Polite Alting

Sadly, I've let all the time I used to spend on this blog get bumped by going back to school. I'm sure people have stopped checking in here, so I'll probably have to build up my reader base again. To anyone who stuck around, thank you! I can't blame anyone who didn't, however. When I started playing, there was a rule in my first guild that was repeated often and I still stick to it. Real life comes first. It sucks sometimes, and it's not much fun, but it's something we've all got to keep in mind.

By the time I finish my assignments, I'm itching to play the game! Not write about it. However, I've missed my little corner of the internet. I don't want my blog to die. To that end, I'm working on inviting another author who knows more about altitis than I do. He's got two accounts full of characters, and more 80s than I can keep track of some days. I'll let him introduce himself when he starts on later.

---

Enough about me. How about something worth talking about?

If you have multiple characters at max level, you've probably heard some grumbles from others. I've been accused of having no life, or being selfish because I want more loot for more characters. I've had it pointed out that that's why I can't make gold in game, and other things.

It's true. I've got epic and cold weather flying on six characters, and I'm saving up for my seventh. I've got the Little Fawn's Salt Lick on my druid and I'm always looking for more pets. I'm close to maxed on all available professions, and some of them I didn't pat an eye at dropping ridiculous amounts of gold to level. I'm usually out of gold or saving toward a huge purchase.

I love spending that gold on alts, usually for convenience. The day I don't have a goal in game is the day I'll probably stop playing. It might leave me with less on my "main" than other people have on their one and only, but I'm okay with that. This is how I enjoy the game. However, as I said before, there are grumbles.

In order to keep the grumbles to a minimum, I've got some guidelines I like to stick to based on conventions in my guild.

• Pick a main. This one was HARD after I retired my shaman. Sometimes you get to enjoy the game however you want to. Sometimes your main gets picked for you due to circumstances and raid composition. I fought against having my druid be my main for a very long time, because she was only healing so that we wouldn't have to bench our new group a year ago. Now I couldn't imagine seeing ICC without her going in first.

• Mains get priority. Don't be selfish. If it's an upgrade for your alt, awesome. If it's an upgrade for someone's main, even if it's less of an upgrade, pass. If an ilevel 245 item drops and you're set to replace your last blue, but someone's main is replacing a 232, respect that person's main. Please.

• Gems and enchants over extras. Yes, yes. You're 200g away from epic flying on your 27th character, and you can taste that speed boost! But, you won a new staff and bought your t9 legs and they're an upgrade even without gems, enchants, or a spellthread. Take care of your main's gear first, please. New mounts, pets, or increased speed only benefit you, while increasing your main's stats will benefit your friends.

• Don't be obnoxious. It's fine to ask for people to run you through lowbie instances, or to carry you through heroics when you first hit 80. It's not okay to demand, or expect others to drop everything to help you out right this very second or else. Your alt may be your new favorite, but you'll be everyone's least favorite if you expect everyone to drop everything for your flavor of the month.

Those are the things I can think of off the top of my head. If you have any suggestions of ideas for polite alting, leave a comment!

Guild Activities

Into every guild some blah must fall. Blah seems to have hit my guild pretty hard lately, and a friend of mine started talking about guild activities. Years ago, when I first joined HE, someone had asked for suggestions for guild activities, and I remember I jumped at the idea to suggest a few, but it just never happened. I didn't think through all the ins and outs of my ideas, and they weren't viable, or they'd take too much effort to organize.

When I think of large guild activities for fun, I usually think of naked gnome races, or similar things. The one put together and filmed by the guild Sting years ago is one of the things that interested me in the game in the first place. A swarm of naked gnomes, all starting at level one, running from Ironforge to Stormwind. They died a lot, but it still looked like a lot of fun. And, about a year after that, I got to participate in something similar on Moon Guard. This time, though, we raided Hogger as a warmup, and then we took on Orgrimmar. Our goal? Give Thrall a hug.

I've never done so many corpse runs in my life.

It was fun, though! But, it's all been done, and not many people in HE want to create a level one character for that kind of abuse. I've run out of character slots for something like that, too. So, what else?

I've seen a lot of ideas thrown around over the years. Amazing Race across Azeroth. Scavenger hunts of all shapes and sizes. Retro raids. Gift exchanges. Duel championships. All sorts of things can be done.

I was going through old screenshots, though, and remembered an idea I had a LONG time ago. Screenshot hide and seek. Take a screencap of yourself somewhere strange and out of the way, and the first person to submit a shot of their character in the same place wins and gets to pick the next spot. I think that with a few simple rules, like no shots of places you have to exploit to get to, it could make for a fun sort of competition.

At this point I have no idea if anyone in my guild would go for something like that, but if it doesn't happen there I might start doing something like it here. We'll see. I just think it could be a lot of fun.

How many is too much?

As my warlock inches closer to 78, it occurs to me that six characters at level 80 might be too much.

No, really.

I was dreaming about getting soul shards off of target dummies, and how I'd get duds that wouldn't go in my soul pouch because they didn't have actual souls, or they were too low of a level...or even too high of a level!

Top that off with wondering when I'll ever get a chance to dps anyway, when my "main" is a healer...so what's the point in having so many characters at max level?

Oh well, I'm doing it anyway. I've got the heirloom shoulders and chest to boost me on my way, so I might as well see how fast I can go. Even if she does sit at 80 and collect dust.

Fear the ToC!

Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

I was, the first time I realized we'd have to joust in the new 5-man instance, Trial of the Champion. I hate the jousting mechanic, and I have yet to unlock all the Argent Tournament dailies simply because jousting annoys me too much to pay for the dubious pleasure of participating.

But, like so many things in life, jousting is made better by having friends. Or, at least by having a meat sack distracting the riders while you get clear to charge the NPCs. (My friend John, who insisted I mention him here, makes a good meat sack. hahaha Well, what else are you going to do with a gnome warrior?)

So, strap on your lance, hop on a horse, and be thankful you're only doing this for half of the first fight! You can switch horses in mid-fight if your horse gets low on health. Just remember to keep your shield up at all times, and charge as much as possible, because that takes the most health away from your opponent. While charge is on cooldown it's a good idea to knock their shields off, but you don't have to make that your priority. When you get to the named mobs, have someone stand on any that have fallen so that they don't make a dash toward new mounts and prolong the fight!

While your jousting the named mobs, keep in mind your strategy. Are you going to fight them as you dismount? Or are you going to make a mad dash toward the door to reset the encounter? (You only have to joust once, thank goodness. Once you've beaten that part you're done, even if you wipe.) Both have disadvantages, especially for squishy members of your party. I've been killed a few times while running for the door. Either way, you'll want to try your best to dismount your opponents close together! If you're running for the door, dismount them near the door so you can run for it faster and have less chance of getting killed. If you're standing your ground, make sure your tank can grab all three right away. These guys munch clothies in about two hits, even if you're decently geared. (I haven't been oneshot by them, but I haven't brought in a fresh 80 yet, either.) Bring someone who can cleanse poisons, interrupt the healer, and if you get the hunter make sure they don't make a pincushion of your healer while you're focused on something else. Those arrows hit HARD, especially on heroic.

The second encounter is fun. You get three sets of three trash packs. Watch out, they MC! Kill the lightwells when they pop up, and kill the priestesses first. If you have a priest in your party, they can mass dispel the monk effect on heroic. Also, all three types of trash mobs can be stunned, unlike the bosses you face.

You'll face either Paletress or Eadric. Paletress is fun, if you enjoy the nostalgia of old bosses but don't want to deal with any of their old and annoying abilities. She will call a shadow of the past, a boss from the nightmares of your memory, to terrorize you while she sits back and hits you with her holy spells. Healers have to be on the ball, since her smite hits for an annoying amount and badly timed holy fire can kill someone if they're feared. Did I mention the fears? Apparently your character is still deeply afraid of Hogger, or Onyxia, or one of any bosses she'll summon from the depths of your subconscious to battle you. You'll thank your friendly neighborhood tremor totem, if have the luck to have a shaman along.

Eadric is a lot less interesting to heal through. When he emotes, turn your back on him. (On my healer, I just keep my character turned the other way.) When he throws his hammer, remove the stun if you have someone in the party who can. If not, the target will get pretty banged up! I've heard of clothies getting oneshot by his hammer, but so far I haven't seen that happen for myself. Other than that, he's a pretty simple fight.

