Druid in Denial

That Thing.

2010-02-23T16:59:00.006+01:00

I was about to publish a post on the subject of healers getting the blame for everything that goes wrong in every group situation, ever, but then I got annoyed with myself and the amount of QQ I can pull together in a long and boring text, so I won't.

However, I do wish some of the dps-ers I've played with in the past few weeks could get into their lovely, adorable heads that sometimes higher dps is the solution, and maybe they should go read up and gear up (properly - enchant your stuff, and no 71/0/0 specs -.-) before they start nagging about wanting to try Halls of Reflection again. Bite me.

OK, off to level my shaman for a bit - strangest thing, once I specced her back into elemental, she was suddenly fun again! (Enhancement smells, and should never bother my sweet draenei again.)

(And ooh, I had to disable Altoholic after a while - it was too heavy for my dear old PC after all, and using portals and entering instances started taking forever - but I'm pretty sure I'll survive :P)

Old Habits, New Addons.

2010-02-18T18:47:00.005+01:00

It's usually during the in game holidays that I seriously start questioning my own sanity. The meta achievements are rarely difficult, but usually quite time consuming - RNG and travel comes to mind - and I'm pretty sure I vowed to only do the seasonal metas on my main character a while ago. But then I ran UK on my druid alt, and won this. I can't just not complete the rest, now can I? So yeah, I did the whole thing twice - my priest finished first, and my druid pitied her last fool late last night. Needless to say, I'm a bit fed up with the drop rate of Lovely Charms...

The other day MMO Champion posted a review of the addon Altoholic. I've heard about it before, and have considered trying it out, but haven't - until yesterday. I've been worried that it would take up a lot of memory, that it would be buggy, and have a lot of stuff I don't really need, but yeah, now I'm trying it out.

So far it's really good - it saves a lot of logging in and out if I want to see whether a profession cooldown has run out, if a certain character knows a particular pattern, or if that character owns a certain mini pet. While it does take up a bit of memory, it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and I haven't experienced any bugs so far. The only thing I have to complain about, is that I'd like a better explanation of how to use the addon with multiple accounts. I've kind of gotten it to work, but both a more in-depth walkthrough of the whole process, and information on whether any future maintenance is needed, would be much appreciated.

OK, I'm off to get some food, and then I'm signed up for some fun in Ulduar :)

Hi Number 4!

2010-02-01T13:08:00.003+01:00

Late last night, at about 00.56 local time, my baby druid hit 80! Since she was put on ice for a while, there was a lot of rested XP, and after reaching 77 (and hence being able to fly again) things sped up considerably. As I've once again managed to get a character to 80 almost exclusively by questing (though she did run through both UK and Nexus a little while ago), I now have a bit of gearing up to look forward to. And yeah, a bit of L2P as well :D

Healing on her is something I've enjoyed so far, and I'm looking forward to doing more of that - healing, in general, has turned out to be more fun than I expected back when I decided to make my priest my new "main". Having (and playing) a level 80 tree was my original plan with this particular character, and while a newly dinged 80 isn't exactly all that, it's a damn good start!

Now I just have to try and get her into some dungeons, and maybe she'll be cool enough to get a spot in one of the Naxx 10-runs for alts and new level 80s I've heard talk about in guild chat :)

Branching Out... (heehee)

2010-01-29T15:29:00.010+01:00

The snow that fell before Christmas is still here, and even more has fallen since. I don't think we've had a winter like this in "my" part of Sweden for atleast twenty years, and while it's very pretty...
...after more than a month of car doors frozen shut, a runny nose, and way too much snow, I want to pick up and move to Hawai'i.

While I haven't been able to go swimming or go out for a run lately, I've had plenty of time to play WoW. I've worked a lot on my priest - gearwise and skillwise - and I've found myself in instances more often than not in the past few weeks. In fact, I've started to feel confident enough in my healing abilities (and finally found the inspiration) to level that healer alt! That's right, my young druid is finally getting some attention!

