Another non-WoW post from me, as well as far from my last entry. I’m just going to hope that someone will read this despite my inability to keep it updated.

This post will be personal…

Not personal for me directly though, but much so indirectly. I have a very dear friend that has the genetic disease Cystic Fibrosis (CF). She’ll be in a documentary that’s coming out soon. The documentary is about another CF patient and good friend of hers that’s waiting for a double lung transplant.

I urge anyone here to watch that documentary and educate yourself about this. There’s not many that even know that it exists. I’m not writing this to claim that there’s nothing else in the world that is worse, I’m writing this because this is something that’s personal… for me. For someone that has come to mean very much to me. She may as well be my immediate family.

Her name is Kina. She really is a fighter as she’s been through a lot and still remain an amazingly loving person, spreading joy and happiness where she goes.

Here’s the trailer for the documentary.

If you want to know more about CF, or my friend’s story and experiences going through the double lung transplant, you can go to Fighting To Breathe. More on Eva can be found here. I’m going to help her with getting the forums working, and well… as you can see, it’s still under maintenance, but please stay tuned. You can also look at my Youtube channel “tinyphreak” where I have a playlist (directlink here) with little clip from Eva that explains it a bit better… and give a better image than I can possibly pain with words.

Though I can’t tell it as well as she can, I’ll say this for those that can’t spend 15 minutes to watch an educational video or prefer to read.
With a double lung transplant, the fight is far from over for a patient with CF. It just makes it easier to breathe. Many of CF patients will suffer from other things, such as chronic backpains because of the constant coughing they’ve done and other illnesses due to the weak physical state they’re in overall, and will take multiple medicines a day - and I’m not talking about the odd five (which are a lot to me personally to start with). Multiply that number with 5-6 and you’ll be in the right ballpark. Worrying about germs, allergies… the body rejecting the lungs. Rejection is extremely fatal.

The money that a CF patient needs to spend on medicines are insane, as you can probably guess by the amount. This is not something they need to take, it’s not simply to make life easier. It’s to survive.

I’m not asking anyone here to do something, I’m just raising awareness. Just, consider donating your organs… a death can be so much more than just a tragedy.

I know that I’m going to go and put my name on a list of organ-donors, as soon as I find out if there’s complications of transferring it when I move over-seas.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I’ll direct any questions to Kina and possibly even Eva if you want any of their answers directly, or if you just want to send them your thoughts.
Guess that’s all for now.

Be safe,
~Tony “Leaf” <3

1. Start writing here again.

2. Fix the URL so that this blog sits on http://www.thegnogue.com the way it’s supposed to do.

3. Fix the original URL to be my personal web page instead.

4. Level my characters to lvl 80 one at a time.

So, now that we have that out of the world, time for a well deserved explanation. I don’t really have a good justification on why I haven’t been writing here for such a long time - especially after being poked by Valenna. I feel bad about not wising up after that (which was ages ago).

The underlying, and most effective, reason I’ve not been writing is just that I’ve never felt like it was anything worth reading. Second on the list is that I’ve simply not been playing Leaf a whole lot - nothing actually. I’ve gotten an US account since I last wrote here, and been playing on that one with friends. Made a guild and leading that.

My most most active problem in regards of not playing as much on Leaf - and neither of my characters actually - is that I have some weird hardware malfunction that causes my computer to reboot at random intervals whenever I play a game. It can seem under control and having been just bad luck, but then it begins again. That said, I plan to fix that as soon as I can afford it by replacing and upgrading my GPU and my PSU to start with.

No, I’m not going to write about the talents in-game. Instead I’m going to write about our real life talents.

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while now, but haven’t really dared to. I want to be able to write this better than I’ve written about anything else so far. Practise makes perfect however, and I don’t want to put this off for too long.
This subject came to mind when I saw this video in a post by Lady Jess. I fell in love with the voice, it was so cute and she could actually sing well. That last thought was what made me think about what I’m going to talk about.

After being amazed that someone who played World of Warcraft could sing really good I began wondering why I was so suprised. There’s a whole lot of people that play this game. The game itself promotes orther ways of artistic expression by being a great inspiration and subject of art in general, and even though I’m still rather amazed that people that draw incredibly good I was more amazed over this girl singing. It was as if I realized there was other talents out there, not just painters and those kind of artists.

