OMG Kill it!

 Honey! Hurry, and bring a shoe or something.  I’m pretty sure this is the biggest bug I’ve ever seen!  

Ok, that’s the kinda shit that I find hilarious at 4am when I’m awake for no reason. 

Sifting through my wow screenshot folder is always a treat.  I never know what I’ve snapped pictures of along the way.  Here’s one of my baby priesty (who is 46 now wewt!)  

She looks like the cutting room floor of a Pixar studios, if animation studios actually had a cutting room floor.  Honestly.  The purple is my doing, I added it because at the time, it looked good with what I was wearing.  But really?  A yellow and aqua ankle length skirt?

 

 

It’s official, 3.2

I have really mixed emotions about this patch hitting today.  I’m looking forward to a few things in the patch, and honestly I think I’ll re-read the patch notes and maybe get re-excited about it.  Mostly, I’m kinda wishing it dropped next Tuesday instead of this.  We have the Retro Raid up and almost rarin’ to go, except I have to get another 14 levels on my priest.  And some people just rolled their toons, so you figure they are probably not going to be ready for 2 weeks-ish.  And then you have some people that are at 60, waiting for the rest of us.  It just puts extra pressure on top of the pressure that I have already put on myself to get my priest to 60.  This will be my first attempt at actually having “an active alt”.  I have never been able to sustain more than one character at a time.  I can’t split my loyalties between them, so I end up favoring one.  We’ll see how it goes. 

A whole lotta nothin’, oh except Yay achievements!

We hit up Ulduar10 last night, after rolling a giant goose egg last Wednesday.  That was the night Argent Dawn took a major crap on our raid schedule, as we were attempting our first hardmode Flame Leviathan.  We failed at getting Dwarfageddon, which we failed at again last night, and the server crashed during combat with FL.  So, last night we tried the hardmode again and I gotta say, I didn’t really tell a difference, other than we were pulling pyrite like freaking crazy.  We succeeded and everyone was awarded 2 Emblems of Conquest.  Yay!  Typical ho hum gear, no healing leather stuff that I needed (just the chest that I have, and have since upgraded).  We got the Orbital Bombardment achievement, and then moved to XT.  We tried doing the Achievement there, but when we didn’t kill the heart on the first pass, we lost the chance.  We did, however, get the speed kill on him, which was exciting to see that popup. 

Kologarn was per usual, and we moved on to Auriaya.  During the fight, our Resto Shammy says “man, we have such a great group, we just never wipe on anything, this is so great”.

Yeah.

Seriously.

So, we did one shot Auriaya, and after wiping on trash to Freya, and wiping to Freya, and wiping 4 or so times to the trash after Freya…

Yeah.

STFU.

Who jinxes a group like that?  The trash after Freya was a miscalculation on our part, actually because we had never attempted Thorim on the same night as a Freya kill and we were separating the trash too much.  As our hunter exclaimed on vent “OH GAWD THEY ARE HAVING SEPARATION ANXIETY”.  I almost fell out of my chair laughing.  We managed to get to Thorim, finally, and split off into groups.  We decided while buffing and eating a fish feast that since our attention spans seemed to be waning, it’s best if we don’t go for an achievement or hardmode on this encounter.  Except, yeah, we did.  Accidentally.  I got the achievement (so everyone else must have gotten it last Monday when I was gone) for Siffed – even though we didn’t actually finish combat, or win for that matter.

I got an achievement because we accidentally pulled too soon.  I feel so cheap.

So, that’s it.  We now move to where we can extend our raid ID and hopefully get some better attempts at the General and beyond.  I hope the patch goes smoothly *crosses fingers*

Purple Haze

A week of craziness, and it’s only Wednesday!

“I just wish my wand would auto-shoot, instead of me having to push it
each time”.  That was from our mage before the first General pull on
Monday night.  That was the culmination of a bit of ribbing he’s been
taking from us, and it was very funny when we all said “it does
auto-shoot” at the same time.

I had to miss the start and a good chunk of the 10 man run on Monday
night due to some storms that were rolling into the area.  When those
petered out, they asked me to come in so the tree replacement they had
was starting to fall asleep.  It was a good time, we downed Mimiron
for a second time, and this time with considerably less failure.  We
made progress on General trash, and actually pulled the General a few
times.  We got some nice trash epic drops on the leadup to the boss.
We got cloth shoulders that both the mage and our holy priest rolled
on, and our priest won.  Then, 2 minutes later, we got the shoulders
again and the mage passed on them - thinking they were a helm… Dork! 
He was able to pick them up though, after everyone passed on them.
We also got a tanking neck epic a couple minutes after that.  Good
times!

