R.I.P. Ezra Chatterton

This blog post is probably going to reach a much broader audience then I am generally used to. I hate to have to bring this story to you. What is it doing on this blog? It's WoW related, but it doesn't take place in game.

A year ago, a heart-warming story came to my attention through the various Warcraft media outlets. It was about a boy, his name was Ezra Chatterton. Ezra was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He faced a ton of treatment and fought so hard for his life and only wanted one thing. See, he and his father played World of Warcraft as a treat when they spent time together. They bonded through the game, discussing the various aspects and playing together.

Blizzard Entertainment, through the Make-a-wish foundation, invited Ezra and his father to come to the development studio and spend the day with the game's designers and developers. Ezra spent the day designing The Ashes of Al'ar, the season two hunter crossbow as well as a quest for the game. Ezra left the studio thrilled, excited and exhasted, dreaming and hoping that one day he would be able to become a developer for the company.

Ezra suffered a stroke a few months ago. He was healthy for a short period of time, but it is in sadness that I have to report that on Monday of this week, Ezra passed away.

Ezra was an inspirtation to a lot of players of the World of Warcraft, and myself and he will be missed. He fought with bravery and honor. Rest well Ezra, may the Earth Mother rest over your soul.

New Beginnings

Alright, I'm back to writing this blog. Why? Because I have nothing else better to do and want to get into this for my own sanity, and TRY, just TRY to help provide people with information. I love World of Warcraft. It's one of my many passions, but I've devoted so much time into knowing the game, and how it works that it really stands out. I play a Shaman, currently. I say currently because as Wrath of the Lich King grows closer, the class I want to play switches every day. Do I want to continue on my shaman? I've grown so attached to healing and devoteda lot of time to know how my class works that I don't want him to fade into the dark. With the new achivement system, something I find myself becoming very obsessive about, my shaman has the majority of achivements shared between all my characters. But on the other hand, my Warlock is needed by my guild it seems. As much as they want me to "play whatever class I want", I want to do a serivce to them for what they have done to me as well as give other shamans a chance to step up and get into raids.

Wow, massive tangent. What I wanted to say plain out was: I want this blog to be about Warcraft. I'll probably start up my own personal blog about other games and "my feelings about things" at some time in the near future and transfer all the old posts over there.

I have a bunch of thoughts in my head when it comes to this very blog. With Wrath coming out in less than a month, I'll probably use the blog to document what I do until then, the achivements I run after and such. I want to also start writing guides about certain aspects of the game. Money, Achivements, and things of that nature.

Since I'm just running on into this long oblivion of an unstructured blog post, I'm just going to end it here.

Remember folks, Do a barrel roll.

Hallow's End

So, as we reach the half way mark of the month of October and are literally less than a month from Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard's annual Hallow's End Festival is now in full swing for the players of World of Warcraft. With the newly introduced achievement system, players are more eager than ever to take part in the Halloween inspired quests. Time for me to break down what you can do from October 18 - November in game.

Trick or Treating - Once an hour, players can bring up the option to "trick or treat" any inn-keeper in Azeroth or Outland. If you're lucky enough to get a treat, you will receive a treat bag that a chance of giving you one of the various masks or wands required complete the achievements that are bundled with the festival. However, if you're luck is in limited to supply, you may be tricked into being turned into a mini-diablo or bat.

The Headless Horseman
Returning to the Hallow's End festival for the second year in a row, the Headless Horseman is back to his annual village terrorizing. You can obtain Crudely Wrapped Gifts by protecting low level Alliance or Horde from the Horseman's relentless attacks on these defenceless towns. Also, a fan favorite, the Headless Horseman can be summoned in the Scarlet Monastery by a team of level 70s. His loot table is the same as last year's. You still have a chance at the mount, but the mask and pet have been made the criteria of the hardest achievement linked to the festival due to their low drop rate.

Candy Buckets
This is mostly for the folks who have a lot of patience or have an obsession with gathering up all the achivements. Buckets of candy have been placed in every inn in Outland, Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. There is an achivement for each of the continents as well as gathering every handful of candy from each bucket. The bucket's offer a quest that gives four gold and a handful of candy that is automatically completed. The handful of candy gives random candy buff foods as well as (G.N.E.R.D.S that are required for another achivement). I netted a decent amount of gold just running around getting the achivements, so it is indeed worth the time.

The Hallowed
From here on out, every world event in the game will now a certain amount of achievements, and if you complete all achievements for that specific event, you will earn a title. If you earn the titles for every world event, you will receive the albino drake. However, Hallow's End seems to have a serious flaw. There are two achievements that may take a year or two to complete. The mask collecting is almost impossible and the chance of getting both the pet and mask from The Headless Horseman is unlikely because you need to share the loot between your party. Even if you run it every day, the chance is very slim that you'll even see it drop. I've been looking at the other festival achievements and it really seems that this isn't the case for anything else.

Edit: At the time of this edit, 3.0.3 has arrived on the PTRs and it seems as if the mask hunting achivement has been removed as a criteria for the title and albino drake. Whippe, now I just need to get my hands on a pet.

A list of achievements for Hallow's End are here.

Achivements are going to be huge. I could tell just by the cheer amount of people trying to go after them all in my guild. In ending, Hallow's End is a lot of fun. I wish I had gotten more stuff during Brewfest done so I had a head start on the achivements last year, but I guess that's life. This is something that will keep many casual players busy until Wrath and Northrend opens up, so it's a very good time to be playing.

Hey, look, my blog is alive again.

Not that I have any readers on a day to day basis anyway, but I've decided to apologize. Why? Because like me, I usually get carried away on other ventures and then come back to the ones I really wanted to do. At this point, if you're reading this post, you probably know me and since you already know me you don't really need an introduction to who I am or why I write this blog. However, if Google or Twitter has brought you here for some random reason, then my apologizes and I'm going to give you the only thing you need to know about me. I love to write. It's my passion.

I feel awful that I let this blog just sit in the blogger server for so long being untouched, but I can't really promise that I'll be writing on it full time. Sadly, at this very moment, I have four assignments and a concert to get to in literally three minutes. I'm off for know, but I'll be back soon.

And that is something I can promise.

Introduction or what not

I guess this blog has been sitting here a little too long without any activity. I'm Ekasra, or well, thats what some of my friends know me by. My slave name is William. Well, it really isn't a slave name, I just like saying that. I guess I'm probably the biggest geek I know. I mean, I have four passions in life: Star Wars, video games, music, and writing. That is basically what my blog is going to be about. If you don't like it too bad.

Some of you probably are asking: "Hey, what the fuck is your blog name all about?". Like I said, this blog has been sitting here for a very long time. It was originally created to sort my thoughts about a game I play called World of Warcraft. How, if you've been living under a rock for the past three years, World of Warcraft is the biggest online game...well, ever. As I sit here writing this, 9 million players are subscribed to the service. I live this game. If I have free time, which is most of the time since I am a student, I'm logged in. I guess this ties to my passion for video games. A lot of shit on this blog is going to be either about WoW (Oh my god, I'm so hip) or about video games I'm playing. In the gaming world, I guess I'm a big deal, or so I'm told. I was an intern at a very large and respectable gaming publication in 2007 until it just started to overwhelm my life and studies. I guess I'll tell y'all what I'm striving for in school. I want to be a journalist. Not just any kind of journalist, but a games journalist. You're going to see a lot of reviews about general shit I like or buy on this blog as well.

Second of all, I'd like to welcome you all. Sorry that this post is kinda getting a little cut off but I'm hungry and need to make a run to go get some food.