I’m still playing WoW of course. During that month I geared up my warrior and have been tanking our guild’s 10-man Ulduar runs, resulting in some funny accidents and some nice kills. Funny accidents include Flame Leviathan, Hodir, and frost resistance gear most of the times – I repeatedly forget to change it back, so once in a while I tank other bosses in it and wonder why I’m dodging less hits than usual or not getting enough threat. Nice kills on the other hand include XT-002′s hard mode and General Vezax. Unfortunately we’re not getting enough time and/or signups to kill the Old God himself yet, but that might change this week with the new ability to extend raid lockouts.

With the new emblem changes, the process of getting the gear up to the rest of the group is going a bit faster, but not that much. I just can’t put my mind to farming heroics all day, especially as a tank in pugs. Some of them are just a major pain in the butt. I almost cry when I’m first on the dps meter after the instance is done – over a retri paladin and two hunters in Violet Hold for example. It’s just so wrong.

Anyway, I’m more or less alive again. It will take a few days to get back to regular posting though, bear with me please.

Other stuff is I’ve arranged the previous posts into new categories – there are a bunch of them in the category menu under Columns, and I’ll be trying to keep up with posting new things to them. I’ve even gone so far as to create a schedule for them, which I will share here – mostly as a reminder to myself. So, here it goes:

• Monday: Randomonday – might be a good idea to rant and complain about random things happening in and outside of the game – and if nothing interesting happens to me, Blog Azeroth’s Shared Topic it will be.
• Tuesday: Azeroth Views – where I’ll be sharing some nice screenshots with you – I have a bunch of them in my folders, ready to post.
• Wednesday: Adding Things Up – which is a column about UI addons. 
• Friday: Alternative Times – all about alts – I’ve got some things cooking here about leveling, professions, great quests that you shouldn’t miss and all that stuff.
• Saturday: Sat-Ulduar-day – as the name says, the guides for Ulduar will go up on this day, and also some other random pointers.
• Sunday: Bloody Sunday – which will be stories about PvP. Now I’m not a hardcore PvPer, so expect some battleground strategies, and maybe some achievements or other things.

Of these six columns you can expect at least 4 of them appearing here in any week – that’s of course not including other columns that are not on the list and are more general. That should get my lazy dwarven ass back in gear. ;) The schedule will be starting this Monday, and as I tank more and more stuff on Vrethir, you can probably guess what it will be about. ;)

Oh, and if you’re still reading this – go and visit Only Ten More Points – a blog of my insane guildie Glinda. She’s writing all about achievements, so if you’re interested, you might possibly find some useful tips there.

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

Rules:

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

Thank you for tagging me, but I’m not sure if I can do 10 honest things at April Fools (and no, I really didn’t choose this day myself… it just happened). I will try, though – I’ll mix up some real and WoW things, and maybe even some will not be real… It is April Fools after all. ;]

1. My 31st birthday will mark the end of the world – at least that’s how some ancient folks foretold – so I will simply try to live up to the challenge.
2. My first WoW character was a nightelf huntard.
3. I still have no idea at all what do I do with this Twitter thingy and how.
4. I’m a gamer – it doesn’t matter if it’s PC or console – if the game’s good, I will probably play it.
5. I enjoy writing a lot – I even wrote some games reviews for some quite big polish portal.
6. I also enjoy reading books and blogs – when I ride the bus to work, I almost always have something to read with me, and my room is basically overflowing with books. And consoles.
7. Final Fantasy VIII totally owns Final Fantasy VII.
8. I live on coffee, pizza and LCD monitor’s radiation.
9. I like collecting figures and other stuff – be it anime ones, game ones, or WoW figures, WoW TCG, and other associated stuff.
10. I have a TV which I don’t even turn on other than to play a console game.
11. I still don’t have a driver’s license – I’m planning to buy a scooter in the near future, though.
12. I had to backdate this post, since I started late and it’s 2nd now here where I live. ^^;

So that will be it. Oh yeah, and wasn’t there a seven blogs thingy… Lets see… Eresin, Zaltu, Birdfall and Greedy Goblin. I’m especially curious what would Gevlon write – I usually don’t agree with his views, but still. :) Oh, and about the seven ones? Well it is April First, so bear with me. :P

Saithir and Vrethir – these names I used for a long time in fantasy themed games, where my usual nickname didn’t quite fit. I think that the first occurence was something like 9 or 8 years ago, when I started playing a MUD. My memory of that time is a bit blurry though… I’m pretty sure I made Saithir first, but I can’t remember exactly how. With Vrethir I have less problems, as he was supposed to be his brother, so I just changed the first half. Or was that a dragon rider and his drake (think Riders of Pern style, though the naming scheme doesn’t fit at all)… Argh, I’ve always been so awful with remembering names and such details, sorry.