While I was waiting for the storms to start up Monday night, I leveled
my priesty some.  I’m making some progress there, she’s level 39 now.
My immediate goal is to hit 45 so that I can get dragged through BRD,
LBRS, and UBRS.  I’ll probably do 58-60 in Outlands and hopefully have
enough green, blue, and purple gear to get me through our Retro
Raiding of old content.  A guild name was decided on, Years Behind,
with a very appropriate Hogger mascot.  Allegedly, we’re going to even
have forums - for now we are monopolizing the Argent Dawn WoW forums.
Tonight is the first night of our next 10 man lock out period.  I
can’t wait, seriously, for the Raid ID lockout extension feature of
the upcoming patch.  We would have totally extended it to give us time
to work on the General tonight.  Soon, very soon.  There was also some
talk about when the patch hits and we do extend our lockout that we
will do 3 nights (Wed, Mon, Wed) of Ulduar and the last night (Mon)
would be breaking into the new raid dungeons.  It seems hard for me to
believe that we are ready for more raid dungeons but I guess it’s been
3 months or so since Ulduar was introduced.

I’m really trying to focus on my healing rotation, and seeing where I
can tweak things.  I currently do not have a tier set bonus so I’m
trying to keep an eye on my lifebloom usage.  So many times it ends up
being completely an overheal.  I’m also considering trying out a
Healing Touch spec, because I can’t believe that I have this totally
worthless spell that Blizzard has given us.  Naïve, eh?  I’m also
toying around with the idea of trying out Vuhdo, the UI that is
sweeping the nation.

The funny bit from our mage that I mentioned at the top made me think
of some other major changes that WoW has gone through.  From having to click a new destination at each flight master, to the time when the boats freaked out and kept dropping people through the world – and they were replaced temporarily by “boat masters”.  When the boats came back, everyone missed the instant portals of the boat masters hehe.  Running through Stranglethorn Vale and getting dismounted at each bridge, and when you had to be in a capital city if you wanted to troll the LFG channel.  It wasn’t global, and it was before the LFG system.  Ahhh the good old days haha :)

* Lil Edit: that’s what I get for posting from a different computer.  Also, I was in a pain-med haze when I finished typing up the post so apologies for rambling :D

I don’t like Mondays

There’s really not much to like about them, they start my work-week, they require that I am productive after 2 days of being unproductive. 

My brain usually doesn’t function all that well on Mondays, so here is a decent size brain dump from the WoW part of me.

Goals

With fall and winter approaching, there will be more time spent indoors so it’s more tempting to spend it all in WoW. I’m trying to come up with a list of goals for myself in game, so I can be productive while I’m in game and not feel like I have to play every second of every day. I know it seems early to think about winter, but in Wisconsin we have Fall for about a week and then have Winter for about 5 months. That is pretty much right around the corner. We usually have very cold nights/days in October, with September being on the mostly coldish side. My not so complete list of goals, so far and in no particular order, is:

• Finish Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor
• Finish Loremaster of Northrend/Wrath
• Laugh with my friends about how I’ll never finish Loremaster of Outlands/Burning Crusade
• Participate and enjoy the Retro Raids with my 60 Priest
• Oh yeah, get my priest to 60
• Finish the Hodir rep grind on Ysinnia
• Hit 10,000 gold on my bank alt (she’s at 6,500 now, the most I’ve ever had)
• Purchase the cold flying tome once the patch hits for my Hunter so I can fly around Northrend and level her mining
• Help a random new low level character get bags, potions, gear
• Attain the Seeker Achievement

Prepping for the Retro Raid

I was questing in Stranglethorn Vale over the weekend, trying to level my priest for the upcoming retro raids on Argent Dawn. I bumped into another drenai priest questing in the same area and asked if they wanted to team up. He had taken mostly holy talents, whereas I am heading up the Shadow tree. I found myself comparing my mana usage to his as we worked on quests and killed pretty much everything that was in our way. I was using a lot more mana, though I’ve always been the OMG KILL IT QUICK type. I’m finding as a shadow priest, I really need to relax a bit and let the dots work. It also helps if you, at level 34, visit your trainer both at 32 and 34. <sheepish look>

I’m almost 38 now, and absolutely giddy at the thought of picking up shadowform at 40. I’ve had to impose on a few friends to run me through some instances for xp and gear, and it looks like I’ll have to continue to do that. I wish that this priest was on a 2^nd account, well and that first I had a 2^nd account, and that I could power level her myself. Many of the people in the retro raid guild have offered help though. It’s strange, wearing a different guild tag than House Stalwart, and with the actual blessing of my guild leader. Guild chat was considerably more quiet over the weekend, being a much smaller guild and there was really only me and maybe one other person on at a time. I have other chat channels but none are as chatty as Stalwart guild chat.

