Happy Late Anniversary!
January 3, 2007. Our first post on our first blog on the first 3rd of that year. BRK is one year old!
Thank you to everybody who reads, lurks, comments, spams, laughs, cries, steals, defaces, and performs obscene personal rituals while in the presence of our little place on the Internet.
Our goals for 2008?
BRK’s Totally True Resolutions for Our Second Year
10. Get an interview with a major, minor, or totally fictional print publication. Why hasn’t this happened yet, that’s what we want to know. And we’re completely down for The View, just so they know.
9. Find a way to get associated with Victoria’s Secret in any way that’s not illegal or completely perverted. Slight perverted is a total Go, of course.
8. Convince Mrs BRK to try WoW again, fail miserably, and let her go back to using the wireless headset while she continues writing her own blog, “Life With A WoW-Addict; Bring Me Prada Driving Slippers And I Could Be Yours. Easily.”
7. Find a way to teach The Boy to play WoW as chores. No more teaching him to take out the trash or feed the dog, we want him to go farm Motes of Fire.
“Dad, do I have to?”
“Two Primal Fires or no park this weekend!”
6. See the entrance to The Black Temple before the expansion arrives, even if it means mulitboxing on a scale not seen since Ali-Frazier.
5. New Rig, and not the new dual-quad-core MacPros Apple just deployed today, ’cause that’s way more power than we need. Right? Yes? We can’t justify one of those. Really. No way.
4. Ask Mrs BRK to hide our Visa so we don’t screw up #5.
3. Find a properly-geared new warlock who wants to raid SSC and TK with our guild, a Marksman hunter who wants to be the BRK Forums MM-Hunter moderator, and a “You’ve Been Chosen!” email from The Publisher.
2. To sell BRK the Blog to a very wealthy industrialist’s son who precedes to turn it into an ad-fest and banner-party disgrace of a website. We take our moolah, buy #5, create BigRedHeadache.com and devote the next year to blogging as we attempt to level our little Paladin without /facesmashkeyboarding ourselves into an early grave.
1. One Word: Tacquittos.
And before we end this post, Let’s do a little reminiscing, shall we? Where were we a year ago? Right about here…
I’ve been a World of Warcraft addict since March 2006, and as my one year anniversary of making my wife watch her bad 80s movies alone, I’ve come to realize that I just can’t go on posting in my guild’s forums, hoping some other hunter learns from my mistakes, gains some of my wisdom, or laughs at my jokes. But I love talking about my hunter, so I’m making this page for me to yap knowing full well that nobody is going to read it. Well, I don’t care, this is for me.
My first WoW toon was a gnome mage and I was terrible. I made level 20, had crud for gear, no money, and couldn’t kill anything my own level or higher. Stuck in Loch Modan, the Wetlands were my Waterloo, I couldn’t get through that damn locked tunnel, and that desert zone to the south was instant death. So there I was, bouncing around Thelsmar when someone asked me if I wanted to go kill Chok’sul. Me, in a party? I’d never really done a pick-up group (pug) before… but sure, why not try. I sure wasn’t getting anywhere on my own.
We swam across the Loch and arrived at the Mo’grosh Stronghold where the leader started talking about how to fight the elite ogres. And what a leader he was, a level 21 dwarf hunter with wicked-cool red goggles, a gun that blew smoke when he fired, and a pet bear named Snugglez. He told me,
“Let the warrior charge the ogre, wait three seconds, then hit the orgre with all the fireballs you’ve got, ok?”
My success with my fireball spells had been limited thus far. Usually, I would send a fireball at a mob, it would hit causing the mob runs toward me really quickly. I’d have to freeze it in place, run away, hit it with another fireball, and hope the thing died. But this hunter says that the warrior will keep the ogre from running at me? How cool.