I started thinking if there was other talents that I might not think about. Of course there is! Think about it. You might be raiding with someone that have won several medals in gymastics. You might have a 5v5 Arena partner that can compose songs, or maybe he’s in a band. The new recruit in your RP guild might be a famous writer.

I thought to myself and questioned why I was so surprised. I couldn’t get over it.

“She plays WoW, and can sing!”

Well, I can draw somewhat acceptable, what’s the difference between that and this girl being able to sing? Nothing actually. I doubt there’s someone out there that don’t have  a certain talent actually, whether it’s making people happy by just being there or being able to juggle 10 balls at the same time. Maybe the talent isn’t as obvious or presentable as the artistic talents of so many people - in fact, in most cases it isn’t.

I know, I’m rambling. I’m rambling about something that was an eye-opener to me though, and maybe it will be for someone else. Just think of all the talented people that you play with during the day. Think about what could come out of those people working together. I think this is a reason why World of Warcraft is often said to be more than a game. It’s a platform for so much more, and the blogging community is actually proof of that. Anything can grow from WoW, the king of MMO’s (at the moment).

So, any readers have a special talent? Maybe you can draw, or sing… or maybe one of those that have a less presentable talent, like being extremely good at organizing things or being really calm in stressful situations.

Post a comment and tell me about it, I’d love to hear about all the lovely and talented people that may be reading this.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bear news. At least it’s news to me, and the one I was with at the time of discovery.

Let me begin at the… well, beginning, as all stories goes this one has a beginning. I was in Goldshire admiring the weather when out of the blue someone whispers me.

“Are you busy?” The person asks me. I amswer that I’m not that busy, as I didn’t want to seem too available (don’t ask me why). Turns out this was a mistell. However, she added “… well, you can stealth too”. Me being a Rogue I indeed can stealh, very well I might add. I inquired what it was about, she told me she wanted to pay me X gold (seeecret :P )for running into Black Rock Depths and get her some Dark Iron Ale to get a tiny frog companion to her large collection - which currently stands at 42 (either after or before this one).

I accept and scurry off to Searing Gorge. I run about in the Depths for a while, killing a rare bos for fun and all that. Eventually I come to The Grim Guzzler. Now, this is where it gets interesting, to me at least like I mentioned already. First thing was something that caught my eye in the corner… this.

That right there is an Arena Vendor, with the normal Arena items for sale… in a lvl 55-60 instance. A funny find for me personally, so I laughed a bit about that with my one, at the time of discovery, party member. I had just returned from a game crash when that screenshot was taken, as you can tell by the chat. :)

Anway, momenst after the initial find of this seemingly lost vendor I turned to run and buy the items I was after. That was when I found the following rather misplaced, yet bery familiar, item surrounded by two Goblins. The first wasn’t that informative if my poor short-term memory serves me right, so I ask the second one what’s going on. Well, see for yourself.

Yes, that’s the drums of Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan (supposedly dinged at the 2008 WWI), and yes, they perform there at 8 every day - according to the Goblin at least.

I just love small discoveries like these and wanted to share. ^_^

Take care!

So, while on the subject I thought I’d just continue on what Gnomes are getting in WotLK. Those that want to be surprised with lore additions and general information, because they want to find out everything themselves, don’t read on. I do hope that’s not too many people, because I want to get full readers, not just people who read the top of my posts. :P

I was going to make a seperate post this little sub-subject (ehrm?), but might as well write about here now because of the way I already need to link something in that thread for a source anyway. So, for all the Gnomes out there, and maybe others as well; I give you “Gnomes in Northrend” by Zovo in Kul Tiras (US).

One thing before I do it like Slipknot. I used to have in-game screenshots of this, but I somehow lost them. I’ll try to update this when I get them again, if I do. Feel free to comment if you have such screenshots, thank you. :)
So, this is a conversation you have with a quest giver at Fizzcrank Airstrip in what I believe is in the southern Borean Tundra, according to several sources - including this one.

Origin of Gnomes

Fine then, have a seat. This might take a while.