Waxing nostalgic

During a recent trip through BRD, I was reminded of the time way back in Classic WoW days when 5 of us attempted BRD - at level - with 3 hunters and 2 rogues. “Our pets will tank” the hunters so confidently reassured us rogues. Most of the run is lost to the wasteland of my brain, but I distinctly remember NOT doing the ring of law and none of us had the key yet so we headed across the crowded balcony … when the crowd turned on us. Feign, feign, vanish, vanish, feign. We barely dared to breathe. “Now what?” <twitch> None of us moved, until finally we couldn’t figure any other way out of it.

We laughed the entire way back from the graveyard about that one.

I had played my rogue to 60 when, because of some issues with WoW and my network card, I stopped playing. I played other games, and no games, during my 6 month break and when I returned to WoW I rejoined my friends and family to start kicking it around in some dungeons. I met up with them at Scholomance and I was the second to arrive. So sitting there, acting all cute cuz I’m a female gnome, my friend (who was raiding MC at the time) says “your gear is shit”. Man, talk about getting kicked down a few (thousand) notches. “We will fix that”, he says. So everyone gets there and we head in. I managed to die several thousand times, and picked up a dagger off the gargoyle boss. I died no fewer than 5 times. I think I was stunned by the amazing display of “huntering” by my friend who said my gear was shit. He solod the green cloud room, as well as the zombie room. He could have solo’d the whole freaking dungeon, honestly.

I thought to myself, I want that. I want to be able to do THAT.  I was never able to do that at 60 in Scholo on either my rogue or my hunter, but damn if I can’t tear shit up as a Boomkin :D  I was playing with a friend of mine and looked at her gear.  My first thought was “your gear is shit” but I held my tongue.  Instead, I took her on a shopping trip to the Auction House.  There are players that play the game to have fun, and there are players who play the game to be competitive.  She plays to have fun.  She makes “pew” noises when she is in combat.  I play to be competitive.  I love the Achievements and doing various silly things in game, but in the end, I like having the gear and being able to destroy things when I want to.

People you play with, and people you have to play with

I think it’s hilarious when I’m watching one of my chat channels and I have a hard time following what is going on - only to later realize it’s because I have one of the people on /ignore. There are 2 folks that I honestly do not like that raid on the 25 man that I occasionally back up heal for, and they are constantly blabbing in one channel or another. I find them both to be huge know-it-alls and I hate that trait more than anything. Get this, one of these royal asses actually gets on our vent during our 10 man runs and makes suggestions for strategies if we are having problems. You know, cuz he’s not actually IN THE RAID or IN THE INSTANCE so he’s really helpful. And he only talks to the “officers” of the raid, on a separate keybind so I see his light on on my overlay but can’t hear anything. I think it is so insanely disrespectful, everything he does. I have him on ignore, and now on mute on vent so I never have to hear him again.

The other person that I just don’t like just acts like he knows everything. Or thinks he does. He always has an opinion, or a comment. And if he doesn’t personally know, then he says “well in my wife’s raid…”. Thankfully, I don’t actually have to listen to him because he is also muted on vent and on ignore. The funny thing is he used to not be this annoying. Both of these guys were in the raid group that I was in during classic WoW, doing BWL and such. Only the first was an asshole knowitall back then, the 2^nd one has just developed into an asshole. He was “my warrior” that I would pull to, as a Hunter. We kept the same warrior/tank assignments for pulls throughout the raid and from week to week. So we would frequently chat about stuff while waiting for the other 38 people to be ready. This one was tricky though, because he is a part-time healer and if I had him muted or on ignore, it might affect what was going on. Luckily, our healing officer knows that most of us think this guy is an asshole so we all mute him and our officer knows that we just listen to her for guidance, assignments, etc.

Ya know, there are just some people that I just immediately like. They are funny, generally helpful to other people, can theorycraft but don’t drone on endlessly about it, they can bullshit on vent but can stop on a dime when it’s time to concentrate on the job at hand. By the same token, there are people that I just can’t stand to be around. It’s not that they are as bad as the 2 know-it-alls, they just rub me the wrong way. Granted, I can be high maintenance and kind of a pain in the ass at times myself, but it’s hard when the people I can’t stand are friends with people that I like. I think I need to either stop playing games in the “massively multiplayer” genre, or just tolerate more people.

Embracing change

Icecrown

Toying around with the Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor Loremaster feats has made me realize that my big goal has to include me getting allllll the Loremaster achievements giving me one big fat Loremaster achievement with title and tabard.  I’ve been trying to deny this.

I open my achievements panel and flip to Quests. I averted my eyes from the glaring hole that is Burning Crusade quests and looked over the Wrath section – the only one not completed is… Icecrown. 3/140. Three. I may as well, everyone bitches about this zone so I may as well just get it over with as quickly as possible. Hmmm I’m now just Friendly with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, I’ll run and grab the tabard quick. Or not. Since the tabard vendor is phased. SKHLGIKHGLHKSDJLFJlkjgflkjghlkghlghkljsflkjfjphasing.