She happens to be on an account with no level 80 characters, so last night, when she hit 77, was a big one. I've really missed flight form - on her, since she came to Northrend, and on all the non-druid characters I play - and as soon as I'd bought her Cold Weather Flying, I took her out for almost half an hour of just soaring. She doesn't have her epic flying skill yet, but it's definitely in the cards. Partly because I've had her pick up herbalism instead of tailoring (Having someone steal my herbs simply because they fly faster? We can't have that!), and partly because the epic flight form is sooo gorgeous :)

I've spent a bit of gold in the AH during the past week, picking up a few pieces of caster leather. While I'm fairly prepared for the difference in play style between my priest and my druid - reactive vs preventive, looking all saintly vs being a funky tree - I think the difference in gear level might be a bit overwhelming. Not that I've been doing any kind of hard core raiding on my priest, but given a bit of time, you can put together a pretty good outfit these days, simply by running heroics and doing the occasional weekly raid quest. This also means, of course, that gearing up a new level 80 can be a lot smoother than it used to be. Still, though - I'm trying to get my hands on as many iLevel 187-200 pieces as I can, and I'm hoping to get some lucky drops in normal dungeons - I'm definitely not prepared to start doing level 80 dungeons in the level 70-75 quested greens she's wearing now!

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to giving druid healing another try. Now, however, I'm off to go through my in game finances - it's quite possible there'll be some swift flying tonight :)

No You're Not!

2010-01-11T11:58:00.004+01:00

Last night I and three guildies decided to do random heroics, and as we were short a tank, we got PuG ones. My expectations were probably a bit low, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good the two tanks I got to play with were. I also got a bit of proof for something I had already suspected for some time: A lot of the people who sport the "the Patient"-title really should reconsider!

The second tank - a gnome death knight in Ahn'kahet - was obviously skilled and geared, but spent the entire run about 20 yards ahead of the healer (me), and wouldn't answer to questions in party chat. It went quite smooth - I didn't have any mana issues, could keep everyone up without trouble, and mobs went down fast enough - but the run was very much an x emblems/hour type of affair for the tank. It's not that I expect a PuG to sit down for tea and biscuits after every boss (although that could be nice too :D) - a fast, efficient run is often great - but I was quite amazed by the blazing speed at which we got to the last boss.

I still wonder whether the tank choosing to call her-/himself "the Patient" was an act of irony.

Happy New Year! (Better Late than Never, Right?)

2010-01-01T18:30:00.007+01:00

Like many others, I've been quite absorbed by the holidays lately - there's been (and still is) a lot of snow, and the temperatures have dipped down to -24 Celsius a couple of times, so we're having a "proper" winter this time around! I hope you've had a nice Christmas and a lovely New Year's, and that 2010 will be a good one for all of us!

I've had time to continue enjoying the features of patch 3.3 - I'm still in love with the dungeon finder, in spite of the occasional bad PuG, and every now and then we've grouped up within the guild, and done chain-runs of random heroics. I have yet to make it through Halls of Reflection on heroic - those waves before and between the first two bosses are just incredibly frustrating - but I'm getting closer to completing my Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement, nice loot has come my way, and I've actually managed to get enough emblems of triumph to buy a few pieces of gear.

I've really gotten into the healing thing lately, and I'm getting more confident while doing it - a great feeling - but yesterday had its ups and downs. When I logged on for the evening, around 9pm, a full guild group was already heading off into a random heroic, and as people were busy leveling alts, pvp-ing or doing something else, I signed up for PuG-ing normal Pit of Saron. I'm very interested in replacing my priest's bracers with the ones that drop from Ick, since it would mean I can hold off on buying the really good and really expensinve ones a little while longer.