Then he told us what mob to attack by putting this big, bouncing, red arrow to mark it… how do you make a big red arrow mark? Can I do that? Of course not; I learned that only hunters can. Well no wonder he was the leader then, he can make big red arrows; it only makes sense. We watched the warrior attack the first ogre… waited three seconds… and let loose with our demolishing barrage of ammo and fireballs. I watched the health of our warrior go down, and tried desperately to kill the ogre before the warrior became ogre dung. And Poof! His health went back up! How did that happen? Oh. A priest. I got it, now that makes sense. Nobody died, the warrior was bloody but standing, neither the priest nor I had any mana, but the damn ogre was dead.
“Eat and drink, folks,” the hunter said, “we have a lot more ogres to go.” Fascinatingly, his health hadn’t been diminished at all, and his mana was more than 3/4 still full. His pet, which had dutifully attacked the ogre then run back to his master’s side, was calmly munching some meat. The hunter just stood there, watching, waiting for the rest of us to be as ready as he.
We clawed and scraped our way through the ogres, got into the big cave at the back of the stronghold, and pushed our way to the back where we saw two more ogres… and Chok’sul, himself. How were we going to take on three at the same time when we can barely down one without someone dying? Our glorious hunter leader explained that my job was to polymorph one of the ogres while his bear tanked the other and we would all kill Chok’sul together. My main priority was to keep my polymorphed ogre polymorphed; doing damage to Chok’sul was secondary.
And the strategy worked perfectly, and I was in awe. This hunter was a master tactician, a MacArthur, an Alexander the Great. He understood class roles and exploiting them while minimizing weaknesses. He took command and got us to work as a team. He had a pet bear, and wore goggles, and made loud, smoky gun sounds, and had a big red arrow-mark, and under his leadership, we took down Chok’sul.
I shelved my mage, whose name today I cannot remember, and rolled a dwarf hunter.
Today, level 60, my hunter is decked in mostly epic PvP gear and a survivor of ZG, AQ, and MC. I am a raid leader, hunter-class master, and guild officer. I lead PvP battles and teach hunters how to kite and jump-shot. My writings on hunter tactics, equipment, and instance and pvp roles have both enlightened and bored my guild to tears.
And now I finally have a forum to gab all I want about hunters.
Let’s Talk.
Comments
55 Responses to “Happy Late Anniversary!”
Got Something To Say?
Email icon provided by Nexodyne.-
BRK’s Site Meter
BRK License Agreement
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
BRK’s RSS Feeds
And thus began the cult of personality that is…
BRK
/yule brenner So let it be written, so let it be done. /yule off
Congrats on 1 year BRK, I for one have been elightened by your little blog.
heh little.
For The Pie can never hope to obtain the readership and following AND hate you have, but hopefully I can reduce the numbers of huntards.
Your work is not complete.
But, now I gotta go find some Prada Driving Slippers….
:wave:
Congrats on the 1 year mark. Major milestones all rolled into your “memory” paragraphs. I quite enjoyed the read and where you once were. It’s always nice to look back and see where we used to be, how far we’ve come, and whom we’ve helped. Of course, we tend to come across those posts or screenshots depicting the guy that refused to turn growl off his pet and complained that it was continuously dying, or the priest that was the only healing class in group and wanted to just dps…
Yeah – remembering is good – moving forward is best!
*shovels bad memories under the rug*
Woot for good times, good people and informative blogs!
*logs in on gnome lvl 1*
/train
*logs out*
Congrats BRK. Keep up the good work. You have helped tons of players be hunters not huntards!
Including me!
Can I get Mrs. BRK to hide my MasterCard next to your Visa? For the same reason?
“Honestly, Mom, I’ll use it to edit film!”
Happy Anniversary. I am so grateful that you did start this blog.
My husband made a Christmas promise to start playing Warcraft with me this year. Our boys (six and eight) play, too, but only up lvl 3, when Mom has to take over, while they watch and add color commentary. But I think the 8 year old could start doing a bit more. The boys LOVE your movies, especially the BRKtestbed ones. My hubby is planning to roll a hunter so you can bet, he’s going to watch them and learn. Otherwise his lovely wife will die and that would make her mad.
