeat]

Finally, I got my Netherwing Drake mount. I admit, I didn't do my daily quests... well, daily, but I got it now, so I can stop fighting everybody to kill a stupid Nethermine Ravager.

I've only been to Karazhan twice. The first time, it was for the first 2 bosses (with no loots), and this second time, it was for the last 2 bosses. Luckily, I won the roll for the T4 token, and got my helm. It was a pretty nice upgrade from what I used to have.

I also buckled down and finally got the mats together for my [Spellstrike Pants]. The hardest part was finding a Tailor who knew the pattern, and either A) Had a [Primal Nether] they could use or B) Have enough [Badge of Justice] to buy one.

Lastly on the loot frontier, I actually did some PvP on my own. If you knew me, you'd be surprised. The most honor I've gotten is just over 10k (that's total, from the day I started playing 3 years ago, without spending any previously). So, I upgraded my wand for the Gladiator's.


I have some more junk to post about, and site updates to do (probably Gallery pictures of my new mount), but I'm at work, and should probably get back to that.

Ok, Azerothianites. My old domain was on the verge of expiration, and I decided to switch registrars. In doing so, I decided to register a new domain, www.unbarc.com. A little more fitting, don't you think? Once I get my old domain straightened out, I'll try and forward all that traffic to the new domain.

On the professions front, I made it up to 374, and have had the past 4 items I've made not get me over that last little skill. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow I'll have tailoring maxed, and the ability to make 20 slot bags, and finish my Spellfire set.

Speaking of which, since I last posted (yeah, I need to get back into posting more often), I made myself a [Spellfire Belt] and [Spellfire Gloves], and fitted each one with a [Potent Noble Topaz] and a [Glowing Nightseye]. Vera nice. All that's left is to make a robe, then try and start saving up the mats/money for the Spellstrike set.

Patch 2.1.0 came out recently, with a ton of changes. One of the best changes: gold spam reduction. Before the patch, I was getting between 10-15 gold-spam whispers per login, now I've gotten a total of 3 since patch day.

After almost 2.5 years of playing WoW, I finally had my first world-drop epic drop when I was farming in Netherstorm. After a few days of sitting on it, I put it up in the AH for 500 starting, 700 buyout, and it ended up selling for 671. Needless to say, that money was spent the next day on mats to try and max out the tailoring.

Tomorrow night, my wife and I are going to be taking a real look at a house. In the past, we've just been looking online, but now we're actually starting to go out and see what the houses look like in person. We found one we really like, so hopefully it'll turn out that way for real.

It's been 2 months, so I figured I should post some sort of update. I haven't really been playing Unbarc a whole lot lately. For a little while I was working on leveling my alt hunter, Barcana. The past week or so, though, I decided to drop my previous profession of Jewelcrafting (keeping Mining for some cash), and I took up Tailoring. Surprisingly, it didn't take too long to get up to 335 tailoring... Jewelcrafting took FOREVER. Right now I'm in a slump because of a lack of [Netherweave Cloth]. It's going to take me a while, but here's the reason(s) I switched:
[Spellfire Belt]
[Spellfire Gloves]
[Spellfire Robe]

As for the site, I've done some new things. There's a new Tutorials section. There isn't much there yet, but it's something I can add to over time. Right now I've written a couple of short tutorials about WoWMapView and how to convert WoWModelView models to Lightwave (you can see some examples here).

Pretty soon, the 2.1.0 will be going live. This is the biggest changelog yet... my version is 1322 lines of text long (my version being HTML-formatted), and the previous longest one was 1.11.0 with only 823 lines.

On the loots side, I haven't gotten much. I think the only thing of late would be these from a quest:
[Shattrath Wraps]

On the other side of the computer screen, my wife and I are starting the process of finding a house, which I'll probably start playing even less because of this. We're so tired of living in an apartment, and we're really looking forward to having someplace we can crank up the surround-sound without the people on the other side of the wall complaining, or doing the same thing.

Last night was a good night for us. We cleared BWL for the first time on our new server, I got over a 10K crit from my Ignite tick, and I got loots.

First off, it was really something to do Blackwing with no lag. We weren't used to it. We've always used the lag, accepted its presence, and rolled with it. Had a wipe on Razorgore, since the mobs weren't standing around like normal, rogues pulled aggro on Vael, and hunters weren't getting the Tranq shot off fast enough with Ebonroc. Even with some wiping, we still did a full clear in 4.5 hours. It was actually our best run through the rest of the instance, kill-wise. People were actually assisting for a change!

For the 3^rd time in a row, I actually lived through the Nef encounter. I'm beginning to think that my problem was the [Limited Invulnerability Potion]s, since I always died when I used them.

New Loots!
[Mind Quickening Gem]
[Head of Nefarian] (turned into)
[Master Dragonslayer's Orb]

Now I go on vacation for a week and a half. Unfortunately I won't 'make it to the BWL clear again tonight (our server transfer wiped our saved raids clean). Hopefully, when Nef dies tonight, the #21 or #22 breastplate off him is Netherwind, because Nef is a bastard.