And, here is a word about that. If you, or anyone near to you, has it in their head that it would be a good idea to:

Paint a Dark Eldar Raider with black tacky primer while it’s still on the sprue! That way it’s easy!

…please, do yourself and them a favor and punch them in the mouth.

I can assure you. It is not an easy thing to glue together a plastic ship with glue made for plastic when there is a thick layer of crap between the glue and the plastic. Nossir.

Either way, though, England prevails.

The raider is the one in black. Here’s another way to look at that:

Yes, it’s true, that crab-scorpion-lookin’ thing is out of your worst nightmares. It’s no fun, and I mean that as a Tyranid player.

The little guys are jetbikes. Matt has 85,000 of these that I intend to assemble, regardless of whether or not he wants me to. His comment about them when he dropped off all this marvelousness was “…meh.” I can tell, he’s only hiding his enthusiasm in order to throw me off guard. I’m sure that when he sees his Dark Eldar jetbike fleet, he’ll warm to the notion.

Or not. Either way, I gets ta build ‘em.

I know, I know, I haven’t been keeping you all up to date on my most recent WoW exploits. A day does not go by that I don’t get a flood of emails in my inbox requesting more information about my progress through Molten Core… or how my alts are doing… people, I can only tell you so much about WoW. I have other topics that I need to address from time to time, okay?!?

…

But not today. Today is all about the fact that I finally (finally) got my Drakefire Amulet. Which is the thing that lets you into Onyxia’s lair… so you can fight the dwagon.

But before we go into that, I must say something about this goddamn quest chain. Holy fucking shit, people. I mean, I’ve done some pretty ridiculous shit in my quest for Better Gear(tm) in this game, but this one…

I honestly have no idea how they expected anyone to be able to assemble forty people who had completed the whole thing. (Forty people, of course, being the number of people you kinda need to kill the Dwagon; more on that later.)

Let me sum up.

…

No, there is to much. Let me explain the whole goddamn thing, so that you may share in my pain. And, I gotta warn you in advance, a quick scrub of your browser’s scroll bar will give you some idea of how comitted I am to inflicting on you the pain that was inflicted on me. (Also, the pretty pitchers are hanging out at the bottom of this post, so there’s yer quick fix. Who loves ya.)

Consider yourself warned. You are now entering…

THE DARKLORD’S INSUFFERABLE GUIDE TO GETTING INTO ONYXIA’S LAIR (for Alliance, and yarbles to the Horde!)

Welcome, fair traveller! So, you seek the glorious drops that only can be had from the corpse-ification of the most notorious of all dwagons, Onyxia? Or, perhaps you simply want to see the great dwagon fall? Regardless of your motivations… son, you are in for a walk.

But do not be dissuaded! Difficult though your path may be, it is, in fact, not insurmountable. Evidence can be found hanging from the gates of Stormwind nearly every Friday and Saturday. Hey, man, if they can do it, you can do it.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1. Get to the Burning Steppes.
2. Be 55+. Better, be 60.
3. Make sure you have friends. Or, at the very least, develop an ability to pretend like you like other people.
4. Prepare yourself to spend a lot of time in Blackrock Depths. You know, the least popular dungeon in the game? The 55+ dungeon with no drops whatsoever of interest to 60+ characters? The vast sprawling caverns of Dark Iron Dwarves and Fire Elementals with no XP and not much cash for anyone with their first tier gear? Yeah, that dungeon. The one you’ve been avoiding, because no one every puts together runs for it. That one. Go get all the Blackrock Depths quests you can find, ’cause you might as well.

Ahem. Let us begin (as so many things do) at the beginning.

1. Helendis Riverhorn hangs out in the Alliance outpost at the Burning Steppes, and she has your first quest. It’s called “Dragonkin Menace“, and it seems innocuous enough. Killing whelps, that kind of thing. It is not, in fact, innocuous. It is your doom, but you have no way of knowing that. Don’t beat yourself up about it.
2. This leads you to a six stage introductory quest chain called The True Masters. It’s a Fedex, so don’t worry. All you need to do is not go crazy with all the goddamn running around.
3. The Marshal Windsor quest, however, is an entirely different story. Marshal Windsor is, in fact, where things start to come apart at the seams.

See, you have to find Marshal Windsor to complete that one. The brave Marshal is hanging out in a jail cell, in Blackrock Depths. So, to get to him, you need to get together four of your friends, and git him!

But don’t forget to get the Prison Cell Key! You can’t open the cell door without the key, you see, so you have to go kill High Interrogator Gerstahn (or, as of some patch, one of his flunkies). He’s in the middle part of the jail section, so it’s not far. No worries! No worries!

It just ain’t easy. Oh, and none of this is in the quest log, so you gotta figure it out. Get used to that.

Okay! So, Marshal Windsor, what’s happnin’!! Good to see you, my man, lets get– uh–

“Bolvar is a fool. I was gathering his precious ‘proof’ so that I could shove it down his throat.

“He is a blind buffoon. Proof stands two feet away from him and he does not see.