I actually remember reading that
As one of your many blog Lurkers I want to say congratulations on a blog well written and cheers for the advice and zeal you have demonstrated over the past year.
I started out as BM, continued to 70 as BM, flirted with hybrid survival for PvE and am now back to BM (but still have my surv gear in the bank, as it IS heaps of fun).
Your site gave me the courage to stay the course even when tons of hunter Vets scoffed at me for being anything but a marksman.
It has been a tool for me to steer clear of Huntardness and earn respect among my guildies.
Thank you
Grats BRK! Keep the awesomesauce flowing!
Ultimate Hunters Blogs and Resources…
Excellent resource for all things hunter….
Congrats! That is an awesome achievement.
Wasn’t slave labor outlawed in the 20’s? *grin*
*hides girl card* What is the deal with Prada anyway? I’d rather buy upgraded computer parts…then again, I think that’s what makes me a geek. *grin*
Again, grats on the year anniversary! *shifty eyes* Maybe you can get the Mrs. BRK interested in playing again by taking her out for an anniversary dinner? You want to celebrate your blogging anniversary by spending time with the one most dear, so she can enjoy the festivities too…
*looks around* What? It would work for me! Oh wait…geek, that’s right. *grin*
Congratulations — months ago you inspired me to pick up my hunter again, respec him, get him good gear, and learn how to play well. Your posts and your videos continue to entertain, and, while I haven’t been able to send many people to your site, the wisdom I gained here I’ve shared with others, and it has helped both my wife and my friend to play better.
Thanks.
Grats on the Year-mark! I too thank you for your awesome blog. I remember asking on the WoW Hunter forums back in the mid 30s (was that really just a month ago??) how to NOT be a level 70 Huntard, as I have this thing about not sucking in the games I play. Y’know, just a personal quirk.
They pointed me to the WishItWasStickied thread, which pointed me here.
I haven’t looked back. (Though I’ve looked over, at Rat and TJ’s blogs. Great fun there, too.) Cheers!
Gratz. Here’s to things bigger for BRK (new rig included).
Grindurbonze & Pluckureyes
Get the Rig. Because You’re Worth It.
Grats on the big 01
Happy big 3-6-5!
Congrats on the anniversary!
Wootsy!
gz on the anniversary =]
And give hobbes some extra kittycookies (ey, don’t forget ya petsy^^)
Congrats on 1 year of converting the masses of huntards to hunters.
I would have never thought about trying out a hunter. I loved my mage and was content leveling that to 70. I toyed around with alts and leveled a priest, warrior, rogue to the 20s and 30s but never really took a love for any of them. Started reading the blog and tried out a hunter, and now i can’t look at any of my other toons the same way. I love my mage, but the hunter rivals my mage any day.
Thanks for the blog. It’s a great tool for any hunter, or anyone wondering how hunters work.
Gratz!! I was already an addicted hunter when I found your blog, but you have helped me feed my addiction. So, my family thanks you, because the time I spend reading your blog and forums is time I do NOT spend boring them with tales of my latest successes as an OPed hunter.
I hear you on getting the wife to play. Maybe I can stealthy disable her DVR >.>
LoL!
And grats on the 1 year
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday big-red-kitty.net(/blogspot) happy birthday to you.
Okay so who’s got the cake?
I’m a new BRK fan but I’m addicted! (All hail, RSS!)
I started playing Wow on day one but could never get over my EQ-five-night-a-week-raiding addiction until recently. Now I’ve rerolled a little BE Hunter and I’m puttering at 40 and really starting to enjoy the game. My BE has never even grouped!
BRK has given me some great info and a lot of laughs. If anyone is playing on Venture Co, give Taliana a shout!
Thanks BRK and Happy Anniversary!
Congrats and Thanks. I am almost exclusively a solo hunter and your blog (and site in general including links) has made a WORLD of difference. Hopefully I will find a guild that has people on when I am, but until then I well on my way to being an asset to the team.