When we first came to this frozen hell, General Arlos, down in Valiance Keep, gave my group of flying daredevils and I a special task: to establish a forward airbase for the Alliance operations. This airstrip is the result. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy, what with all the nasty beasts and the ground rock-hard from being frozen! But we managed, and we did it quickly too! Anyway, we needed to pump up lots of sand and oil for the machinery. The nearby pools proved to be perfect for that. Some of the sand even proved to have magical properties… can you say possibilities!?

But that’s a different tale. So, we drained most of the water out and build the pumping station smack dab in the middle. Everything was going swimmingly until one day the main suction pipe got clogged. Mind you, this part I learned later because I wasn’t out there at the time.

When they ratcheted up the suction on the pump, up came pieces of a robot that looked like a gnome! Of course the fools worked night and day to put it back together without telling us. This is when we lost communication with the pumping station. After a couple of days of silence, I sent a scouting party out to the platform. They never returned. I sent another group the next day with the same results, and lost a couple of flying machines out on aerial recon.

At that point I sent someone south to find help, and we hunkered down to prepare for the worst. We turned all of our attention to making armor, weapons and robots so that we could head out there in full force. When we did a few days ago, we couldn’t believe our eyes! As I was saying, what we saw out there defied explanation. My people where nowhere to be found, but in their place as a veritable army of robots and androids going about their business!

The droids all looked like gnomes and they said that they’d been expecting us. In fact, in their own strange way, they acted like they knew us. We were surrounded and quickly taken to the top of the pumping station. That’s where we saw their leader and what he was doing to the surviving gnomes!

He called himself Gearmaster Mechazod. When we arrived he was busy transforming the survivors into mechanical beings! He greeted us warmly and explained that he was one of the first gnomes ever to be created by something he called “The Grand Architect”, a Titan keeper from within the halls of fabled Ulduar.

Apparently, he was the blockage that my team had accidentally sucked up from where he’d malfunctioned thousands of years ago. It was just our luck that we’d built the pumping station right above him. The station’s mechanics had put him back together, bringing him back to “life”. And now, by way of thanks, he was going to return the favor by curing all of us of what he called the “Curse of the Flesh”. According to Mechazod, it’s a condition that eventually befalls all creations of the Titans! In other words, we all supposedly start out as robots of some kind, and, over thousands of years, slowly turn into fleshy beings!

Preposterous, I know.

It didn’t look like much of a “cure” to me, and I wasn’t about to stand around listening to some crazy robot while he was butchering my people! We did what any sane gnome would do… we ran! Well, actually, most of us parachuted off the side of the platform, but you get the picture. Not many of us managed to make it back here, and we’re still spread thin from having to deal with everything else too, like the magnataur to the north and the Scourge to the east. To make things worse, the Horde just set up shop to the northwest!

And that’s where we find ourselves now, [Name]. We can’t possibly deal with all of this by ourselves, and quite frankly, I feel a little out of my depth. Jinky knows what needs to be done. You should go see her now.

I just hope you’ll be able to get us out of this with our bodies intact.

To be continued?

I know I’ll be hoping for more. By the sounds of it, Gnomes will get a base in WotLK as well. We got one in TBC - Toshley’s Station, and we’re getting one now - Fizzcrank Airstrip.

Oh, and the quest is called The Mechagnomes by the way. And yes, I did make it less paragraphy (new word?) here for the sake of yourscroll wheel. ;P

I’m really hoping for more… like… a new home city? Maybe when Blizzard has fully implemented the code for the game to remember progress on an individual basis, or something like that. Maybe a server wide war effort? Something, anything.

That’s all for Gnome coverage for now. Thanks for tuning in, Leaf Hingesprock signing off.

It’s not the most recent news, but news all the same, at least to me. In this post (read on before you click please) by Kalgan, there is some information about changes incoming for the different racials. Trolls getting buffed, Undeads getting nerfed and so on, pretty standard really.

Now, to the reason I even made a post about this so early after my latest one. Gnome racials!!

That’s right folks! No more resisting our Gnomish artistery of escaping tight spots.

