inspired_mind

While I am enjoying my weekly facial (honey based this time, gods I love it), thus having absolute no feeling in my face, I figured I might as well write a new LJ entry. Lots has happened this week!

First of all, I finally decided to build a new webite for my WoW guild Iron Wardens, as the former GM simply won't reply to my email/forum pleas to send me the data/password of the current website. As a result, our last kill on the main page is Omnotron Defense System and the recruitment status very much outdated. Since we desperately need to recruit new people, which we cannot send to an outdated website, I finally gave in and made a new website at Wowstead. Imagine my surprise when I realised I already was logged in. Turns out Wowstead is part of Curse, I use the Curse client to update my addons, thus I already got an account. Silly me. Anyways, the new website in the making can be found HERE. 4 or so hours of messing around and it already looks so great. Very much enjoying this in fact. Sadly, the skin we use now for the layout will have to go in 30 days, as it is a premium skin (thus having to pay for it when our 30 day promotion runs out).

Aside from that I have been watching several anime. Finished Infinite Stratos, which had a somewhat disappointing final battle, but the humor in it was priceless, typical harem anime. Been watching so many dark/emo/action anime as of late, I forgot how refreshing a humor anime can be sometimes.
Up next was Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which I mostly wanted to watch because of the music, but turned out to be one twisted anime. Seen 10 out of 12 eps so far...and lets just say I can never look at the same way at magical girl anime anymore. Seriously, which each ep it gets more dark and twisted...just wtf.

Lastly, I have been watching some of my old fave youtube vids again, after cleaning up my bookmarks. Today I will be plugging a lovely female singer, whom goes by the name Erutan, also known as katethegreat19. Her songs are simply lovely. I originally found her by searching for Lament of the Highborne, which she did a very enchanting version of. One of my personal favorites is her version of Aerith's Theme (WARNING: FF7 spoilers!), which she wrote her very own lyrics for. Now I never managed to finish FF7 due to various reasons, but listening to this song makes me appreciate the game a bit more. She is also the leader of Stella Voci...an international online 14 member female choir! Afaik they never met each other IRL, thus each recording their own voice and then arranging/mixing it in various songs is amazing.

Oh yeah, before I go...League of Legends is oddly amusing. Now gimme a proper Windowed Mode version so I can actually chat to people on yahoo while playing this game!

~*~Maru~*~

So lately I have been all into gearing my Death Knight in WoW, greatly enjoying Unholy dps. After successfully doing all Cata normals and several heroics, I managed to become geared enough to enter the 2 Zandalari heroics. Zul'Gurub went fine with guildies...I did decent dps, not a single death. So I took a big leap and decided to queue for Zul'Aman all alone, as it's considered to be easier than ZG and I got plenty of experience in that place as healer and ranged dps. Now, I am quite proud at the fact I tend to have a very solid survivability, especially on my warlock...but melee dps in Zandalari heroics really is an entirely different story, especially when your healer is a total stranger.

Anyways, it first started with a tank and healer whom wanted to do the 2nd boss first, obviously because of some loot, then planning on dropping the group. It was a lousy tank really, bad at holding aggro, slow. His healer buddy was quite bad too, often idling around untill the tank would drop very low. We didn't even manage to down the boss before the timer ran out, so no additional loot either. And as expected, they dropped the group right after. I put them both on ignore and requeued...only to get the VERY SAME tank and healer again. The hell Blizz? Isn't ignore supposed to prevent those people from grouping with you again? When they realised the boss was dead, they dropped the group again. At least this time they would get the deserter debuff, resulting in no dungeons for 15 min, feh.

Enter new tank and healer. We down the first boss with no issues. We do the trash to 3rd boss with no real issues, everything goes fine. Then on the boss itself...I die. I am well aware of its mechanics, but as melee you have to react much much faster to avoid the fire, else you drop down dead in a matter of seconds, if not healed. The tank drops me a battle rez, I get up at barely 40% health, no heals, new fire in my face, SPLAT I go again. We end up wiping on the boss and the tank goes completely berserk at me, calling me the F word and other words for retard. I was shocked, to say the least. Seriously? Was that really needed? It's not like the healer was one of the best either, the adds were flying around everywhere, even with me dead they could have downed the boss with ease, but they wiped. Clearly it's not all my fault? Anyways, I apologise, explain the fact I never did this boss as melee before, he stops whining. We down boss, kill the next 2 with ease. On last boss, ranged screws up and ends up killing one of the range dps and the healer, at 10% I drop dead too, but the remaining dps and tank down the boss. Loot is taken care of, both alive people promptly drop the group without rezzing anyone, resulting in yet another corpse run for the 3 of us. And to make matters worse, during the 1,5 hours (if not 2) of failfest, wasting time on replacements and nerdraging, all I got was a lousy cloak that was barely an upgrade...

