More changes.

On a sidenote: I felt that the black background was getting a bit too... Depressing? So, I decided to change the layout a bit. A light yellow, a different font, and a screenshot of my lovely druid, flapping about in Hellfire Peninsula as a header pic. Kind of wish I knew how to move the title text down to the bottom of the picture, though... Will have to research that.

Edit: Found it, and it looks a lot better! This place had the solution.

Changes.

I was endlessly excited about the 3.0.2 patch, and ever since it finally arrived I've been on a constant sugar high :D Now, when it's been with us for a while, I think I'm starting to get back to some kind of "normal" state. A few major, and many minor achievements have been completed:

• 50 mini pets -> Stinker
• 50 mounts -> Albino Drake
• Exalted with all 5 alliance factions -> Ambassador title
• Exploration of all pre-TBC and TBC zones (Which will lead to the Explorer title when Northrend has been fully... Well, explored.)
• Fallind 65 yards without dying (Scryer's tier in Shattrath is a hot tip, from the balcony to the left of the elevator, when facing the center of the city)
• And a whole bunch more...

Of course, I have to add a screenshot of my druid and her new, smelly friend:

(Yeah, yeah, it could be a lot more exciting, with fireworks and hordes of dancing gnomes, but this is what I have, OK? Also, skunks rock.)

It's been lots and lots of fun, and the general atmosphere on the server is all "SPRING BREAK!!! WOOOOOH!!!!", which is such a relief after the rather high strung era of be.imba-scores and general e-peen-ing that's been going on ever since the last batch of badge gear came out. Hardcore raiders spend their afternoons in Goldshire, putting out fires and dueling, while wearing RP-greys and pumpkins.

My druid is one (1!) silly achievement away from getting the "the Hallowed"-title - all she needs is a Sinister Squashling and a Hallowed Helm (and the upcoming removal of the 20 mask achievement from the requirement), but the few times she's killed the Horseman she's been outrolled on both helm and Squashling, and she's not having any luck at all with the trick-or-treating... I'll try to run a few pug's, though - hopefully a lot of people have those two items already, are only after the mount, and are willing to take me on just because I can summon the boss. Honestly, I'd be willing to pass on the mount just to be able to get the two drops I need for the title. It is a sweet mount though, and in a perfect gaming world I'd have all three :D

What bothers me the most is that three of my alts, low-level, seldom played ones, have gotten helm+pet through trick-or-treating, seven others (yes, I have *that* many characters) have gotten the pet, and five have the helm, while neither my main - my beloved druid - nor my planned primary alt - the mage - have either one. I bet the drop rates of these items are higher for lowbies :( If for nothing else, just to annoy high level casuals like myself.

Anyway, after a couple(?) of weeks with the new patch, I'm mighty pleased. The new achievement system really speaks to the old Pokémon-player in me (Charizard was cool), which is both a blessing and a curse - it leaves me with tons of stuff to "complete", but not getting certain things completed (such as the Squashling+Helm situation) drives me crazy.

I spent the weekend at my parent's house, with no internet (gasp!), and even though I had a number of other reasons for needing to get away for a bit, the time out from WoW was a welcome one. I still really, really want that title, but other than that, I'm going to take it easy for a while, i.e. no hardcore farming - buying enough mounts to get to 50 took quite a bit of dailies... The occasional daily, yes, but since one can't use flying mounts in Northrend in the beginning, I'm not really in a rush to get epic flying for the mage, and I don't think I have a lot more to spend cash on, except for raising profession skill caps, paying trainers, and buying fancy little things that may very well be available in the new continent. But that won't be until after the 13th of November!

So, my plans for the next couple of weeks include a lot more RL than WoW. Studies have been piling up at an alarming rate, and I have to do something about it. At the end of January next year, I'm hoping to start a new era in my life - one without studies! It's all I've ever done, so it scares the crap out of me, but finding a job, moving, and having a real income seems like heaven, and has done so for a long time. This does in no way mean I'm quitting WoW, though :) Just that there'll be a lot of RL-changes, which will lead to a much happier player!

Finally!

About 20 minutes ago, the Background Downloader finally started working again. For some unknown reason it's been stuck on 63% and "tracker is not responding" ever since the third and last part of the upcoming patch was released for downloading, but now it has increased to 65%, and the "Downloader" is even stating an approximate amount of time needed for the remaining download. OK, the amount of time varies between 4 and 8 hours, but an amount is an amount!

Boring: Will probably have to spend some time this evening frying pancakes. Had sushi for dinner yesterday, and considering my limited finances, that was this month's take out. That sushi was gooood, though. So worth it. Anyway, off to book the laundry room, and to buy eggs and milk.

Short-term Plans.

Since I play on a European server, I won't get to enjoy the hassle of "o-shit-the-patch-is-still-buggy"-downtime until tomorrow, so I've been making (very loose) plans for the evening:

• Herb gathering. Inscription will be introduced, and as much as I love my druid's alchemy trinket, she's switching from alchemy to inscription. (While I keep my fingers crossed she'll be able to get a trinket less embarassing than her old Glowing Crystal Insignia.) I'll still have the rogue to make pots/elixirs/transmutes.
  