Anyway. The PuG went well, but after the last boss was down I started thinking (oh yeah), and after checking on Wowhead I found out that while me continuing to heal with the Overlord's Brand on me doesn't hurt any of my fellow party members, it does in fact heal the boss. The thing is, I use the Deadly Boss Mods addon to keep track of special debuffs, who's got mark of death/doom/boogies on them and all that, and DBM just says "Stop DPS" when the brand is on me, so I've drawn the conclusion that me throwing shiny light on the tank isn't included there. Well, I guess this shows that you shouldn't rely blindly on your addons, and that it might be a good idea to look up what certain spells actually do. The problem is, it seems to me that the boss insists on casting Forceful Smash almost immediately after casting the Brand, and that's when I really, really want to heal the tank... I suppose I'll just have to keep that PoM on cooldown, and my fingers crossed.

A little bit later in the evening I got into a guild run for a random heroic, and after picking up our emblems in VH, our lovely guildmaster organised us in a quick run to complete this week's raid quest. I've participated in killing Noth the Plaguebringer once before, but that was a couple of months ago, and at the time I was mostly having trouble keeping myself alive, so last night's encounter was almost a first :D After getting him down, we went upstairs and killed Sapphiron, and getting a fancy achievement at the same time. So, we were on a roll, and continued onward, into Kel'Thuzad's room. OK, I've never even read about this guy, and I was getting really tired, so when the other healer, a significantly more experienced druid, told me I didn't have to heal ****i, that he would handle that, I said "OK :)", and didn't think too much about it. Well, I did think it was a bit weird, a hunter having his own healer - I mean, while explaining the fight no-one had said anything about focus being on anyone except tank and offtank - but who am I to question these things? We didn't down Kel'Thuzad last night, for several reasons: People were there on slightly lesser geared alts, due to being saved on their mains; some people didn't have a range checking addon, so the frost blast-thingie was chained; we were only two healers, and while we're both overgeared for Naxxramas, I'm not familiar with the place, and I still have a lot to learn.

And yeah, I'm quite sure our lovely druid said **i, the name of the main tank, instead of ****i, the name of our chatty hunter, but my tired mind was easily convinced, and the rather similar names got mixed up. I do hope the hunter doesn't think I hate him, and I hope the druid doesn't think I'm amazingly stupid >.<

After having had a rather long break from druiding, the thoughts of branches, feathers and claws are starting to find their way back into the WoW-part of my mind again, and I've started playing my younger night elf druid a bit. Nothing serious - just a few quests here, some seasonal stuff there - but she might end up being my healing alt. I healed on my old druid for a while, but back then it was all about having lots of spellpower and keeping three stacks of lifebloom rolling, and it would be fun and interesting to learn to heal as a druid, after having gotten some experience as a priest. Anyway, I'll see what happens - either way, I'm planning to re-level herbalism on said younger druid, and thereby removing her tailoring skill. I don't like farming, but she's an alchemist, the prices on herbs have gone crazy, and I already have 450 in tailoring on my priest.

OK, I think I'll be off to see a guild officer about getting yet another alt guilded :)

The Green Dot is Your Friend.

2009-12-14T15:17:00.003+01:00

Like many others, I've been more or less swept away by patch 3.3. Most of the time during the past couple of years I've stayed away from pugs (leading to a lot of alone-time while unguilded, yes), probably for the same reasons as many others - I don't like surprises along the lines of "the tank is a cloth wearing moonkin" or "fireball is great for pulling lulz", and I don't like spending two hours trying to get a group together, only to have it fall apart before it even gets to the instance.
But now, now we have the dungeon finder.

On Wednesday, when the patch hit European servers, I put on my holy scrubs, opened the dungeon finder, and signed up for healing Forge of Souls. Within 10 seconds I was standing next to four other players, all from different servers, and none of us had been through the place before. It went very smooth - we ended up doing all three dungeons - and I got several nice upgrades :) An annoying detail was, of course, the (now fixed) bug at the end of Halls of Reflection. Me and the tankadin disconnected when trying to run up the ramp, and then we fell down below :( Luckily, we had a warlock in the group, and she and the two other dps managed to summon us back up, and as someone had heard of Levitate fixing the bug temporarily, we finally managed to get our loot.