Ashler, Sheven and Riwynn – these three are just names generated by a random name generator. I pick one and try until I find a name that sounds well. It’s more of a success in the case of Riwynn, my little baby Tauren hunter than the night elves, though…

Lirelle and Vean – these two I haven’t generated randomly, I just thought them up and liked them. Lirelle is quite appropriate for a female human paladin, and I just like how “Vean” sounds.

So, that would be it. I know it’s a bit dissapointing – I wish I had some cool story to all the names, and they don’t even have a meaning… ;] Also, I’d like to forward the meme challenge to Davlin and Nexultor. Have fun guys. :)

Also, don’t forget to check the webcomic itself. Cadistra is doing a really awesome job there by drawing the cutest tauren chick I’ve seen.

About me, the author and player behind the dwarfs.

I’m a gamer from Poland. I play a lot of different games, though I must say that World of Warcraft is the one and only that I’m playing for so long, and with the arrival of the new expansion, I must say that I almost stopped playing anything else. Well, we all saw that coming, aren’t we? I started playing WoW few years ago before the Burning Crusade, but left it for about a year after leveling my first character to 40. I went back with the TBC, and got hooked for good. In April of 2008 I’ve found my current guild, and raided with them up to Tier 5 content. 

Introducing the dwarfs

But enough about me, time to write something about the real heroes of this blog.

Saithir, the combat swords rogue

This is my main character, even though he is definitely not the first one I made or even not the first one to 70 – I leveled him first to 80, and it’s my main character to do raids and achievements with. Even though all the talk about mutilate being the best raiding spec for a rogue now, I always really liked playing with swords in TBC’s raids, so I’m still more or less the same spec as I’ve always been with him. As far as professions go, he’s my skinner and leatherworker.
 

Vrethir, the protection warrior

He’s been the first one I’ve leveled in TBC, and apart from leveling in Azeroth, he was a protection warrior as long as I can remember. I’m still leveling him to 80, and still doing it the prot way – the new talents made warriors so fun and so easy to kill stuff with, as well as made tanking fun again, as the tanking burnout made me make my rogue in the first place. The professions? Mining and blacksmithing, nothing out of ordinary here.
 

Sheven, almost a tree

I was planning for him to be a boomkin when I level him up, but while leveling through Northrend I chose the hybrid 31/0/30 spec and went healing a lot of instances, so he’s probably gonna be a tree in two levels. The healing was a bit boring at the start, but I started to like it after a while. I still promise myself that I will be back to moonfiring stuff when we get the dual specs, but any kind of feral is just out of question. I have my rogue and warrior for that, why would I want another one of these, just furry? Sheven has the most profitable professions out of all of them, being herbalism and inscription, and he’s the one providing the rest with gold for the epic flying mounts and all the other stuff.

Ashler, fighting the huntard stereotypes since 2008

We never had a lot of good hunters (and quite a few of the bad ones) in the guild, so I made this one to see if raiding as a BM hunter is really that hard. It isn’t, and I had a blast leveling him up. He is currently a bit neglected and is gathering dust in Shattrath while the rest is gaining levels in Northrend – I haven’t even taken him out to learn the new tiers of his mining and engineering. Maybe I will get back to him after I level up the rest.

Lirelle, the pretty bank girl

She was supposed to be my healer, but as I’ve started her before the 3.0 patch made paladins overpowered, I only got her to level 12. She’s been sitting in Stormwind since then and serves as my bank and AH girl. Maybe I will level her up someday, because I can’t stand the sight of low level character on my realm list. ;)

But Saithir, only one of them is a dwarf!

You must have got something wrong here, maybe you should look again? ;) Well, actually it’s my guildies fault, because they won’t stop calling me a dwarf no matter which one I play on. I tried correcting them at first, but it was futile, so I just gave up on it, and so came the name of the blog. After all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a night elf or a draenei with a dwarven heart, right? Right?

Anyway, all of them dwarfs are on the Deathwing-EU server, and are members of an awesome guild Conclave of Shadows.