After you've fought over the contents of the chest, it's time for the return of the Black Knight. (Or, it might be the first time you face him, like it was for me.) You have to kill him three times. He's got some fancy versions of DK abilities. The first time he'll have a ghoul. The second time he'll hit you with Army of the Dead and the occasional ground effect to dance out of. The third time...is where I usually run into trouble healing. He does fairly steady damage to everyone in the party, and a great deal of damage to one member of the party. It can be hard to keep up on, so DPS needs to burn into him with everything they've got in the third phase. At least there's no adds!

At any point in the fights, you can run back into the instance. The graveyard is nice and close, and since it's in Icecrown you'll be able to fly back. Every boss drop is a Naxx or better quality epic, even on regular, so if you've got well geared friends you can gear up an alt or a fresh-faced main pretty quickly. I wouldn't recommend bringing a whole group in blues into the instance, however. It's tuned for people who have been at least grinding Naxx, and I've even run into problems and had wipes with people who have been doing Ulduar a while. (Okay, we may have been underestimating the fights a little, since it's just a 5-man...but still!)

ToC is fun, and it's pretty fast. It's NOT your usual instance, though. It's tough. It reminds me of MgT, when that first came out and the trash mobs would roflstomp your face with their glowy purple bubbles and their annoying glaive throws. Thankfully it's not nearly the same time investment as MgT was. It's over and done with in about 15 minutes, making it the easiest and fastest loot in the game, if you've got the group for it.

/roll for blame

It's been a while since I updated this. First I had issues with my eyesight, then roommate troubles, and finally the relationship I've been in for the last 10 years came to an end. It's been rough, and I've had a hard time finding motivation to write in my blog. I feel like I've been completely pwned by real life, and that has sapped all of my energy.

I'm going to make every effort to return to this, however. I enjoy my little corner of the WoW blog arena. So, I'm going to ramble about some of my oldest friends in the game, and how I got where I am.

See, I'm terribly shy. IRL I have sneaking suspicions I have social anxiety disorder, from what I've read about it. That is reflected somewhat in game, mostly in that I go out of my way not to initiate prolonged social contact. I'll throw out the occasional one-liners in trade or in a group attempting the door boss, but that's the extent of it. I have never joined LFG on my own accord. I don't PuG unless someone I know asks me to join the group.

So, how's a girl like me get into a raiding guild? Well...it took a while. I did it one person at a time. First, by going along with my ex when he would find a group, and then making friends with those people and so on and so forth. And, my first step in raiding was the guild The Night Crew. They're a bawdy bunch, and they believe that a raid without beer just isn't a raid. They taught me the basics, like the first rule of healing. "Stay with your tank." If my tank is around the corner, I have to be AT the corner, or he just might die and take the rest of us with him! I'd spent many an instance just hanging back, waiting for the tank to get in range...

We were a Kara raiding guild, but with half our members at least tipsy or sleep deprived (late night means calling the raid at 2 am most nights) a lot of mistakes happened. Nobody took this raiding thing exactly seriously...we were friends who wanted to do something online together. In order to keep things drama free, to keep friendships despite dumb mistakes and stuff, they started rolling for blame long before I joined their group. It kept the momentum going, and nobody had to suffer through the humiliation of a screaming tirade a la the Onyxia Wipe video.

Through NC, I met the guild leader of Honored Exiles, and a few other members of the guild. Nervously, I applied to this group that dared to move beyond the halls of Kara to TK and SSC. I followed my ex to Dont Panic for a few months on my main, but I'd found a home in HE, despite my shyness. They were good people, and good players, and there were other women around to talk to without the whole guild imploding in drama. (I'm referring to my attempt at a guild on an RP server. I think now that the RP part was at least 75% of the problem...the other 25% being one girl in particular who is still wondering why all her guilds implode in a huge mass of drama.)

Still, the guys in NC are some of my favorite people on earth. I can't stay up to raid with them often, since I'm on a more normal sleep schedule these days, but whenever I get the chance to I love every minute. They make me feel good about myself. They're generous, they're fun, and I owe them everything I am in game these days.

I was having an absolutely rotten day yesterday, and I was just about to give up when I was invited to a regular ToC with them. I dusted off my shaman and went with them, getting a couple of upgrades, and just having fun. ToC lead to heroics, which lead to 10-man OS on my paladin, which lead to Naxx, and since the other tank on the run already had Ulduar gear (he runs with my HE group most weeks) I ended up with a lot of gear, a lot of confidence in my tanking ability, and a complete turn-around of my day. I went to bed feeling good about myself, instead of next to tears.

I'm so glad those guys have been a part of my life, even if it's only a virtual life. They've had an impact on my real life as well.

No matter how much people say "It's just a game," there are real people behind the avatars. You affect them. You have an effect on their lives.

Never burn your bridges behind you. Even if something is "in the past" it can still have value to your future.

Don't underestimate the value of a good friend, even if you've never met.

And always, always, ALWAYS blame Ciandros when you can't roll for blame.

The Snows of Icecrown

So...fanfic. Because I've run out of interesting things to write. It was just thrown together this evening, but it was fun to write. I'm sure I'll be writing more, but feel free to skip them since it's all about me and my characters and other characters I know in game.

Wee, Ceraan, and Shavra are all mine. Borin is used by permission. Yay!


Something To Prove

Part One - The Snows of Icecrown

"We shall triumph!"

It was a phrase Auregwyn heard more than once used by Tirion Fordring, while doing various missions at his command. The words gave her a thrill, as if he were talking specifically to her, proclaiming her eventual success.

"It's because of my nickname," she explained, wrapping tiny hands around flint and striking sparks into the kindling. She was adept at making camp fires by now, though setting one up in the cold clime of Icecrown, where she was hard pressed to find a spot without snow, provided a new challenge.

"You have a nickname?" One of her companions stirred, showing interest.

"Yes. It's Wee Insanity. I thought you knew that by now, Shavra."

Shavra turned a deeper shade of blue, ducking her head. "I thought that was your real name," the draenei said. "What? I still don't know that much about gnomes. Or death knights. I heard that some had lost their memories is all."

She shut up when the druid dropped a blanket over her head. "Her name is Auregwyn."

Wee nodded, smiling a bit. "That's right, Ceraan. My mother named me after Magna Aegwynn. Though, not exact, of course. If I walked around named Aegwynn it would have been confusing at the time, and presumptuous, and a lot to live up to. Too much to live up to, really, since I didn't inherit a shred of my mother's abilities with magic."

"You met Magna Aegwynn?" asked the druid Ceraan in her soft voice. "What an honor that must have been."

"No, no," Wee shook her head quickly. "A lot of my mother's colleagues did though. See, I grew up in Dalaran."

"You?" Both of her companions expressed their shock. It seemed like the least likely origin for a gnomish death knight.

"My mother was one of their most talented mages, before the war." She smiled triumphantly, finally building the fire up enough to warm them and their supper. "Hand me that fish."

"I'll cook it," Ceraan insisted, sitting down next to the fire and opening her pack.

"Nuh-uh!" the gnome protested. "I've seen how some of you druids fish!"

"I'm the one who did the fishing," Shavra said, shaking her head in amusement, long white pigtails brushing her shoulders.

"Shaman shapeshift too," Wee said, crossing her arms.

"You're half dead," Ceraan pointed out. "Now let me cook, since I've the most talent at it."

"I do my best," Wee said. Still, she backed away and let the druid prepare the meal, watching and learning from what she did. "Not all of us can be billions of years old."

"Only a few thousand," Ceraan said. "Not that it matters. Shavra is older."

"I am not!" the draenei stood quickly, holding her hands out in protest. "I'm a very young draenei. See the pigtails? Young!"

"Right," Wee snorted, holding back a giggle. "You talk about Argus in your sleep. When I walked around that crashed ship of yours, they said your people fled that place way over 20,000 years ago. You're ancient. Your hair isn't white, it's totally gray."

"And I don't even remember the Sundering," Ceraan added, flipping the fish over.

"My grandmother, before she was viciously slaughtered by orcs, told me of the homeworld. She gave me visions of what it was like. I may, possibly, be a bit older than Ceraan. I do not remember how old I am, however. Time, day and night, the length of a year; these things are all different from planet to planet. And I was not born on Draenor."