Gnome

• Escape Artist: the freeing effect can no longer be resisted
• Arcane Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Arcane spells by 2%

More on Blizzard finally giving Gnomes some love in a planned future segment, keep your eyes peeled (not meant to be taken literally).

Take care! :D

Okay, beta version of WotLK seems to be leaking information like Titanic after it hit the iceberg.

So, seeing as I’m one of the brave souls that have ventured into the “Deep Ass” spec and picked up Mutilate as my main attack and so on, I thought I’d be one of the few to go through the changes based on my spec and not the overall Rogue class. Basically laughing at all other specs for the nerfs they get and cry about the nerfs that affect me. I have to say that it’s looking mighty good for me so far. I’ll make an as short as possible rundown for you. I’ve cut out those that doesn’t affect me at all, such as obvious PvE talents and skills  - since I’m a PvP’er more than PvE’er, and will spec accordingly. Basically I’ll just comment on what interests me, live with it. ;P

Assassination

Skills

•  Dismantle required level changed from 75 to 20. Max range changed to 5 Yards.

This doesn’t really affect me that much unless I plan on leveling a new Rogue. I might actually do that soon for a special reason which I might bring up in a future blog. ;)

Talents

• Hunger For Blood damage bonus reduced from 5% to 3%. Now works with any harmful physical effect affecting you.

QQ about the damage nerf, but horray about the any harmful physical effect. No more crying over warriors getting lucky crits or putting Rend on your Rogue bum. Just blind, activate it and vanish to reopen.

• Focused Attacks has been moved from Tier 9 to Tier 8.
• Turn the Tables has been moved from Tier 8 to Tier 9.

Made life easier for me to spec pure PvP I guess, other than that nothing really big. Almost didn’t comment on this.

• Find Weakness changed from 5 points to 3 points. Now increases the damage of all offensive abilities by 3/6/9% (Old - Your finishing moves increase the damage of all your offensive abilities by 2/4/6/8/10% for 10 sec.)

Seriously huge buff to damage. Keep it, please! *prays to Blizzard*

• Vigor has been moved from Tier 7 to Tier 3.

Have to say that I’m a bit disappointed about this change. Previously having 120 Energy was a “Deep Ass” thing only, but now every damn Rogue will have the chance to run around with that. So, yeah… thanks for making us less special. However with the latest changes to Mutilate, I’m guessing more people will spec it since it will now be easy without the positioning requirements. More on that further down though.

• Deadened Nerves changed from 5 points to 3 points. Now reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%. (Old - 1/2/3/4/5%)

This may have made this viable, and might even shine more than the recent Murder buff in terms of talent choice. Depends on player style of course, and I’ve always liked killing something fast before they’re able to react. However, I might change that a bit since sooner or later someone will find me out of stealth. Very nice buff to an otherwise useless talent.

• Master Poisoner moved from Tier 6 to Tier 9 and changed from 2 to 3 ranks. Now Increases the critical hit chance of all attacks made against any target you have poisoned by 1/2/3% and reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 17/34/50%. (Old - Reduces the chance your poisons will be resisted by 5/10% and reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 25/50%.)

I like this change a lot. Anything that buffs damage in my tree is a good thing, even at the cost of having to spend one extra talent point and having your poisons getting resisted more. I’ll be honest, I never did take this talent anyway, so I’ll just gain from this.

• Relentless Strikes has been removed. (And moved to Subtlety)

The most annoying change so far when it comes to the Assassination tree. And the fact that they increased it to 5 points and not 3 just added to the pain. Valenna from Parry! Dodge! Spin! put it very well in her, at the time of writing, latest beta update. Blizz made it more accessible but made it more expensive. That’s like taking a car that used to be purchasable only for people with a certain title (i.e. Sir, Lord, Lady, Earl, Countess, Duke etc), making it available for other people but at the same time making it so that only the rich people can buy them.

• Improved Expose Armor now Reduces the energy cost of your Expose Armor ability by 5/10. (Old - Increases the duration of your Expose Armor ability by 25/50%.)
• *New Talent* - Overkill (Tier 7) - Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy.

Now, this is rather interesting. Seperated, only one of these seem great. Together, they seem like the perfect match. This will make the Sap>CS-withoutbreaking-sap>EA-without-breaking-sap>Restealth a bit funkier, if you’re able to pull it off.