My guild has three raid nights every other week, and as last Thursday was one of them, the evening was a pug-free one for me. The objective of the very first weekly raid quest was to kill Razorscale, and that was what we had our sight set on. Up until then, I had never seen her killed - only wiped to her over and over - but we were on something of a roll, and our lovely team cleared The Siege area, and also took down Kologarn. Most of this had been done before by the guild, but Ignis was a first. Quite a few nice achievements that evening!

After that night, however, it seemed we didn't have a whole lot of spirit left, and that, combined with a few people not feeling too hot, led to us wiping repeatedly on Malygos on Friday. We decided on doing a one-boss, no trash encounter, but a lot of us weren't really feeling up for it, and in the end we simply lacked the coordination. Next time, though, next time!

Now, back to the dungeon finder: Yesterday I decided to try and get Lockdown!, and hence I queued up for Violet Hold heroic. Now, it wasn't exactly hard finding a group for that place before 3.3, but if the new dungeons had been launched without the dungeon finder having been implemented at the same time, I'm sure it would've been almost impossible to find a decent group for VH hc. Well, I could have talked some guildies into running it with me - three emblems for very little work and all that - but sometimes that's not an option - people can be busy, not online and so on. Anyway, it wasn't as fast as trying to get into one of the new instances, but within a couple of minutes, I was in a group, and three bosses later I was back in Stormwind AH. The point here is, all of the others had ended up in VH by choosing to do a random heroic, meaning that as long as people use the random dungeon option, even the least popular dungeons will end up being played. Maybe I'll even give Oculus a try one of these days :)

I don't think the dungeon finder tool by some kind of magic has made players nicer, but I'm positive that less waiting makes people behave a little bit better, leaves them with a little more patience. My experiences have so far been pleasant, and the horror stories I've heard from guildies haven't been that horrible. Time will tell if things stay good, I suppose.

Zuramat the Obliterator is still keeping me from getting the achievement, though - I never thought I'd say this, but I think I'll be pugging again tonight :)

If I don't get to ride in a van, it's simply not worth it.

2009-11-25T11:30:00.006+01:00

Azeroth is a crazy place this week - turkey fever all over - and we're all running around looking like night elf mohawks:

Hmm. Yeah, yeah, Mr T is awesome, and of course I pity the fool, but I'm going to be incredibly relieved when this event is over. Seriously.

The night elf mohawk is just a minor thing, though, at least compared to the ongoing Pilgrim's Bounty holiday. I stayed up late last Saturday, after getting the adorable new pet, to check out the new, Thanksgiving-themed event. As I was really, really tired, I couldn't figure out how the tables worked, and neither could anyone else, so I ended up logging off to get some sleep.

After checking out a guide on Sunday, things went smoothly. A bit of traveling was involved, but nothing like during the Lunar Festival or the Midsummer Fire Festival, and the PvP achievement very much agreed with me - it's basically just about being there - no skill, gear, or understanding premades is required (I'm giving this one another try next year, though - that proto-drake is too pretty to give up on!).

I don't think it's a big surprise that the hardest thing was finding un-turkeyed rogues, but people have been bringing a lot of level 1 alts to Dalaran during the past couple of days, so even that one was fairly easy. Anyway, yesterday I got the title and the pet, which is all kinds of win! :)

I've been working on having only one main character during the fall - Delinda, my priest - and I think I'm making progress! Treating several characters as mains takes a lot of time and energy, and trying to complete holiday achievements on four or five characters was doing my head in, so I try to do things differently these days. If an event consists of "log on to get a pet + achievement" - you can count on me to do it on every alt - but if it takes more than five minutes, I'm only doing it on Delinda. Crazy as it sounds, this rule has been (and still is) hard to remember, and to live by, and I've had to mentally slap myself several times for starting to do holiday achievements on an alt.