Fine. Argent Vanguard it is. I head to camp and there’s a handful of quests. I work on those, fly clear across the zone, fly back, oh wait, fly back there again. I can’t imagine doing this without epic flying. I find myself flying so much that in order to keep it interesting, I indulge in some druid fun - playing chicken with the ground. Fly as hiiiiiiiigh as I dare, then drop flight form and fall…fall.. and fall until I can’t take it anymore and pop flight form again just before squishing on the ground. Ahh I love being a druid. God help me if I ever play another class with flight.

Hm, these Shadow Vault quests are kinda fun. Hmm you want me to duel some combatants!? YES I WILL! Keeping in mind that I keep about 18 useless quests that are somewhere between accepting and completing, I really only have about 7 spaces for active quests. Being this high maintenance is tiring sometimes. Burn banners! Yes, I can do that. Whee! I’m catching things on fire, I’m sticking banners in corpses… and before I know it, I’ve burned 2 hours and am sitting at 40/140 quests. I also made about 900g in that time. I AM LOVING ICECROWN. 

It’s so strange to me, I hate/d Burning Crusade with a well, Burning passion. I hated the newness, the strangeness, the change. I love Northrend. Maybe I’m just in a better spot to accept change in my real life, more flexible (my husband would disagree), who knows. But I am loving each zone! I think the only zone I’m not gaga over is Howling Fjord. I went back after leveling to 80 and finished up HFjord anyway but it’s not as interesting to me as the other zones. But Borean Tundra was so interesting, maybe it’s because I love the snow and cold weather. I’m glad I leveled there and just let the quests take me to the next zone up.

Ok, where was I? Druid chicken? No, that’s right - Icecrown. I can’t wait to steal away time this weekend and work on more quests. I’m literally in awe of some of the quests - and the way the zone changes. I finished up the quests for Crusader’s Pinnacle and am loving all of the changes. Yes, I’m LOVING CHANGE.

Retro Raiding, part 2

So I had previously mentioned a notion on the server about locking toons at level 60 when the patch hits and doing all the raids at level. Well, it’s looking more and more like a reality. As much as I’d like to take the easy route and play my rogue who is sitting at 60, I am just not a rogue anymore. I’m a healer. I’m a druid healer, but at the very least I’m a healer. My dwarf priest is 70, and obviously too high to participate in the 60 content. I have a dreanei priest at level 30 and I’m a crazy person but I’m leveling her to 60, hopefully in time for the patch. She is also my only enchanter so I’m kind of excited about leveling her. Flynch has been shelved for the time being in favor of getting my closest in level healer to 60 in time. A friend ran me through Uldamann last night and got me 1 level in about 25 minutes. I also got a few blues to DE (yay!) and a ring that I’ll eventually be able to equip.

Ulduar 10

Our 10 man group is still doing very well. Last night we made several attempts on Mimiron. We had our first person die to the bomb-frogger on the way, and even though we had a bunch of tweaks to make (we kept losing the MT during phase 1, people clipping the laser barrage, etc.) and completely learning phase 4, we were able to pull out a win, Stalwart style. During the evening, I lost both rolls on Druid tier token items - the helm and the shoulders. I did, however, win the Shoulderguards of Assimilation. Yay! Leather healy stuffs! The Mimiron win was so gratifying because we worked so hard and it required such teamwork. I hope they do well on Wednesday night, due to some RL issues I have to miss the raid.

Achievement Updates

I was able to finish my last cooking daily - EVER (I hope) - on Saturday and receive my Chef’s Hat. I have to say, I don’t notice any cooking speed increase. Is that on an upcoming patch and I assumed it was already live? Either way, it’s pretty silly to wear your Chef’s Hat when you’re questing in Icecrown. Oops. I should make better use of the Equipment Manager feature, eh?   I hope at some point they make a reason to do the cooking daily again.  I’m missing some outland recipes from those dailies.

My mini lan party for my birthday was a good time - we ran BRD and I got the achievement, finally haha. It was a good time all around, I had 3 50ish toons in tow and everyone got some good xp and good drops. One of the 3 was a good friend of my husband’s and I was pretty happy that we got him his very first epic drop (that he’s too low to use yet haha).

Last night during our 10 man, we also got the Don’t Stand in the Lightning achievement, which was a nice surprise. I think those are my favorite achievements - the ones you don’t expect : ) The mimiron kill also gave me The Keepers of Ulduar achievement.

All in all - a great weekend for me for achievements and having fun with real life friends in the game. Now to put my nose to the grindstone and get my baby priesty to 60. And soon.