The trio fell into silence. Shavra was brooding, Ceraan was making sure the food was thoroughly cooked, and Wee was trying to calculate just how many Azerothian years it had been since the draenei arrived on Draenor so she could start actually figuring out how old Shavra was. "My uncle Gyrofob said he could figure out the original circumference of Draenor if he could measure the curvature of the horizon, and the distance from the--"

"Let it go, Wee. I don't need to know," Shavra said softly, putting a hand on on the gnome's frigid shoulder. "We should eat quickly and sleep soundly, for tomorrow's journey shall be long and arduous in the terrain ahead."

"I don't understand why we can't just fly," Wee muttered.

"With that noisy contraption you built?" Ceraan shuddered, handing out portions of the meal she'd prepared, setting one aside. "Just thinking about it, I can hear it all over again."

"What?" Wee perked up, looking up toward the sky. "That's not mine, and that's not a memory." She jumped to her feet and started waving. "It's him! I'll bet he's got news!"

The propeller of the mechanical contraption nearly extinguished the fire as it landed. A dwarf climbed out, grabbing his mace and shield from beside the seat as his feet touched the ground. He left his heavy pack in his vehicle though, and hurried over. Ceraan silently handed him a portion of food.

"What news, Borin?" Shavra brightened a bit.

"Been all over the place, playing messenger," he grumbled, sitting down and resting his shield and weapon handily at his side. "It's as we feared." He took a large bite of his food and then looked around expectantly. "What? None of ye lasses have some brew to spare? If we're stormin' Ulduar on the morrow, I'll not spend tonight sober."

"It seems I'll be taking first watch," Ceraan sighed, pouring Borin a mug of mulled mead. It's what she had on her, and what she'd had heated for herself to aid her sleep that night.

Wee pouted. "Blightbender, or whatever I'm calling him today, can handle it. He's not all that bright, but he's loyal and he can warn us if anything foul is afoot."

"I won't be havin' a blasted undead as our only protection against, well, the undead!" Borin shook his head, scowling. "Light bless it, but I don't know a paladin alive that will stand for that. I keep better watch with a drink or two in me anyhow. Any dwarf worth his salt does."

"Aw, but he's so cute and all alone out there. Poor little guy, bits of him freezing to the ground...."

Shavra cringed, setting her food down for a moment. "He is far from little. You reanimated him from that vrykul we killed earlier. He is five times as tall as you, at least. How is that little, I ask you?"

"Whatever," Wee said around the last bite of her fish. "He's loyal, he doesn't need sleep any more than I do, and the three of you DO need sleep. I've been dead once, just like him, and that's quite enough sleep for me."

"You still need rest, though," Ceraan tried to forestall an argument between death knight and paladin. "Call it sleep or no, we all work better with rest and we'll all of us need rest if we're to be of any use to your guild tomorrow."

"Aye, that's as true as any," Borin said. "I'll take the first watch, 'an wake Wee in a few hours. And ye' best be stayin' awake so ye can wake Ceraan for watch. None of us'll be happy if we wake up to Bonenibbler--"

"Blightbender," Wee corrected.

"Whatever. None of us want the ghoul invitin' a few friends o' your old master in for a light snack."

Wee sighed and crawled into her tent.

"Thank you," Ceraan murmured.

"I hope I din't offend the wee lass. Better her and her friend on our side than his after all. Her and her kind are about the toughest fighters, an' I know it's not a life they chose, but I--"

"I know what you mean," Shavra agreed. "It's like there is an absence of Light, where they stand. They've proven their worth, and their loyalty, many times over. Still, there's something about the death knights."

Wee rolled over in her sleeping bag, tuning out the voices outside. She knew they were right. She knew it more than they did. But, it seemed that the death knights would always have something to prove.

It's Monday...

...so I think I'll start this up again. My eyesight is still a bit fuzzy, but I'm not sick anymore!

What have I been doing this whole time? Mostly busywork, and until last week all my game time was spent soloing. I couldn't see well enough to heal, and mostly did some leveling on my paladin by remembering quests or squinting at the screen for five minutes.

Remember. Don't mess around when it comes to your eyes. Learn from my mistake.

Anyway! Before I start sounding like a public service announcement, I had some exciting times in Ulduar last week! We skipped Ignius entirely and tried to make a mad dash toward Mimiron for some actual progression. Thursday we tore through the place and left a scant few bosses behind. We rocked Flame Leviathan with one tower up, and we're planning on hitting him harder next time. We took longer than we wanted to on Thorim and Hodir, so we finished off Iron Council and left Freya as a warm up act for Saturday.

Saturday went well, too. I'm still not in top form, and our favorite pally tank was gone for the day, but despite that we poked our head in on Mimiron and made some good progress. First phase is a healer's nightmare, though I got the easy part with healing through napalm. Second phase we started out with a few too many people clumped together, so we'd be targeted too long to heal through. That was fixed by moving one of our healers between the two ranged groups all by himself, and that got us through to phase three.

Phase three Mimiron sucks. The adds hated us. The bomb bots loved to oneshot me. We ended up moving further away and had a ret pally grab the bomb bots. Something tells me that'll be my job when we're finally able to bring Wee in there for more than just Flame Leviathan. But, if the adds get taken care of right, we've got phase three.

Not so much phase four. We got to phase four with eight people up on our last attempt, and that's where we lost it. Oh boy, did we ever lose it. It was glorious, though! All three healers were still up, and we did our best. But, at that point it was just total chaos as everyone was just so happy to be to phase four that we weren't sure what to do next.

I'm worried about this week, though. Our main tank was away, so we had a DK tank. His cooldowns were a bit more forgiving than our pally tank's cooldowns, for mitigating the instakill in phase one. I'm sure we'll work something out, but we're a bit worried that we're going to have a bit of trouble with it. We need more dps before that's not an issue, I think. And, since I got all of Freya's loot Saturday that means we didn't get dps upgrades from her. Yeah, I was excited about that, but embarrassed, but we need more dps upgrades now for people who will be here every raid day.

Maybe I'm worrying about nothing. Maybe we've got this in the bag, and the loot from the other bosses, as well as the loot we'll get this week, will be enough. Maybe our tank will get upgrades so he isn't going to die horribly in a oneshot of doom. Or, maybe it'll take us a few more weeks as we continue to get the same shaman drops every week that are getting sharded.

Enough speculation for now. Mimiron will go down, and we'll move on to the real meat and potatoes of the raid. Yoggy must die. And then? More hard modes than just Flame Leviathan.

So, I'll leave you with a banner. Hope springs eternal, and I want to win some of the drawings they've got going on. Specifically the trip to Blizzcon, because that would just rock.

Attack of the Real Life

I'm so sorry for abandoning my blog for so long. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about. Far from it! I've just had a hard time mustering the energy.

I've been sick for the last couple of weeks, and life is conspiring to keep me in just enough of a stressed out state that recovering is taking forever and ever and ever. The details are unimportant, stupid, and anticlimactic, but they're still kicking my ass.

I will be back, but that time is not now. It is hopefully "soon" and I mean that in as non-Blizzard a way as possible.

In the mean time, go give extra hugs to your loved ones, and take care of yourself. You never know when the little things will pile up and pull you down. And you never know what new disasters tomorrow may bring.

Good luck to you all.

For the Alliance!

Actually, at 9:30 pm on a Monday night, it was more like, "Give us our bears, now."

The Night Crew, Honored Exiles, and a few of our friends finally got tired of trying to PuG this achievement with random strangers, so we banded together and tore through the Horde leaders like they were made of tissue paper. We're all experienced PvPers and raiders, so any resistance we met was easily dealt with and crushed. We suffered a handful of deaths in the process, but for the most part it was easy as pie.

Mmmm...pie....

It was hilarious, afterward. Sindorella had a horde guildie defending, and when she came back from playing her DK with us I watched over her shoulder as she apologized to him for ganking him. They both laughed it up, and a good time was had by all. I hope he gets his 10 more Alliance kills for City Defender soon. Good luck to him!

p.s.
The screenshot above only shows a few of us who were there for our city raids. Some of our group had logged off immediately, one stayed in UC to kill more hordies, and some just didn't want to bother. Also, some people who ARE in the screenie just happened to be there and couldn't resist showing off their bears for no other reason than to show off.

Down they go...