Lousy pugs happen, that's the risk of pugging...but this really was something. I never got yelled like this at on my healer or range before. Did I just end up with an elitist tank? Or do melee dps simply get much easier blamed for stuff they didn't cause? During that entire run the hunter failed at properly trapping his assigned mob, but never did the tank say anything about it. But during the one time I screw up, I am the retard? Maybe I am just doomed for being a Death Knight, one of the most disliked classes ever...but the tank was one too, I really didn't expect that from him.

One thing is for sure, I ain't going to pug that place on my melee alts again. Hurrah for guildruns! Also, I certainly won't get annoyed at my melee guildies anymore for taking damage on the 3rd boss, because it's really quite hard to avoid. Sorry guildies for doubting you!

~*~Maru~*~

I wasn't in the best mood yesterday, so I decided to cheer myself up by checking some of my fave youtube vids. This resulted in finding various orchestra and a capella versions of video game themes, one of them being the following vid.


Gawd I love violins and cellos. It's giving me goosebumps, especially around 1:40. Video has been on repeat for hours. Planning to make an entry about my fave songs soon, so stay tuned!

~*~Maru~*~

Had the urge to play around a bit in modelviewer, so made a new forum banner for myself:


I may resize it slightly, as its kinda big. Not that anyone would care prolly, seeing as only a couple of my guildies read the guild fora. Maru is actually starting to look like this (minus shoulders, damn you Cho'gall and Nefarian). Mariko and Miraya....not so much =P I just realised I now need to make a matching avatar as well tho.

Also made a silly picture for the main page, featuring our beloved GM. You see, our raid leaders failed to make a screenshot for the first kill of Omnotron25...so I figured a replacement pic would be nice. It actually took me over an hour to assemble this pic! 5 different models and had to ninja someone ingame to make a screenshot of the room the boss usually stands in.The result can be found here: CLICKY

aien_hime also inspired me to change the layout of my LJ. Thankies for that ^^

~*~Maru~*~

Yep, I still live. I just have been busy with WoW: Cataclysm. Gearing up my priestie, theorycrafting, wiping on raid bosses. Let me tell you, Halfus Wyrmbreaker and Omnotron Defense System are quite nasty, especially when learning tactics and not everyone being properly geared yet (guilty on the gearing part...the loot gods are evil to me...stop dropping bloody plate gear!).


This was on our first evening wiping on the Omnotron Defense System.... As soon as the Poison Bombs target me, I have to run and the tank tends to fall over as a result =P (Bigger Version)


We did kill the Baradin Hold pvp boss Argaloth...tho I was asked to go shadow and be dispell monkey. Fairly tight enrage timer too, especially for us slightly undergeared peeps. (Bigger Version)

So yeah...sorry for the afk. I hope to update the Photoshop banner guide with some text too, also planning to work on some sort of logo for my guild...but need to dig through Modelviewer for some proper models/pics first.

~*~Maru~*~

Once in a while, when home alone, I have this urge to open my fave song/music video list and get nostalgic. The featured song in this entry is one of them.

I discovered the author of this song, Cranius, when I was browsing for some WoW related music videos/machinima. His very first song, Big Blue Dress immediately became one of my faves, due to his awesome voice, the great sound in general and how it synchronized greatly with the video itself (especially 3 or so years ago). And ofcourse the lyrics itself! Nowadays machinima people would laugh at the quality, but for me as a fairly new WoW gamer, it was was awesome.

The Lament of Captain Placeholder
The Lament of Captain Placeholder has the same effect on me, tho in a more relaxing way. It's one of those songs I tend to turn on the laptop in the kitchen, while cleaning, singing and dancing along loudly. I guess I am just a sucker for guitars. For the story of this great NPC, whom I sadly never met (tho I hope to do so soon, now that he has returned to Cataclysm beta!), I will refer to this article. It's certainly worth a read.

While praising Cranius, I also have to praise the orginal creator of the song, which can be found here. This guy may not have a studio to record his song in a great quality, but despite that, the original still has a great sound. I tend to alternate between them to keep it interesting :)

It's really amazing what a MMORPG does to some artists eh? Just look at me and my Photoshop banner addiction. All those things would never have been created, all those people I would never have met if WoW hadn't been around O.o

~*~Maru~*~