“As for my data, it’s lost. Gone. Unrecoverable.

“Should I ever find Ironfoe and make it out of this labyrinth, my first stop will be Stormwind, to place my hammer in between that reptile’s eyes.

“Leave me, Allora.”

Uh.

Okay then! I’ll just… leave you here in this dank cell to die. Sounds good!

4. Looks like we’ve Abandoned Hope. Return to Marshal Maxwell at the Burning Steppes, and give him the bad news. His response can be summarized as “Drat.”

Now we come to the unbelievable part. At this point, the quest chain dies. It literally disappears. There is no follow quest, nothing. You’re done, congratulations, take your XP and go about your business, thanks. Many people, I imagine, are on this step, and don’t know it. Because, of course, the next step is to:

5. Fight in Blackrock Depths (you know, the least popular dungeon in the game?) with random mobs until A Crumpled Up Note drops. This gives you the quest… uh… A Crumpled Up Note. (I hear this can also drop off the slaves outside, but still. Whothefuck goes down there if they don’t have to?)

Now, nowhere in the world is there a clue that tells you that fighting in the least popular dungeon in the game is the right thing to do. But it is what you must intuit. Or, at least, ask Thottbot about.

6. Take this note back to Marshal Windsor. He’s still locked up in Blackrock Depths (BRD) where you left him (the… least popular dungeon in the game?) He will send you looking for A Shred of Hope.
7. Specifically, he wants you to get Marshal Windsor’s Lost Information from General Angerforge, and Marshal Windsor’s Lost Information from Golem Lord Argelmach. They are both in BRD. Yes, you have to run it again.
8. Bring these back to Windsor (in BRD). Finally!! He’s willing to

leave this hellhole!

9. Now, run Jail Break!.

Ahhhhhh, Jail Break.

In Jailbreak, you get to escort this crazyman Marshal Windsor as he strolls around the Dark Iron prisons looking for his buddies. Remember: clear every mob group in the jail section before doing this. We’re talking about something on the order of thirty groups of thirty groups of 4-6 55 elites. It’s an hour’s worth of clearing, easy. And, booooooooooooooo-ring.

Also, note! There will be no reward for this process. The only boss you fight is Rokkor, so good luck finding people to help you out with this part. I had to literally trick my rogue friend into coming along.

It’s… not popular. Fortunately, it’s not hard. The hardest part, honestly is getting a party together to do it.

Okay! So you’ve saved Windsor! He has proof that… um, well, we’re not sure yet, but he’s got proof of something, and he means to confront someone in Stormwind about it!! He tells you he’ll meet you there, sends you back to Marshal Maxwell in Burning Steppes, and with a “hi-yo Silvah!”, he’s away.

So:

10. The Great Masquerade is underway. Meet Marshal Windsor at Stormwind.

Getting him to spawn at the front gate of Stormwind is actually quite a trick. (And, we are talking about the front gate, not the “portal” across the bridge. The big gate is where he dismounts from his horse.) My best guess on this is that he spawns something like 10 minutes after you start the quest. So, what I did was flew back to Marshal Maxwell, abandonded the quest, accepted it again, and flew right back to Stormwind. I call this “quest hax0ring”. I am teh l33t qu3st h@x0r.

Of course, my skills were not awesome enough to prevent someone from stealing my first Windsor when I was trying to do this. Stay sharp: anyone with the quest can steal him from you. Yeah.

Windsor will walk to the throne room, say mean things to Lady Prestor… who, as it turns out, is not Lady Prestor but is instead Lady I’m Gonna Breath Fire On Your Raid Group Until You All Die, a.k.a. Onyxia the Dwagon. One would think that this would mean bad things for you, the player, but, instead… nah. Just watch admiringly as all the dialogue and combat scrolls by you.

Almost there!

11. Once the fight is over, Highlord Bolvor Fordragon (that’s mister Highlord Bolvor Fordragon to you, son) will give you The Dragon’s Eye. And… man. I gotta hand it to the designers on this.
    

    “You must search the world for a being capable of restoring the power to the Fragment of the Dragon’s Eye. The only information you possess about such a being is that they exist.”

12. So, someone needs to make this Eye thing whole for you. Someone. Somewhere. In the world. Stare at this quest. Then, give up. Ask Thottbot, or a friend what the deal is.
13. Yaaay for Thottbot! Find the crazy elf Haleh up in the Winterspring to show the Fragment of the Dragon’s Eye to. Getting to her is a trick in itself; there are webpages dedicated to how to do this without having to fight every goddamn dragon in the cave over which she is standing. I recommend this route.
14. Haleh informs you that in order to get the Drakefire Amulet (oh my god, oh my god, oh my god), you must obtain “the blood of a black dragon champion”. There’s only one more fucking painful step left! You’re so close! You’re almost there! You can hear the dragon’s snores, for cryin’ out loud!
15. Get nine (9) of your closest friends together, and do an Upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS) run, and go aaaaaaaaaallllllll the way to the end. There you will find General Drakkisath.