So, I don't think I mentioned it before. Our group raids on Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons. So, today was our second day of the week...and boy did we get some progression done!

First we went after Ignius on a vengeance run. It felt good, smacking him around. We got him killed after a few tries, and all was right in the world. I got the hot pocket achievement, too. Thank goodness I can heal myself in that thing!

Next we went on to Auriaya and hit her with a grand oneshot, and a leather healer helm dropped. (It's shaped like a moon. My druid is mooning the raid, now. haha) The next bosses were a bit on the tougher side, though. Thorim was a bit tricky for our stay behind group. I did the gauntlet, and it was pretty easy to heal, but that doesn't matter when the other group doesn't stay alive. We finally got it sorted out, though. Something about dispelling something that was making our shaman healer cast times ridiculous. It was a pretty fun enounter. I won the roll for the T8 shoulders, but since I'd already won something I happily passed on it for our mage. I'm just stoked I would have won it. We then went in and said hi to Freya...and took her down on our third attempt. The trash in that room is, uh, interesting. But, I got to sleep things for the first time since Sunken Temple! Go go druid CC!

Freya's room is full of herbs, including two near the door that aren't pickable. They're underground or something. It would have been all well and good, but the rogue kept getting all the herbs before me or the mage could get to them! And, instead of handling it like an adult, I went all passive-aggressive and snarky. I was just so exasperated! It's not even that I needed the herbs that bad, I was just frustrated that I wasn't taken into consideration. So, we need to find a better way to handle that.

I won the Alchemists's Cache tonight, and we were all a bit surprised by what it all contained. I sent some of the potions and mixtures on to other members of the raid, because it really seems like a ridiculous amount of stuff to go to one person. I kept the herbs and the vials and the eternals, though. I hope we all bring the same characters each week, so the other two alchemists in the raid get the bag in turns. We'd probably guild bank the items, but the three alchemists in the raid a) aren't in the guild on these characters, and b) nobody ever gets stuff like that out of the guild bank anyway. It's like this black hole or something. There's a few things in the first tab that the common folk like me can take one of each day, but I have yet to learn the secret to gaining access to any of the rest of the stuff. Even asking for a heart of darkness for Shavra to make new shoulders way back when was a bit of an ordeal. Sure, we've been burned before, but at the same time if we can't do anything useful with the useful stuff, what's the point in having the guild bank? I don't even want the shit in there, but it feels a little off that it's ALL off limits.

Meh. That's a rant for a different day.

All in all, today's trip to Ulduar was a raving success! I think we need to iron out some kinks and stuff, both in the raiding and in the picking of the herbs, but we got the job done and we learned a lot. Barring disaster, next week will go a lot faster and we'll get to see more bosses! Yay!

Mostly rambles

First topic on the table. Does my priest want to heal you?

I don't know. Let me mind flay you and see how well that works.

For the last year and a half, my priest has been a pretty dedicated shadow priest. I have other healers. I MIGHT dual spec her at some point in the future, but I doubt it. I'm just not all that great at priesting these days. I brush her off about once a week, do the jewelcrafting daily, and fly around Icecrown looking for saronite.

It's not that I hate holy or disc, I just never got the hang of them. I "grew up" a three-button healer, so all the options on my priest gave me the centipede's dilemma in the worst way. Now that I'm used to healing on a druid, with many more healing options than I thought I'd ever get used to, I might give priest heals a try. I might not. But, no matter what, no. I don't want to heal your PuG.

---

Secondly, yesterday morning I helped my sis-in-law get her baby mage her "the Noble" title. At level 10. Well, okay, she wasn't 10 when she got the title, and that makes us all sad. She made a discovery ding before she got the actual title, but she did all of the work at 10, so we think it counts.

It was pretty fun, escorting her on my paladin while my brother escorted her on his hunter. He'd hit things that might be a problem, and I saved her life more than once from something that had snuck up on her. We got her all the way through Tanaris, Un'goro Crater, and Silithus without a single death. Go team us!

I've seen a screenshot of a tauren actually at level 10 with the title, and that made me a bit sad. We could have done it, if we hadn't insisted on killing things while she was in our party! Oh well. I'm still pleased with my level 38 hunter with the title, so I'm sure she's happy with her level 11 as well.

---

And, on the raiding front, XT nerfs saved the day. In one night we downed Flame Leviathan (duh), Razorscale (oneshot), XT (twoshot), Assembly (took forever, but we got them down), and the bridge boss (oneshot on our first attempt). We're not hardcore, so we're all pretty pleased with this, but I know I'm not the only one who feels a bit cheated that we couldn't get this far without the XT nerfs. I really like a good challenge. The tantrums were a bitch to heal through, but we had it if our dps had just been a bit better geared and we'd all known what we were doing.

Oh well. I beat the other healers on dps when XT dropped his heart. That gives me a lot more smug satisfaction than perhaps it should.

Also, finally, I enjoyed healing last night for the first time in a long time. I felt like I was on my game for once. I'm looking forward to healing tomorrow. It's back to being my comfort zone, and I need my comfort zone more than I need things changed up. I go back and forth, and I'm sorry to anyone who has to put up with me like this, but that's just how I am sometimes.

I'm taking a bit of a break from the game today, but I can't play all the time! Next up, leveling my paladin from 70-80. Maybe I'll try to see just how fast I can go. Wish me luck!

This just in!

Yesterday, I was the only DK in a 25-man PuG of Emalon!

Actually, considering how we ended up in a wipefest after replacing too many people, that may not make me the smartest DK in the world. Our first three attempts were awesome, but one person after another dropped for one reason or another...and finally the attempts became total crapola. We ended up replacing about 10 people from what I'd stepped in on, and the last attempt showed it totally wasn't worth it.

Wee's string of bad luck continues. I think I'm afraid to touch her for a while. It's because I got the Super Simian Sphere, isn't it? Curses!

So...Noblegarden

All my blog time yesterday was spent hunting eggs.

In fact, all my WoW time yesterday was spent hunting eggs.

My shaman and my druid both have their holiday titles, and I still have my horde hunter to go. I kinda doubt she'll get the title, since she's level 37 and the mobs in Un'goro will make her a light snack, but that doesn't mean I won't get as much done as I can.

On Shavra, my shaman, I had all of the items I needed drop within my first 100 eggs. I ended up with three of the pets, and it made me sad to have to delete two of them.

On Ceraan, my druid, my luck was a bit worse. I had to buy a few things, and I ended up not bothering with 50 more chocolates for the circlet since I didn't need it for the achievement. A nice death knight went to the starting zones with me so our bunnies could get their spring fever out of the way together.

I might or might not do any of it on my death knight. She's having a bad week, with Maly bugging on her and not being able to find a spot to grab eggs every time I've taken her to a hunting spot. I'm also leaning toward being just sick and tired of clicking on eggs right now.

If anything amazing or amazingly frustrating happens, I'll mention it. Otherwise, I'm just waiting for Children's Week. I've always had a soft spot for that particular holiday, and it'll be just that much more fun with the achievements in place.

For reals, this time...

Now that's more like it.

We've got Flame Leviathan and Razorscale down, on our first regular week. (Our raid leader was gone last week, so we didn't put in any real effort into Ulduar. Or anything, for that matter.)

Not bad for the "B" group, but I'm not sure I'm entirely happy. We just plain didn't have the dps for XT-002. With three healers, we hit the enrage timer. With two healers, we died too much. I was second on dps when I brought in Wee, but Wee's dps doesn't matter when the rest of the dps are taking dirt naps from bad tantrums. We've got the mechanics of the fight down. We just need better geared people tagging along. I think we'd have started with more of our better geared regulars if we hadn't switched to Thursdays...but that's another tale entirely.

We two-shotted Razorscale. Again, the first wipe could be pretty much attributed to me. I was the first healer down, because I didn't notice I was standing in a patch of pretty blue flames until it was too late, and instead of getting out of it like a normal person would, I hit the wrong button and died. Trees really don't like fire. Our second attempt was pretty messy, too. Both of our tanks were dead at the end, a third dps had just gotten munched, and we barely killed it before I was next on the menu.

That was NOTHING next to the chaos and confusion we faced trying to take a screenshot of our kill, though! We couldn't agree which end was the tail and which was the head. I was jumping up and down, pointing out that I was in her dead mouth and there were teeth and her glowing blue eyes, and people were still insisting we were at the wrong end.