Congratulations on the one-year mark, BRK. It’s good to see you and Hobbes have obtained quite a following. Should my demon, Shaaroon, and I see you in Shat, we’ll be certain to /wave.
Gratz on the anniversary BRK!
I got this guide while I was leveling my level 30+ Hunter, waddling around Aimed Shotting mobs and going: “My pet can’t hold aggro!”
Then I got the wonderful lines in my eyes looking something like: “So you think you like leveling as MM. You think you’re doing massive amounts of damage and pwning. No, you’re not.”
An introduction to BM hunters followed. I respecced the following minute and I’m now 4 levels away from Outland, chain-trapping and squishie-saving with my BRWolf <3
Thanks so much for writing this all and I hope you’ll continue doing so for many times. Meanwhile I’ll spread the BM Hunter cheer, alright?
~Mio
Good luck on your resolutions. Fair warning though, BT entrance is kind of a let down. You go in through the sewer pipes, and you don’t even get to see much before on of those water elemental spawn things runs over and does you hard and rough where you stand. =\
Congratulations! I’m a long time lurker. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wonderful writings. Your passion and writing for huntering make me proud to be one in and outside the game. You really know how to make the class and the people who play it feel like they’re doing something special.
Grats on one year BRK!
I’ve enjoyed reading your blog immensely and point all and any hunters and most especially huntards I come across to it. I know that your efforts here have definitely helped me become a much better hunter!
A woop, a cheer and no small amount of “Hail to the night!” on your first year… even though I only discovered this place a couple of weeks ago. Okay, so I haven’t been through the archives yet but you’d be amazed at the speed it went from “Hmm, interesting blog, quite funny,” to taking its pride of place amongst the (tight and precious) space of my Google homepage.
And, just so you know, that farming chores for your son moment up there came dangerously close to making me shoot tea through my nose. To save you from being totally grossed out, I will add that I was drinking tea at the time and it’s not just something that happens when I’m amused.
Great blog! It’s helped my hunter out tremendously. Keep up the good work.
Congratulations… and thank you… you bring such a fun spirit to the sharing of your wisdom and yourself.
Respect can never be won… only earned… /bow
Boo Ya, hombre!!
BOO YA.
I remember reading that post.
Whats with the Pally hating?
I have a 70 Ret and he was cake to level. Pre-2.3 too. Cake I say. Not sure what the beef but I am having an equally easy time of leveling a warrior, course hes post-2.3. Still all the complaints I have heard an read about levleing a Prot warrior tend to be about damage. I’m about even on damage, or maybe a little less, then the pally did at the same levels. What you might wanna do is focus some grinding and questing where it involes undead. Play to the strengths of the class. Once you hit 50-52 you will fly. WPL, EPL are a haven. If you are still less the 30, check out SFK. Almost all undead, no loot for you really but an easy smash for exp. Take along some clothies for some instant Karma when they get themselves the robes. 30-40 SM should be your home. Run it, love it, live it, collect the whole set. If I wasnt working on a warrior, I’d roll on your server an guide you as much as I could in the creamy Skull Crackin Goodness that is a Paladin.
Thats if you go ret. Holy or Prot? On your own boyo.
Oh and happy anniversary BRK. I still say its way past time for another NGR.
Congrats BRK on such a milestone. Now blow out your candles and make a wish… I hope you have many more posts and revelations to share with us.
Grats on the 1 year anniversary BRK!
/tar BRK
/cheer
Grats on one year! This is one of my first stops on the Intarwebs each and every day.
Looking forward to many more informative/hilarious posts.
Well done mate. Keep up the good work.
Cheers
Kolan & Jag
Yay! Gratz and hope there’s more to come
Guinsanx & Bore
Thanks for the awesome blog BRK! It’s very informative, entertaining and most of all, fun.