1. Kill him. This is, shall we say, easy to fuck up.
2. Know this: he will drop between 2-4

Blood of the Black Dragon Champion. Yes, this is a fact. If there are more people in your (10-man) group that need the blood than drop… well, you’re gonna have to roll for it.

3. Fail the roll.
4. Repeat until you succeed. Try not to shout obscenities about unfair gods and please oh please end my suffering. Remember: you are paying for this game.

Bing-fucking-go. Rarely have I felt such a mixture of satisfaction and utter exhausted disgust than I did when I finally had this bad-boy in my inventory. Gotta tell ya, the urge to rant is high.

…

Like, say, for example, this blog post.

…

Anyway. Onyxia hangs out in Dustwallow Marsh, down in ye olde Wyrmbog. Yes she does. And, on Sunday, yours truly ventured into those hallowed halls, and got his/her/it’s first live-and-in-real-time peek at the Onyxia, the Dwagon.

With great gusto, and a merciless battle cry of “WE ONLY HAVE ONE PREIST WTF!?!?!?”, the battle was entered.

With… predictable results.

Someday… someday that dwagon is goin’ DOWN. I’ll letcha know.

People… are really freakin’ funny.

You may (or may not) be familiar with the Elder God C’thun. He(/She/It) is the end boss of An’Qiraj… which, if you have a life also might need some explaining. It’s a dungeon in World of Warcraft, of course, one of many.

Well, yesterday I hooked up with C’thun’s MySpace. He’s a swingin’ fellow, as it turns out. He just wants some mortals to consume, is that so much to ask?

Turns out MySpace is becoming quite the popular hang out for the World of Warcraft named mobs. How these virtual entities are managing to reach across the interstellar void of existence itself (as, you know, they only exist in the most thin of interpretations of the word) to, you know, dink around with HTML and construct a homepage on a social networking site… well, perhaps it’s something best left unexplored.

The complete roster, however, is certainly worth a look.

My apologies to those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about. This shit is way funnier if you’ve fought and killed these jerks 45 times. But, I think it might still be amusing (assuming you share my twisted perspective on humor) even if you haven’t been farming these guys for drops.

Ahem.

Blackrock Mountain (various):

• Nefarian (who seems to take his job very seriously… I respect that)
• General Drakkisath

Ahn’Qiraj:

• C’thun
• Emperor Vek’nilash

Zul-Gurub:

• Hakkar (sometimes an Elder God just needs a hug)

Molten Core:

• Ragnaros has two pages, it seems. He seems to be experimenting.
  
• Majordomo Executus (coward)
• Magmadar (the cutest giant two-headed lava dog in the world, who’sagoodboy, who’sagoodboy!!)

Various other instances:

• Onyxia (the Black Dragon Queen)
• Baron Rivendare (who has chosen a tastefully framed pic for himself)
• Lord Kazzak
• Archmage Arugal
• Cookie (the ship’s cook), who’s taste in homepage music is nothing short of exquisite…

Folks who are Outside:

• Sylvanas (you know, the Banshee who freed the Undead from the shackles of their masters, giving them free will? Yeah. She sounds kinda confused about it though.)
• Prince Thunderaan, The Wind Seeker
• …Auctioneer Wabang? God damn it, I knew that dude made a lot of money, but… WOW! How do I get that job!?!

And, my personal favorite:

• Hogger

…

The Internet… is the best thing ever.

On Thursday, yours truly flew down to the greater Los Angeles area, and struck, single-man-insertion-mission-style, a lightning reconnaissance on the enemy. The folks at E3 never knew I was there.

This, of course, has almost entirely to do with the 150,000,000 other people who were there, many of which look kinda like me. Also, the bass was pumpin’. The 100′ tall video screens didn’t hurt as a distraction, either.

The ability to pick perfect venues for lighting reconnaissance makes or breaks the mission.

Lemme tell you. There are some games coming out. And soon.

A few notables worth examining:

• Heavenly Sword – Oh. My. God. After seeing this gameplay (that’s gameplay footage, people; I recommend “Heavenly Sword – E3 2K6 Gameplay HD”), I went over to the God o’ War II display, and went: “…feh.”

• Lost Planet – The strangest thing for me about this game is that I know it’s going to be big, even though I only glanced at the preview movie, and stood watching someone play for about three seconds. Why? Because everyone (and I mean everyone) at the show who I talked to asked me if I had seen it. Gotta admit, it looks cool.

• The Burning Crusade is, of course, going to continue to ruin my ability to enjoy anything else.

• I will be playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Prey, and Spore.

There were a few wonderful surprises lying in wait:

• Warhammer: Mark of Chaos looks soundly enjoyable. They have my Orkies, and big stoopid giants, so, pretty much, I’m there.
• Tabula Rasa… you know, I’ve been skeptical, and as much as I have wanted to believe that Richard Gariott was going to pull it out, it’s been looking dicey. But… hmmmm… he put… that magic symbol thing in front of the chick’s hand, and all of a sudden his sci-fi mistake is starting to look like something that might actually be unique… I’m getting interested.