So tonight I am in an incredibly euphoric mood. I found the keys that I lost in the previous post. Turns out they took a trip to Bonnaroo in Tennessee with my little bro. Sometimes I definitely envy the amount of free time he has. Not having work or classes helps I guess. So yea I am so relieved that I don't have to get my car towed to the dealer to get the lock popped and have some special "immobilizer" key made that costs god knows how much. So I am very thankful for the anti climactic ending to the saga that was my lost keys.

On to something more relevant to the topic of this blog. I think World of Warcraft Battlegrounds are pretty amazing! Now before you write me off as just another blizzard fan boi please take into consideration that before I started playing WoW I was firmly in the EQ / EQ2 camp and severely biased against WoW and its Cartoony graphics. I was also very skeptical about Battlegrounds when they were first released. As a strong member of the Rogue community (no matter what game I play) I felt that we would be severely out of place in battlegrounds. Honestly when I think about situations where rogues shine it is not in 40 vs. 40 man raids where Flare, Hunter's Mark, AoE's, and every other anti-rogue magic known to the wow community criss-crosses the battlefield. So when I tried to figure out what rogues would do in battlegrounds I was /boggled to say the least.

I have been proven wrong! I must admit I am starting to enjoy when Blizzard overcomes the skeptics and turns them back with their tails between their legs. Fortunately for the Rogue battlegrounds is so much more then TM vs. SS style raids. As a matter of fact I think relying simply on your raid force to win brute force style is next to impossible. Alterac Valley for starters is laced with quests. Some simple reputation building quests that let you loot body parts off the opposite faction and some more involved that require teams of people to collect hides, tame wolves all to achieve a common goal.

don't like direct combat? That's ok sneak around the back of the alliance bases and slaughter their rams for the hides needed to release your Wolf Riders. At the same time your killing the Rams they need to release their Ram Riders.

If you want to make a difference take a druid and another rogue or two and slip behind their defenses capturing their Graveyards with perfect timing allowing your team to push forward as their reinforcements lag due to your efforts.

Granted the main focus of the battleground is to take the battleground graveyards, towers and all. But to do so requires much more then a simple coordinated raid force. It requires tasks to be delegated and everyone to contribute. One of the biggest benefits you can have in a battleground is having someone who is a natural leader to direct the activities of your faction. Releasing your Elemental or Ancient can deal a heavy blow to the opposing team but releasing it along side your Elite riders and upgrading the armor of NPC's can be overpowering.

All this is well and good but we all want individual rewards. Admit it! As a Rogue you will suffer through doing your part but not for free right? What's your cut in all this...? Certainly not Contribution points. Hardcore pvpers have already pointed out that the contribution flows most freely through Warsong Gulch. Well it just so happens its all about the Reputation.

That's right, I said it! Reputation. Now before you click away in disgust check out the PVP rewards for reputation in Alterac Valley.... mounts, armor, weapons, potions, and even bandages. Granted the potions and bandages are only supposed to be used in the Battlegrounds the rest of the stuff seems like it can be used anywhere. So how about a nice 100 damage dagger for getting revered with Orc clan in AV? ok... how about 110 damage dagger for exalted. Did I mention that these rewards are based on Reputation not Rank?

Well that's why I am pumped about Battlegrounds, that and the fact that the moment I land in Kargath I am no longer instantly zerged by 10 rogues with nothing better to do then farm "honorless targets" cause they don't know any better... or simply don't care!

~Cerias Shadows

Wow... just ... wow. I am not talking about the video game either. This last week has been
more interesting then virtual life could ever hope to be. Unfortunatly its been the sad depressing interesting that ussually pushes us towards virtual worlds in the first place. Where do I begin? Well with class ...

This past week I had 2 exams, a quiz, a couple of assignments due and all of this in 3 compressed summer classes. While class on its own is far from interesting I am just begining.

On Thursday I lost the keys to my car. Now I know alot of you are saying big deal. But this isnt the I lost and then found them 5 minutes later in some obscure place. This is I lost my car keys, apartment keys, mail keys, and 1 gig memory stick key chain. I would like to say that at the end of the day I found them but the more I look and turn my apartment upside down the more I get a sinking feeling that someone may have taken them. Even not being able to drive my car to work or school wasnt that bad. I just borrowed the 'rent's Camry!