Can I say we got roflpwned by the screenshot boss? Our raid leader had to finally tell everyone it doesn't matter what THEY see, get over here and stand where the screenie will look right on his computer. (Which, incidentally, agreed with mine.)

Trying to juggle two characters in Ulduar is giving me a headache. The rust is flaking off my healing skill, but I'm still not at the top of my game. I was third on heals, out of our three healers. I was second on dps, when I brought Wee. You can kinda tell where my heart is, in all this. But, I can't complain. Bringing Ceraan is VASTLY more fun than sitting at the summoning stone and then calling it a night because nobody wants to heal.

So, that's Ulduar in a nutshell. And, since I don't want to be wiping to that stupid whiny robot every week for the next ten years, everybody had better bring their A game tomorrow. Either that, or we should get our asses back in Naxx.

When I grow up...

I was at a loss about what to write about today. I came across the Shared Topic: What Class Would You Be in Real Life and my brain started working on it.

Before coffee. It's a miracle.

I've stumbled upon a few interesting ideas. Mages sound awesome at first glance, but it's just not for me. Sure, I love the idea of teleporting wherever I want, whenever I want. But, think of all the scenery you'll miss.

Priests and paladins appeal to me in their own ways, but I'm just not a religious person. That, and I realized many years ago that if undead were real, and I had the faith-based skills to combat them, then I'd kinda be forced to, you know, combat them. Ew.

When all is said and done, there's a reason that first tauren of mine will never be deleted. There's a reason Shavra was my main for so very long. If there's a class in the game I'd truly want to be, it's shaman.

Like I said, I'm not religious, but I'm very deeply spiritual. I don't agree with shoving my beliefs in anyone's face, but I do think that people could do well to show a little more respect for nature and the world we live in.

I love the idea of tapping into the earth directly for support, and setting up helpful totems as I go. I've had dreams where I'm up against someone truly vile, and I turn the raw energy of lightning upon them, and it feels great. The raw coursing energy of the wild, or the gentle nurturing growth...

Most of all, there's the ghost wolf dance. Who wouldn't want to do that in real life???

Super Monkey Balls!

A friend of mine asked me to do heroic HoL with him this morning. I dragged my feet a little. It was early. It's HoL. And I hadn't had my coffee yet.

I'm glad I went. I got a Super Simian Sphere out of the deal!

I just hope Teeny forgives me, eventually, for beating him on the roll. He got the axe he was after, at least...

Ulduar and more

First of all, a random statement. This game, and the whole world, need more random acts of kindness.



Now, to Ulduar. We, in HE, seem to love doing things in a unique way called "ass-backwards". Now, now, everyone in guild don't start telling Stout to kick me. Everyone out of guild, don't start pointing and laughing. I mean that in the best way possible.

Due to epic timing fail, our group didn't get to see Ulduar until Sunday. We DID finally get in, and we downed Flame Leviathan in no time.

Well...I wiped us on our first attempt. See, when people said something about shooting passengers so they could do stuff to towers or whatnot, I was thinking TOWERS. Like, towering over people. Like, I had to aim high and get my passenger up at the top where all those flying things were. There was no concept for me to, I don't know, throw my passenger on top of the boss to shut down something-or-other that was actually on it. And when I asked where I was supposed to throw my raid leader, he said just hit the button...

Yeah. Our wipe? Totally my fault. Because I just didn't get it. I do, now. I only make the really dumb mistakes once, unless it's on Thaddius. But, we won't talk about Thaddius.

So. First easysauce boss down. And, what do we decide to do?

We say hello to Ignus.

Ignus trash sucks. It took us a bit, but we figured it out. We were all so complacent from running Naxx that we forgot how "fun" trash could actually get. Remember TK, back in the day, when CC was necessary and you had to kill certain mobs in a certain way or things could go very badly? Ignus is like that. Only, the trash mobs come two at a time, so you'd think it's easysauce, right?

The big guys at the front door in my screen shot are interesting. They hit pretty hard, and they do an AOE silence. Even with hots, it's easy for a tank to go down in that silence. But, the silence can be LOSed. It only took us a couple of wipes to figure that out. /facepalm And then a couple more to get the positioning right.

That's when the real fun begins.

First, you get a traveling debuff when those two die. It deals a nice amount of damage and then hops to the next person at random. The only way to get rid of it is to die or go down to the water in the boss's room to put it out. There are two golem packs and four or five revnant packs wandering around the room. The golems are easy. They hit hard, do fire damage in a cone in front of them. Face them away from the raid, tank them together, no problem. They go down pretty easily. The revnants wiped the floor with us, however. They cast flaming cyclones of doom that like to toss the melee into the air and throw them to the ground at 10% health or less. If you're lucky, they throw you out of their path. Otherwise, you die. Poor little Wee died. A lot. I finally had to err on the side of cowardice. I never saw a casting bar on those things, but other people did, so I'm playing with my mods before next attempt...but they seem to get brighter about two or three seconds before they cast the cyclones of fiery doom. Or, maybe I was just chicken. Either way, on the last pull I ran away when I suspected they even might be casting it, and that was the only time I survived. If you're ranged you can just run away and all is good. They follow one person at random. So, if it's not after you, sidestep it and keep casting.

And then we made four or five attempts on the boss himself. Having a DK to chain the adds into the scorches is awesome. Our problem was that we were taking too much damage and dying before we could even hope to get one molten and then brittle and then shattered. I think part of it was the add tank taking a lot of damage when kiting them into the scorches. Once the add tank went down, it was over.

It got late, we called it, and Thursday the real attempts begin. We'll start with Razorscale this time, instead of Ignus. You know...the right way? I'm hoping we'll have our A game. We'd had to bring a few "warm bodies" because our regular raiders weren't all on. Even still, it went well, we learned, and we had fun.

This was my first time attempting new raid content the same week it came out. Always before, I've been trying to catch up. Catch up on leveling, catch up on gear... I repaired as I went most of the time, so I didn't pay attention to how much it all cost. 150g or so? On trash. And it was totally worth it. I feel like I'm finally where I wanted to be in the game.

Special Weekend Edition

There are so many bugs, annoyances, and blahs, that I just had to post on a Saturday.

I'll keep it small.

First of all, my death knight should be Weeinsanity Jenkins, Champion of the Frozen Wastes by now. Should be. I ran heroic HoL last night, had a lot of fun, and then I looked down and noticed that the achievement didn't show up. In fact, it had one grayed out name on the list.

Mal'Ganis.

I'm beginning to see why Arthas thought it was totally worth going evil to hunt after that bastard.

Well, that's okay. One of the shaman healers who helped me so kindly to get my bronze drake last week still needs hers. So, she asks me and I'm all over it. A chance to finally get my title AND help a friend? WOOHOO!

But, nobody's on.

Disappointing healers is bad karma, guys.

The icing on the cake, of course, is one minor annoyance that I just don't want to deal with today. The shaman spec I'm least familiar with, enhance, had all my talent points refunded at random! Noooo! I actually have to look up my spec again to fix it, instead of knowing what I'm doing. Ugh. Why couldn't it have been elemental that got messed up?

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

Sure, they're dying, but am I doing it right?

Yesterday my sister-in-law and I cut a swath of destruction through Blade's Edge Mountains and the opening zones of Northrend. She hasn't seen much of the high level zones from an Alliance perspective, but I was there to make sure she didn't run into the wrong town or something. And I fully expect the same treatment when my belf hunter starts hitting the iffy areas.

So, Dinkydeath and Jerasha went wandering, an unholy DK and a ret pally, from level 67 to almost 70. We were plate-wearing machines, tearing through anything else like tissue paper.

At some point she yelled at me from the other room. "Every time your spells go off, I keep thinking they're mine!"

This made me laugh. She's the one with the death knight, but her main is a blood elf paladin. My, uh, prefered character is my death knight. So, for about a half our before she said something, I was reminding myself that no, I was not the one casting Icy Touch. (And no, I shouldn't expect my little judgment hammer to reach that far.)

This brings me to my point. We were killing things easily, but I haven't spent much time on my paladin since the whole class was completely revamped. On single targets I'm doing my little judgment of light, hitting them with a crusader strike, and... Well, Dinky finishes them off before crusader strike is off cooldown. If I'm really bored, I'll cast my divine storm, but that's a little bit of a waste. It makes life interesting when it turns a single pull into a multiple pull, though. Gotta love those passive shoveltusk...