So, this Christmas I'll be logging on to every single alt, just to get as many mini pets as possible, but only one will be a Merrymaker :P

Tonight I intend to continue to take advantage of the nice holiday buff: Spirit of Sharing. In case you've missed it, you get it from eating 5 of each dish at any bountiful table. Everyone gets 1 hour of the human racial, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the buff actually stacks with said racial! If you need me, I'll be in Nagrand, killing ogres.

Building A New Main.

2009-11-16T12:55:00.005+01:00

I've spent the past few weeks doing a lot of new things, but also a lot of old things. It's been roughly a month since I first participated in a raid on Naxxramas - clearing the Arachnind Quarter - and about two and a half weeks later we cleared the Plague Quarter. Yes, a lot of the others had done the whole thing a zillion times before; no, I didn't survive the dance on Heigan, but ooooh, it was fun, and I learned a lot. And got some nice loot :)

However, when the guild advertised the regular Ulduar raid on the forums, I felt like too much of a scrub to sign up, and since those runs have seemed to fill up quickly in the past, I didn't feel obligated to do so. Then raid night came, they were lacking a healer, and since I was there, and actually had read up on the first few bosses, I got to go to Ulduar! Now, this isn't really news to anyone, but that place is huge!!! And there are shiny things, and a boss who does a bit of stretching while you're fighting trash, and a dragon (who one of the officers kept calling Moroes o.O) who kicked our butt all night long last Friday (the 13th - need I say more? Eh? Eh?). They cleared the bosses up to and including Kologarn on Saturday, though, while I had some real life to catch up on: TV and pizza is not to be underestimated :)

As I said, I've been doing a lot of new things, and the trips to Naxx and Ulduar are just that, along with a few trips into 5-mans, but there have been old things as well. One issue I'm having with the "new main"-thing is the fact that I've done a lot of things on my druid that I haven't (yet) on my priest. Some things I don't really plan to do again - Outland dungeons is one example, even though I wouldn't say no if the opportunity presented itself - some things I simply can't do again (Spirit of Competition and Clockwork Rocket Bot - I'm looking at you!) and then there are things I very much want to do.

The Outland "mount factions" is one major project I'm working on - still only honored with Kurenai, friendly with Sha'tari Skyguard, and only just started working on the Netherwing attunement questline. When looking up Ogri'la on WoWhead I was pleasantly surprised: Apparently you no longer have to go through the pain of killing all those sons of Gruul in order to get to do dailies for Ogri'la. You just fly up there and talk to them. Of course, if you want to become Queen or King of the Ogres, and neutral with all the other ogres in Blade's Edge, you still need to do the questline. I'm mainly interested in speeding up the rep grind to get Del access to more mounts and an awesome little pet, though, so making her Queen of the Ogres can wait a while.

There are a few things I'm planning, that I haven't done before, on any character. The big one is *drumroll* getting the Loremaster achievement! I've probably done most of the quests before, Alliance-side, but not all on the same character. There are also quests I haven't done at all, and with Cataclysm changing everything sometime next year(?), I really want to see things before they're gone.

As I've written earlier in this post, I've been doing a bit of healing. It's a lot of fun, and I have fallen hard for the priest class - my only problem is the game's lack of triple-spec :D Holy is lovely - Circle of Healing makes me all warm and fuzzy inside - and questing as shadow is the breeziest of breezes. But a couple of weeks ago I switched my shadow spec for discipline, and ooooh, do I want to learn it! Shiny, shiny bubbles and lazers? Yes, please! The problem is, I want to keep my holy spec, since it's awesome, and since I've so far only managed to grasp about 1% of it's versatility, and at the same time I still have a lot of the "harder" quests left to do in Northrend (and Outland), so getting rid of the shadow spec doesn't really work either. Hence, my plan is to do the high-level parts of Loremaster first, then trade in my face melting-skills for some bubbly ones.