To compound the issue of not having a car I got an email from work that the Website was down. www.nursecall.com is the site in question. I call the hosting company to find out that because of some break down in communication they cancelled our account. Ok no big deal, I ask them to restore the site from backups. Well they deleted all the backups as well. I am still not sweating because I keep a backup of the live site on my local work computer, a source code server, and my memory stick key chain (see above paragraphs). I ask them to call the company they out source the sql databases too and have them restored from back up. This should be a simple process and I have had to use it before so I know for a fact that this company makes backups every 24 hours of my data. They get back to me telling me that the databases were wiped and the backups of the databases were also wiped. I am baffled here folks. Who deletes the database and the backups of a customers database? So i have the SQL scripts and can restore the database myself but the actual customer data that was in each database is gone. Hundreds of accounts erased. Now things are starting to just get poopy!

Well I am NOT DONE YET! It turns out that my guild on WoW no longer needed a teamspeak server that I had purchased which was cool, no big deal, I had other plans for it anyway if the primary plans fell through. I had planned on turning that server (arthas.ucfusion.com:8723 <- Its up for the moment check it out.) into a free public teamspeak server for the WoW Arthas Server to help pickup groups communicate and raise the level of play in Battlegrounds. I was looking forward to opening the first 48 slots today but it wont be happening now, at least not immediatly. It seems that Fused Network is pulling the plug on all their teamspeak servers leaving me once again in a poopy situation.

You might say take Heart Cerias today is Friday after all. Go get drunk and next week will be better. Well... it just so happens as I was looking over my list of homework todo for this next week I have an Exam in Calculus, an exam in Statistics for Economics, a Quiz in Object Oriented Programming and a programming assignment in the same class due Tuesday.

/sniff sniff... :-(

~Cerias Shadows

Well patch 1.5 is out and with it comes the much anticipated Battlegrounds as well as some bug fixes and other changes for each class. Some classes received what they will refer to as "Nerfs" others got really nice buffs to their class. The Rogue got some minor changes listed below:

• Riposte - Fixed a bug where the ability was not usable against a disarmed or unarmed target.
• Vanish - Should be a lot more responsive when used to avoid incoming attacks.
• Sitting characters will now stand up immediately after an attack, even if stunned.
• Alchemy Rogues - Restorative Elixir name changed to Resorative Potion with potion cooldown timer. Functionality has been changed so it should be more effective as it now dispels one harmful effect every 5 seconds for 30 seconds.

I have yet to try out patch 1.5 yet but assume that its gonna be a good one. I have heard good and bad about battlegrounds and I am sure that they will be fun. However I would like to know what people think about the changes to Riposte, Vanish, and Restorative Elixer? Are they more effective now? Does Vanish "break" less? and is Restorative Potion a greater asset to rogues or has its effectiveness been nerfed? We as rogues can only be disappointed about the nerf to stunning people who are sitting down. This effectively nerfs our ability to get 100% crit on the sitting target for 4 seconds. Personally I would rather be nerfed this way then to have one of our main abilities nerfed I suppose. We will still crit our opener which is good and im sure some rogues with prep / coldblood won't even notice the change.

~Cerias Shadows

The Advanced Rogue guide posted at WorldofWarcraft.com Official Rogue forums has been copied over to wow.Azzor.com where it will be improved upon and refined into a more complete resource for rogues. Currently Azzor does not have all of the class sections complete but stay tuned to this site it looks to be a real good source for information for all classes in the near future.

Welcome to RogueSpot. I know im incredibly creative theres no reason to point it out.
I felt like making a spot to comment on the Rogue class in Blizzard's MMO World of WarCraft.
From here you will be able to find useful links for rogues as well as the occasional video, guide, or solo exploit. I might even comment on a current event or bitch out one of the lesser classes. Your welcome to point out inconsistencies or errors and even spelling mistakes if your so brave but be warned I will probably /ignore you. ;-)

~Cerias