At level 69, is that really it? Is that all there is for a ret paladin? I've got my seal of the martyr up, I pop myself with a flash heal when art of war procs or between fights if I need it, and...

And...

Do all ret pallies just sit there and autoattack while they wait for cooldowns? This feels really weird after playing my DK for so long. I suppose it's an improvment over making myself a sandwich as a prot pally at the height of BC, back when I hit the Plaguelands, but it still feels like I'm not doing enough.

Let me tell you, though. Two dps in plate questing together make short work of everything. Even between cooldowns, it was a hell of a lot of fun.

I got pwned by Ulduar

Actually, our whole server did.

In our guild there are two regular raid leaders. Stout and Cian. We don't have an "A" group and "B" group. We have "Stout's group" and "Cian's group". But, if we went by "A" and "B", I'd be in "B" group.

Our "A" group has been trying to do Ulduar for the last two nights. They got pwned by the Loading Screen Boss more than a few times. They got roflstomped by the Instance Server Crash boss a lot. And, finally, they were defeated by the Retrieving Character List boss and called it a night.

Our "B" group, missing a few key members (like me, who was eating cake when the call to form group went out), decided to hang out, try heroics, and poke at the new Argent Tournament area. But, when I got on an hour and a half late, our heroic group met the same fate as the "A" group. We got pwned by the same bosses!

Our guild is awesome like that. If we're going down, we're going down together.

I did get to see the inside of Ulduar last night, for about a minute and a half. We converted our doomed heroic group to a raid, and two of us went in to check things out, and to see if it would stay stable enough for us to try to light up the warlock Bat Signal and call in group "B". Before I thought to take screen shots, though, a dwarf who shall remain nameless suggested that we step outside and see if we can get back in.

We didn't get back in.

Our raid leader will be unavailable the rest of the week, so I'll start babbling about Ulduar, and how much I hate healing post-patch, next week. Stay tuned, I'm sure it'll be a thrill a minute and it won't be covered ANYWHERE else (by me).

Once upon a time...

...there were two gamers. They geeked out together mostly over their love of Star Wars, but the most miraculous part of all was that one was male and the other was female. So, in typical geek fashion, they jumped in feet first and explored their differences, thoroughly. Nine months later, a little gamer joined them, and started demanding his own computer and copy of Star Wars. (Okay, he was demanding milk and diaper changes, and the occasional burp, but his tastes have refined since then.)

Yes, that's right. Nine years ago today (in the oh-my-gods-awful bright and early morning, at a time when all good gamers are passing out and drooling on their keyboards or resting their joysticks somewhere embarrassing) our son was born. Our house is going to be filled with cake and singing and celebration today...which means I'm going to have to cram in all the Argent Tournament poking I can while he's in school.

No time for blogging! We're having a birthday!

The Great Addon Debate

I know, I know. Everyone is excited right now about the patch coming out today. For weeks now, people have been anticipating Uduar, the new dual spec system, and the Argent Tournament. I'm all downloaded and squared away, waiting for Blizz to release the flood gates and let us back in.

What's the first thing you'll be doing? If you're anything like me, the first thing you'll be doing is asking, "What happened to all my addons?" Not a patch goes by where I am not too excited to see content to remember to check the status of my addons. I have to log out, check the box to load out of date addons, and head back in.

This time, though, we might be seeing a larger number of broken and out of date addons. A lot of addon authors have gone "on strike" in protest of Blizzard's recently established policy, stating that you cannot charge for premium mod service, and you cannot advertize or ask for donations within the mod itself. Many of you, I'm sure, have heard of this already. It's been debated before. And now that there's a date set for compliance a lot of people have renewed their protests.

Allow me a tangent for a moment. About ten years ago, I started writing fanfiction. I used it as a tool to hone my skills as a writer, and it was especially effective online because feedback is relatively instantaneous. I put a lot of work into the fanfic I wrote, because otherwise it would be a waste of my time. I'd never learn anything if I threw just anything out there and demanded praise. I wanted to see what worked, so I put in my best efforts. I know many other fanfiction authors who do the same. Is that to say that all fanfiction authors are like that? Of course not. For every fanfic author writing something worth reading, there are a hundred others who are posting pure garbage. For every fanfic author writing something truly artistic and worth paying for, there are a thousand who are merely passable.

The legality of fanfiction is a huge gray area of intellectual property rights and fair use. As long as fanfiction authors, no matter how much they've put into what they've written, don't charge for what they do, they're largely ignored. They're fans doing what fans do--being fannish. But, I've read some fanfiction of novel length and publishable quality. If it hadn't been fanfiction, I'd have gladly paid to have that book on my shelf.

This is where I get my attitude about WoW addons. It boggles my mind that some addon authors can't see how they're playing merry with Blizz's intellectual property, and the moment Blizz says they're crossing a line they throw an open revolt. I'm not belittling the time and effort and skill that goes into making a great addon, especially something as complex as Questhelper or Carbonite. I do, however, think it's crossing a line when certain addon authors can make a living off of producing them. This is Blizzard's cash cow, not yours. It is NOT the same as Microsoft demanding you stop writing programs. I've heard that argument over and over, and it doesn't float with me. If you are writing an addon that only works in that particular game, and they own the rights to that game, you're violating their rights by demanding money for it. If you don't agree, perhaps you should take them to court and see how that pans out. If you can get a judge to rule in your favor, I'll withdraw my stance that you're still playing in their playground, like a fanfiction author making Arthas and Jaina live happily ever after.

The Friendly Skies

My first special mount. I never got the ZA bear. The RNG doesn't love me enough to have given me even a chance at the Baron's mount or either of the mounts Prince Kael'thas can drop (in MgT or TK). But, I finally got my bronze drake. It makes me happy that it's on my gnome, too, in homage of Chromie.

I don't know if I can explain just how happy it makes me, or how amused that even after doing CoS for a week straight with mostly the same group, I still lost the roll every time.

I'm going back. There are two people who still deserve their drakes for helping me as often as they were able to: Ravendream and Melissande. I want to help other friends get it on their alts as well. If I get the mount on alts, I'll be happy. Of course. Who wouldn't? But, that's not a huge motivating factor. It's a fun instance, even after doing it every day for a week straight.

So, I'd like to thank Borin, Cassindra, Ciandros, Melissande, Falgoran, Ravendream, Stoutheart, Teenytanky, Pamathas, Kola, and Abnet for helping me and running with me. (I'm forgetting some other members of The Night Crew, and I'm sorry. Still, thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I still love you all.)

Abnet gets huge thanks, for passing on the mount even though he didn't have it, so that I would get it on Saturday. You killed my complaining rights, but you're good at that. /hug

Wait. This wasn't my Academy Award! Oops!

Moving on...I'm one heroic away from my "Champion of the Frozen Wastes" title! Wish me luck on Halls of Lightning. Oh, and be afraid. I've never set foot in the place before. Hell, I don't know where the instance portal is....

My Ghoulfriend's Ghoulfriend

Last night in Naxx we were giving people an afk break about half way through, and our vent conversation turned to ghoul names. They're obviously randomly generated from two lists, a creepy noun and another creepy noun ending in -er. (It sounds a lot better than RandomPetName, which is what they all started out with on beta. See?)

Sometimes when you put two creepy words like that together, you end up with something creepy. I had a cool ghoul name the other week when Corpsegobbler popped up. More often than not, it comes up pretty silly. I've had the name "Eyeleaper" come up a few times, and it makes me giggle quite a bit. "Mudbender" was another one of those silly names that I think only Avatar fans could find cool. In fact, the one ghoul I've had that ended up with the name Mudbender got me killed in short order. I'm sure it's happened to just about anyone with a pet class, where you'll set your pet on something and they chase each other half way across the zone for some reason. This one ran into the middle of the cultist's camp in Terokkar Forest before I could try to call him back, and pulled about ten mobs with him. I was never so happy to see a pet die, and I'll curse that random name forever.

If you play a death knight, or you've just been looking at other people's pets, what's your favorite random ghoul name? Has something particularly funny caught your eye? Or, how about a ghoul name that would actually be appropriate for a ghoul?