You’ve helped me to become a great Hunter (came second in dps on my first Gruul raid the other day
) and your views on Wow have helped me to enjoy all aspects of the game a lot more.
So, Happy Anniversary, here’s to another great year of BRK blogging. /cheer /dance
Wamogri, Charlotte & Cassandra
Been with you since the start. Thanks for all you’ve done.
Congrats BRK, you’ve helped a lot of young hunters and I look forward to seeing even more helped in the next year
Grats on the 1 year! It’s certainly been an experience, following your journeys through the world of Azeroth and Outlands.
Here’s hoping for more good years ahead…
BRK – Fighting Huntardism since ‘07
And we love him for it!
/cheer
Congrats on the 1 year celebration BRK, I only wish I started reading the blog earlier on, would have made my long grind from 1 to 63 a whole lot faster.
Cheers BRK and we’ll see you in the future!
Congrats on the year, BRK! You’ve helped me be a little less huntarded than I otherwise would be. Thank you for that.
Congratulations for the anniversary! Keep up the awesome work. Love to read this blog =)
GZ!
Best Blog on the Net!! Thanks for the entertainment, the information and most of all the confidence. Its nice to come here learn, try and relearn again.
Best of all thanks for answering an email from me – never expected it – and as usual helped me another step along the hunters road.
As an aside I too have a pally alt – now 53. It has taken me two Ice Ages and an epoch to get there, Don’t know if I will ever really take to a char that takes so long to kill mobs that I can do some household chores during each fight. But it always sweet to go back Hunting Horde in AV and release a few pent up frustrations. I think everyone should have to level a pally it must be good for the soul
Resolution No 7.
Worked great for me, for about 6 months until my son wised up when he reached 9 yrs old. Started levelling his own character and told me to get lost. Now i’m fighting with him for computer time – fortunately i still have the power to send him to bed
Gratz on the 1yr aniversary
Congrats on one year.
For the win,
“a level 21 dwarf hunter with wicked-cool red goggles, a gun that blew smoke when he fired, and a pet bear named Snugglez”
“Well no wonder he was the leader then, he can make big red arrows; it only makes sense.”
gratz on one year,hope there’s more than that left for ya!
i have sent many fellow hunters here for guidance and have converted a few mm hunters myself. always willing to share love and tricks say hi if you see me!
runedaegun-70 dwarven hunter/boulderfist
itoywithu-21+ be hunter/the forgotten coast
Grats on the one-year BRK! I have sent many a hunter towards your site to get them to watch a movie of what I am showing them in-game. As a MM/Surv hunter I really enjoy reading about life from your side of the talent tree. Your blog keeps me sane at work, gives me a laugh and a thought to ponder when writing tech manuals becomes a headache…
-Hoder & Ripper (Bladefist)
Hear Hear BRK!
/Raises mug of something indiscernible.
A toast to the Sage of the Hunt!
-Rekurve and Kuro
Congratulations!
And Thanks Big Time.
You have saved me from being a sucky Hunter and I am very thankful.
wow – 1 year and a cloud of dust – great effort – great results.
peace on mars,
aNTE
That is the sweetest story ever
Reminds me of how confused I was in the beginning.
Thank you for taking care of all the little hunters in the world, including me.
This is me today
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Emerald+Dream&n=Wilds
Btw can we see an article about the best BM trinkets?
(shame on me If I missed one).
“Find a way to teach The Boy to play WoW as chores. No more teaching him to take out the trash or feed the dog, we want him to go farm Motes of Fire.”
I was guildmates with a mom once that would have her kids fish in game for her as punishments.
“But mom, I was going to clean my room.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Go get me 30 fishing skill.”
“Awww, mom!”
Best…idea…ever…
hey there,
i’ve been reading your blog for the past 6mos and it has been extremely helpful and entertaining (you’re a pretty good writer!).
many, many times i’ve been complimented on my hunter skills and you’re blog is why.
thanks for your time and effort!
- Andro and Malph (Greymane)