• Dailies for a bit of cash. Since I'm going for both the 50 mounts, and the 50 mini pets for the achievements, I'm going to try and get those together asap (regardless of when the achievements are actually introduced), now that they wont take up any space in my inventory.
• Getting the horde mini pets. I think I'll fire up my undead mage to do a bit of Booty Bay AH trading with snakes and whatnot. Good thing, that - getting her past 20, so she can teleport around a bit.
  

Since the amount of Azeroth herbs needed is rather huge, I think that's gonna have to be it. May have to temporarily make one of my alts into a herb mule, though, since my main banker is filling up, and the guildbank only has one tab.

Before dinner.

I'm a bit bored this Friday night, but that's OK. Waiting for my dinner to be ready, can't decide what to watch while eating it, can't decide what character to play later tonight - am I going to spend the whole night on my druid, or should I rush through the fishing+cooking dailies, and level my priest? Probably the latter, at least if I'm going to be somewhere close to 70 on her in mid-november. And, I'll probably watch some Buffy-episode while having dinner, unless there is something new and exciting on TV (as if).

So, why the boredom? Well, I guess it's the aftermath of a lot of reputaion grinding - all of the Alliance capitals, Netherwing, and also checking the AH for Coilfang Armaments - but I think I'm done with that for the time being. I think I'll recover soon enough, though - moonkin is the only way to go :)

Ah, my dinner seems to be ready - fish and mashed potatoes - yay!

On a slightly different note...

...I really should log on to the beta more often - every time I do so, there are at least three patches to download before I can actually log on. Oh, well, I guess this gives me a bit of time to work on that exotic, new thing called "real life".

Decisions, decisions...

As everyone and their mother know, the new expansion will be here in 1 month and a few days, and it has the potential of changing one's gameplay a lot. Since some time during the spring, I have had all my characters (a respectable amount, I might add, considering they're all on the same server) stationed in a closed guild, i.e. a guild started by me and a close friend, intended to serve as an alt-guild, where the two of us have exclusive and unrestricted access to the guildbank. Really convenient when I want to send stuff between characters on my two different accounts, or when I want to send stuff to him.

He picked the name, I picked the tabard, and I've enjoyed countless hours of alt leveling, without getting bugged by some nab whispering "join my guild plz xroads raid every week!!!11", or even better "wanna join my guild? its a hunter/shaman/draenei only guild".

But now, with WotLK around the corner, I've started looking around a bit. There are a few guilds on my server that seem really nice, that seem to have the kind of plans for the expansion that would suit me very well. "Casually aiming at heroics and 10-mans" - works for me. Also, I've been talking with a friend from my old guild a bit lately, and I'm playing with the thought of asking for a social spot in her guild, which also happens to be the guild where the other people I loved from my old guild are members. They've been doing quite a bit of 25-man content lately, though, so I don't know if that means I'd be sidelined entirely in the expansion. I miss them all a lot, though, and since I'm trying to get my so-called "real life" going, I think I'd be very OK with not being booked for a lot of raids. Chatting while I do dailies and level fishing, and some heroics every now and then - that would be great.

Naturally, I wouldn't be moving all my characters to this other guild, partly because i don't want to come off as insane, but mostly because I tend to be a bit shifty when it comes to leveling alts. I have a gnome rogue at 42, and a nelf priest at 51, and while I spent a lot of time leveling them in the past, I have no idea if I'll ever level them to cap. Also, I've leveled characters to 70, just to discover they aren't too much fun (read: hunter + rogue). So, the plan would be to move the druid, and possibly one or two others, probably my mage (66), and the human priest (44 atm), and keep the others in the alt-guild. Provided, of course, that I'll still love the mage in 4 levels, and the priest in 26 levels.

Anyway, these are still just thoughts, and I don't know if I'll be putting them into action. A change would be good, though, and getting into a "real" guild again could be a great change.

While I'm starving.

Well, not "third world"-starving, more like "I really should get some water boiling for the pasta, so I can eat soon"-starving.

Anyway. I discovered that the Arctic Grizzly Cub will not be tameable in WotLK, so my hunter will sadly not be accompanied by a cuddly, smiling, lethal friend... :(

I've managed to reach exalted status with Darnassus, Stormwind and Exodar on my druid, and Gnomeregan Exiles and Ironforge are not too far away either, so Ambassador-title + Albino drake, here I come! :D (I'm planning to spend the afternoon in Uldaman, as soon as I've looked up the available quests.)

This close to the expansion it may seem stupid to start leveling a brand new character, instead of trying to bring the higher leveled ones to 70, but the thought of a female gnome warrior has always been sitting in the back of my head. However, I think I'll try and do all the other stuff first, such as getting pvp gear for the druid, leveling shaman+mage+priest, and maybe even the pally, and then I might go for the tiny, pink power puffed girl with big weapons. I'll make a gnome Death Knight when WotLK comes either way.

And now it's time to actually make that lunch... I've had the same lunch for several days: Pasta + swedish meatballs. May seem boring, but why change a winning concept?