Sneaky, sneaky

The first time I took my shaman into arenas--wait. Let me rephrase. The only time I set foot in arenas was on my shaman. We died horribly, quickly, and frustratingly. I was resto at the time, and I'd heard that was one of the best arena spec/class combos out back then. So, how was I roflstomped so easily?

I mean, aside from inexperience, since I just admitted I was a total noob.

Stealth and stuns.

In all of the opposing teams, we had rogues or druids or both coming up and taking me out before my team mates could blink. I had no idea what totems were helpful or not at the time, and I became the easiest target they'd ever seen.

PvP is a skill you have to cultivate, but at the time it seemed that stealth classes were easy-mode. I'll still get completely dismantled by a good rogue in PvP, even with a little more experience under my belt. It has nothing to do with being a noob, though. Rogue PvP seems to be a game of patience, and luck. Once those are both on the rogue's side, it's time to say hello to your friendly neighborhood graveyard.

I could be wrong, though. My rogue is still in her mid-20s. And, while I love her to death, I'm a long way from mastering rogue PvP skills. Okay, I'm still a noob. But some day, when you least expect it, she'll be 80 and lurking in Wintergrasp. While my paladin and mage friends are distracting you, looking like easy honor kills, I'll be patient.

I'll be lucky.

And you'll be dead.

A Girl And Her Pets

I have two hunters; one draenei, one blood elf, both on Moonrunner. I've had an orc hunter on an RP server, and my first hunter was a tauren I named Cowvin. (I was going to give him a tiger named Hobbes, of course.) Pet classes and I didn't click, at first. When I was first learning to play, it was actually more of a hinderance for me to have to keep track of a pet. That probably seems backward for most people, since pets add to your survivability, but it's what happened for me.

How many hunters I've gone through, or how many I have now, or how I learned to love the class? Not the subject. This one's all about the pets.

As you may have gathered from me mentioning Cowvin, the names are kinda important to me. I'm a big ol' geek when it comes to names, especially for hunters. For example, my draenei may seem like a mild mannered, normal, almost RP kind of girl with the name of Aislen. Again, I stole it from writing/RPing in the past. (I picked it from a family tree I wrote for the background of my first novel. The character will probably never see the light of print. But, I still needed a name.) Pets were where I could express my fannish side. Her first pet was a crab named JayneCobb. I took her to Westfall and picked up a coyote packleader and named him MalReynolds. There was a bird from Arathi somewhere in there, and I may or may not have at one point owned a ravager. (Every draenei does.) Right now, her pets are a dragonhawk she's had since 18 named RiverTam, a shadowmaw panther named Zoe (that won't be lasting much longer, sadly), and a turtle named Soup.

Yes, Soup.

There are only so many Firefly characters, damn it!

My blood elf, on the other hand, was unabashedly named in a fannish manner. I don't do it often, but my family finally convinced me to watch the new Doctor Who series, which sent me on a nostalgia kick for the old Doctor Who, and I couldn't help myself. Romanaii was born, and her first pet was one of those little white piggies in Durotar named TheDoctor. She just picked up an elder cloud serpent and it's running around being called JackHarkness. Next up, an ape named TheMaster. So far she hasn't garnered as much recognition as Aislen's Firefly pets, but that doesn't matter. It amuses me, and I'm sure some day someone smart enough will stop me and cheer.

Not every hunter indulges in their geek side. (We're playing a video game. Face it. We're all at least a little bit geek.) Some people name their pets to be crass and see how much they can get away with. (My hunter friend with a cat named Pussee...that some of us girls love to lick and hug and other stuff. We're bad! haha) Some people pick pair names like my Cowvin and proposed Hobbes, or the combo of TheCaptain and Tennille I ran into a while back. And, there's the ever popular (and maddening) former fad of naming your pet after a guild healer, or (especially) the main tank.

The pet names hunters pick say a lot about the players behind them. Do you have a "dream name" for a hunter pet you plan on having? What inspires you to name your own pets? What hunters and pets have stuck in your mind over time?

Horde vs. Alliance

I didn't start out with a favored faction. Everyone I knew played Alliance, and I joined in. I actually liked the Horde a little better when I started, especially the Tauren. There was something about their laid-back, nature-loving, granola-crunching society that appealed to me.

The thing I didn't like about playing a Tauren was how long it took to get from here to there and back again. I spent more time running my first shaman from place to place than I did actually questing! That, combined with having my character take up a good third of my screen (I didn't start out with a widescreen monitor), and with BC making shamans available to the Alliance, I didn't spend much time playing Horde.

I still had this feeling of defensiveness when others I knew would bring up the Horde vs. Alliance debate, though. I'd really enjoyed the other faction, and felt bad abandoning them. I felt awkward in those sorts of debates also, because they invariably devolved into name-calling and sweeping generalizations. Alliance players are a bunch of selfish children with hero complexes. Horde players are a bunch of power-tripping, emogoth jerks. Blah blah blah. On and on.

Those things annoyed me, but there are a few things that amuse me, when people make assumptions about those who play the other faction. As Alliance, I have heard over and over how Horde is so awesome at PvP. How it's not fair that they've got people who actually use strategy. How they protect their healers. How they do everything right, but my fellow Alliance are a bunch of drooling idiots and that's why we never win whatever battleground said person is whining about this time.

What's so hilarious about that? My sis-in-law has been doing Wintergrasp the last few days, and a few things she said sounded eerily familiar. Alliance know what they're doing in PvP. Horde players can't get it together, and are a bunch of drooling idiots who can't...

I was laughing too hard to hear what else she said.

No matter which faction you're playing, the players behind the characters you see are just people. Sure, a few personality types seem to gravitate toward certain races, but it's silly to just assume. I know I'm not your typical annoying gnome, but when I'm playing Weeinsanity I'm sure Horde players don't know that. Not every dwarf is a rude, obnoxious, node-stealing asshole, for example. Not every blood elf is a vapid, self-centered, node-stealing bitch, either.

But we all know that all undead are emogoth teens who equate penis size to dps meters. Some stereotypes are just true like that.

For me, a state of healer burnout exists...

Right now, with the flavor of the month class being capable of tanking, healers are even more rare and precious than ever. I get that. I really do.

I get it right between the eyes.

Until WotLK came out, the four classes I'd leveled the highest were the four healing-capable classes. Shaman, priest, druid, and paladin, in that order. When I leveled my shaman, she was resto for most of it. I loved it. There's nothing like being the hero that saves the group and keeps the tank alive and does the cleansing and everything else a good healer does. It's really rewarding, especially in a group that appreciates their healers.

It's a lot of responsibility, however. A good healer is golden. A bad healer is mocked soundly, and rightfully so. A bad healer is a huge liability in a group.

Also? I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. When things go wrong, I don't go around blaming others. I ask what I did wrong first. What could I have done better? What was wrong with me? Why was I throwing HoTs on that person when I should have been throwing a big heal on that other person? Why did I cast swiftmend when the tank was only down by a little bit? Why didn't I cast it when it could have saved the tank? Why do I always forget Nature's Swiftness???

Top that off with the frustration of not knowing a huge part of most fights, because I'm too busy looking at health bars and whatever crap/fire/disease/void zone might spawn underneath me and kill me in one fel swoop, and eventually it leads to the need for a long vacation. There were some nights I'd log out after a raid in tears from the frustration.

Much as I love the glory of healing, at heart I'm a DPSer. I get off on big crits. I giggle when accidentally pull aggro from the tank. I swoon when I top the dps meters. I ♥ big numbers! I'm a girl with an epeen and the desire to show it's just as big as any guy's!

So, I've been in heaven this week. I've finally been able to take my little DK to places and get gear for a change, instead of just badges. I've watched her claw her way up the dps meters, so that she's in the top ten and not hovering somewhere right above (or even below!) the tanks. Sure, pally tanks are kick-ass in Naxx, but last Sunday I knew I wasn't helping the raid much when I was hovering right there with my favorite pally tank. He's geared as all hell, but he's a tank and I'm supposed to be dps. This week? Not a problem. I was somewhere in 6th or 7th place. (My Recount put me at 7th, but others put me at as high as 5th on some fights. Woot!)

Mini rant: Dear fellow DKs. Do not cast Army of the Dead whenever the heck you feel like it. I don't care if it's a PuG. Gluth is not one of those fights you want to pull those guys out on, thanks. Please know the fights.