• Lethality now increases the critical strike damage of all combo moves by 6/12/18/24/30%. (Old - Didn’t affect all skills)

Very grateful for this one and I hope it stays.

That was it for the actual Assassin tree. Now for what I believe affects me in the other trees, should be interesting - but can’t promise it will be. :P

Combat

Skills

• Sprint cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes.
• Evasion cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes.

Obviously affect me as well, maybe a bit too obvious to comment - but still felt like stating my thanks. The lower cooldowns the better. Mohahaha! Fear me, Enhancement Shaman, Feral Druid and… other Rogues? Meh, just fear me.

Talents

• Dagger Specialization has been moved from Tier 4 to Tier 3 and now affects Fist Weapons as well.
• Dual Wield Specialization has been moved from Tier 4 to Tier 1.

This is what will make me change from going deeper than Tier 1 in Subtlety tree, to going Tier 3 in Combat for level 80. The notes that I copied and used didn’t mention the name change (if it will change, which does sound reasonable), hence the link saying something else.

• Improved Sprint changed from Tier 3 to Tier 4.

Sad to loose the possible 4th root-killer (Gnome ftw), but I’m happy with having “only” three. ;)

• Precision now also increases the hit chance of your poison attacks.

Really good for a poison dependant spec like “Deep Ass”.

Subtlety

Skills

• Cloak of Shadows cooldown increased from 1 to 1.5 minute.
• Vanish cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes.
• Disarm Trap increased from 5 to 20 yards. Casting time reduced from 2 to 1 second.

Ouch,  yay and cool. CloS nerf was bound to happen though, and it’s not as bad as 2-5 minutes I guess (knock on wood). Disarm Trap change is interesting and will be very useful against hunters… now if only CloS worked on Flare, hehe.

Talents

• Master of Deception Rank 4 and 5 have been removed.

I’m a bit confused by this. Saying they’ve removed it would imply to actually remove the effects of those last two ranks, compared to making it more concentrated (like detergents or orange syrup). If they in fact removed them, making it worth 9 “stealth points” at max (1 point from 2 extra levels worth of stealth), then I won’t even bother taking this and will instead go with either 3 point Relentless Strikes of fill up both Murder and Deadened Nerves.

• Opportunity has been changed from 5 points to 2 points. Now increases the damage dealt when striking from behind with your Backstab, Mutilate, Garrote and Ambush abilities by 10/20%. (Old - 4/8/12/16/20%)

Love that I’ll be able to have this and Dual Wield Specialization. <3

I dinged 70 on September the 1st 2007. Here’s a little video of that happening. I copied the method of dinging from Chidori of Argent Dawn (EU), who makes the charming web-comic The Chronicles of The Flaming Ruby. Her video far surpasses mine, but this was more of a way for me to just mark it down and make a milestone of my own, so it doesn’t matter if it’s bad - it’s mine.

Excuse the boring prelude and long fight, and only providing one song. Hopefully someone will enjoy it anyway. And the first name on the “thank you” roll, that may not be seen because of the speed, is the lovely Aeiseth whom unfortunately missed the event although wanting to be there. <3

Roll the clip!

Ok, I’m back. I have been back for a while now actually, and a lot of things has been happening. I won’t go into any personal details, but I’ll just say that things has changed enough for me to have time to write consistently here - which is the main point here. By reading the previous post you can guess what changed anyway. :P

With that said, I have some posts that I’ve been meaning to write long ago but just didn’t find the time or didn’t know what to say really. I’ll redo the ‘About’ page and fix the blog up as I find the extra tidbits of time and know-how to do so.

After writing this I’ll fix the ‘About’ page, as mentioned, and then jump to my first post which I should have done a long time ago. Better late then never, right? ;)

I’ve officially taken a break from World of Warcraft for now. Will probably not be back until Wrath of the Lich King, and possibly not fully then either.

Long story short, lots of things are happening in my life and I need to take care of it before it goes out of hand and I’m standing there with nothing. I want to make everything work as smoothly as possible and that means I need to focus and do the work now before it’s too late to make it smooth. This probably won’t make any sense without details of the situation. So…

Details are:

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