It feels good to be able to prove that I'm not one of the new wave of useless idiot DKs. I'm good at what I do. I don't stand in shit, and I learn from my mistakes. I love being able to see the fight, and not just the health bars. I love my big numbers. I love my little evil gnome.

I know me. At some point I'll get frustrated with being just another dps. I'll start asking if I can take my druid to raids again, especially with Ulduar on the horizon and the chance to get a legendary item. Mmmm...legendary heals. I'm drooling already.

But, for now, I'm still enjoying the big numbers, and I'd rather stare at boss ass than health bars.

Quick note

The blogging will continue next Monday. The kiddo is on spring break, so I've been sleeping in and hanging out with him instead of blogging.

I just had to share this, though. I have my first chocobo! Er, hawkstrider. My first Horde character to hit 30, I mean. And it still feels like cheating to have mounts at 30 to me. (Oh! This is the first character I've leveled to 30 since the level requirement changed, too.)

And I still haven't gotten killed by walking into the wrong town or clicking on the wrong flight master.

Yay!

(I feel all sneaky, walking around in Horde towns. Like a spy. I can finally see the inside of those walls! Woot!)

Mootank

This is somewhat later than I would like it to be. My son keeps bringing home colds and fevers and other nastyness from school with him. Why can't he bring something cute home, like a kitten, or puppies. Even a tauren would be better than this crud! hehe

Speaking of taurens...

There's been a lot of talk in the house about playing Horde the last few days. Raven started out Alliance, he got me to start playing and I made Alliance characters so I could play with him, and it went so on and so forth from there until my brother's wife started playing.

Well, she's got a friend who played on the same server as us, only with her husband who started out Horde. He got her to play Horde, and it went so on and so forth from there, until...

My sis-in-law has five of each faction on Moonrunner, but her main is a blood elf paladin. That's her first 80, that's her favorite, that's her baby, and that's the character with all of her gold.

She keeps hearing all of my "funny" raiding rants, and she wants to raid some day, but she's a bit wary of raiding with "that guy". You know the one. The guy who thinks girls can't play, all healers are girls, and if girls play they must be healers. The guy who yells at everyone. The guy who starts drama over repair costs. The guy who MUST WIN AT ALL COSTS, even though this really isn't the sort of game you "win" to most people. It's not a game to "win" for her. It's a social experience, and something fun to do when being a housewife gets boring. She wants to raid to have fun with her friends. Not for loot, not for "points", not for being better than others. And she doesn't want to deal with some misogynistic prick who wouldn't know "fun" if it bit him on the pecker.

She knows two people on the server with actual raid experience. Me, and another girl who doesn't play on Moonrunner very much. (The other girl has more raid experience than me, with a much more progressed and driven guild. I envy her the chances she has, but I wouldn't give up the friends I've made here for some pixels on a screen, sorry. I'm sticking with my friends who JUST got their first Maly kill.) And somehow one thing got carried into another, and I have a baby mootank in the making.

I've named the baby mootank after the god of death in the novel I'm currently writing. I was going to name him after the god of war, being a warrior and all, but I looked up my notes and realized I don't HAVE a god of war yet! /facepalm

How do you have a fictional pantheon without a god of war?

Don't worry. I'll be fixing this. Soon.

So, if he ever gets past Ragefire Chasm, I'll unveil him here. I'll brag about him. I'll post screenies.

Me. Tanking.

You'd think by now I'd learn.

Bad Llama...

I totally skipped yesterday. I sat my butt down and played the game all day, instead of getting anything else done.

I also spent a considerable amount of time complaining about, well, just about everything with one of my friends/guildies.

Actually, yesterday seemed to contain the recurring theme of the RNG. Random Number Generator.

In all my time playing, I have seen a special mount drop ONCE. It was one Brewfest ram. When Raven was doing those runs over and over, though not as often as I was, the ram dropped enough that they had to let one go. Everyone in the party had one. Everyone. And he told me that it dropped ALL THE TIME. I saw one, and it went to someone else.

No kodo. No Baron mount. No ZG mount (though I haven't been in there that often.) No Attumen mount (I went in there all the time, though.) No Headless Horseman mount. No albino chocobo at the end of Magister's Terrace. Heck, I didn't even see the pet drop there.

One Brewfest ram, that I didn't win.

That lack of luck aside, my druid has a hard time winning just about anything. If I'm rolling against someone else on something, I might as well grats them before they roll. My gear upgrades come from the fact that I'm the only druid in our raid group. My gnome-shaped Abnet friend has the same sort of luck, on both his warlock and his rogue, Fred.

I've got a theory. I'm only allowed to bring Ceraan to raids because of her rotten luck. If I brought a character with GOOD luck, nobody would want to bring me along anymore. Don't laugh. I could very well be right.

Sarth

If you're running a PuG OS, here's a few words of advice.

Make sure the people you've put symbols over as who to run to for walls KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING, and don't use a yellow star. Some people are color blind, and a yellow star against a yellow flame wall? Kinda dumb.

Just a thought.

No, I don't trust anyone else personally. I bring Wee to OS PuGs on occasion, but I won't bring my druid. Healers kinda have to trust those around them to a certain degree, because you get in that healing zone where health bars are your priority. As melee DPS, I can keep my own eyes on the walls and run to where I know it's safe, rather than try to trust someone with a symbol over their head as being smart enough to run to the safe spot.

(Rant inspired by a near-wipe Raven had the dubious honor of participating in. He's still not used to the fight, so he got killed by trying to follow the star...and he's colorblind.)

Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom

I have a baby warlock that's been my favorite for the last few weeks. Haunt is made of awesomesauce, IMO. It's starting to make me wonder if throwing HoTs up on the warlocks when they lifetap is really doing them a huge favor, because I feel bad using my haunt, siphon life, or drain soul when I've got full health. But haunt has such an awesome graphic, and it's a good source of dps! I use all these with life tap so I rarely have to stop to eat and drink, or bandage. (Honestly, I bandage more often than I eat or drink these days.) So, I'm robbing my 'locks of the opportunity to feel all warm and fuzzy about using the suffering of their enemies to replenish their own health, and therefore their mana pool.

Poor warlocks can't get a break.

Like I said. My warlock is 62, so I've still got a lot to learn. Still, she's already been spoiled to death, and has had four epics in her leveling adventures. Where the druid I raid on is always the last to get anything in the group, because she can't win a roll to save her life, my warlock has somehow jinxed the RNG in her favor. I have a sneaking suspicion that she's not above cheating (and I'd like to know how she does it, because some of my other characters could use some love.)

I hit 61 right before casting the summoning circle on the dreadsteed quest. I've got my Doomguard now. I'm pretty well set!

Except for the part about still being 62.

Leveling ANOTHER character through Outlands and Northrend.

Top it off with knowing some pretty awesome players with warlock mains, and leveling her is a pretty intimidating idea!

In the mean time, it's fun saying "doom". Doom doom doom doom doom.

Doom.

Seriously! What's not to love about being a warlock and going around saying "doom" all the time?

Doom. Doom d'doom. Doom doom.

Doooooooooooom!

Yeah. I'm done.

(For now.)

Those Nifty Extras

Instead of playing with my UI yesterday, I sat around working on my novel. How boring of me!

So, instead of talking about my UI and rambling about that for a bit, I'm going to ramble about those nifty extras you go back to old dungeons for. I mentioned my Orb of Deception yesterday. A lot of people have mentioned that they run to the Dire Maul arena to kill rare mobs for those to drop. It's perilous though, since some people are in the habit of letting someone else do all the work and then killing the player when the rare spawn reaches around 20%. I'm glad I never ran into that frustration in search of an in-game toy!

In Naxx a couple weeks ago, a paladin friend of mine pulled out an Eye of Arachnida. These seem to be getting more popular now that so many people are hunting for the Baron's Mount in Stratholme. I've soloed the place more than once on my death knight. If that death knight Rivendare can have the cool mount, why can't Wee?

Of course, I've heard stories of people running through Magisters' Terrace, usually with their SO, to pick up a Phoenix Hatchling. I would love to try for that myself, and perhaps see what it would take to get a crack at the Chocobo. I mean, hawkstrider.

I've got a wish list about a mile long. I know my druid wants the raven mount, but that might have to wait a while. There are so many things to do, and so little time to accomplish them all!