OK, off to check some auctions, and then I'll try and get to work on that questing-project :)

Another Time, Another Place.

2009-10-13T15:48:00.004+02:00

Fall is definitely here - the leaves are turning, it's getting colder, and people who have been on a break are returning to Azeroth. Well, not all of them. Some are waiting for Cataclysm, some have decided that they're done with WoW. One thing's for certain, though: I'm not done.

I'm madly in love with my new guild, I'm enjoying the (for me) rather new concept of focusing on one character at a time, and I'm quite pleased that I still have a whole lot of Northrend left to conquer before Cataclysm hits the stores (I just started running dungeons again, haven't really done that since TBC - not really an active choice, I just haven't gotten around to it until now).

Some guildies have lured me into normal and heroic dungeons over the past week, both as dps and as a healer, and I'm amazed at how easy it has been. OK, the others outgear the instances by a whole lot, and one might argue that I've been carried (I'll smite your a** if you do, though!), but still: I seem to have learned something during all those Botanica-runs two years ago, because I know how to "do it", even when playing another class. OK, it's not that hard, but I like the feeling of familiarity.

I had a real Kodak-moment with one of the guild officers - also a priest - after finishing heroic Violet Hold last week. He presented me with a new robe and a pair of gloves (I was still wearing the Primal Mooncloth Robe I had used while leveling), and when asked if I could pay him anything, he simply encouraged me to show people how great priests can be. Did I mention how much I love my guild?

It's been a bit quiet on the druid front lately - there's been a lot of priesty activity - but I'll always be a druid at heart, and I always seem to return to my shape-shifting origins. At the moment I'm loving my cloth-wearing, less hybrid-y, less "I can solo anything" priest girl, though. It can be rather nice to be dependant on others.

Yaaarrrrrr!

2009-09-19T14:51:00.005+02:00

I'm currently waiting for my tea to cool off a bit, down to a drinkable temperature. Meanwhile, I'm going through my possible "plans" in WoW. (Aren't I always, though? Well, anyway.)

As you probably know, I just joined a guild, and I'm loving it. OK, I'm still "the new one", but that's not too bad - whenever someone I haven't met yet logs on, they welcome me to the guild, and ask me how I like it so far - everyone's really sweet, and I'm starting to get a grip on which alts go with which mains. Also, the other night, I helped a couple of guildies with a heroic Sethekk-run. They're both druids, and after the mount, and since my priest isn't honored with Lower City, I too chose to play a druid. My old nelf girl was briefly taken out of retirement, prowled past trash mobs paw to paw with her newfound druid friends, and finally got the achievement for heroic Sethekk Halls. The mount didn't drop, but we had a good time, and I got to know my guildies a little bit better.

Yesterday I did the Tournament dailies on Bunnyhop - she's currently working on becoming a champion of Stormwind, the last one she needs apart from Argent Crusade rep - and since I haven't really bought anything with her Champion's Seals, I'm considering saving up for some heirloom gear. It'll still be a little while before I dare to venture into a level 80 heroic with any of my characters, and when I do, I'll probably want to spend my first emblems on gear for the toon who looted said emblems. But with Champion's Seals - there are a few nice pieces to get, but they're quite cheap, and seals are easy to come by - and eventually with badgers... Sorry, emblems - I can haz female gnome warrior with super fancy gear?

Yes, I want a tiny, female juggernaut :D

First of all, though, I hope to get my priest to 80, and get some more experience playing her.

After that? Well, only time will tell. I'm sure I'll be able to find another character to level up, if the mood strikes me (which it probably will). ;)

Also: Happy Pirate's Day!

Delayed wall of text.

2009-09-15T13:41:00.008+02:00

A bit late, yeah. The plan was to post during the weekend, but then I was all exhausted from my friday (which included a funeral for a very old relative - her death was expected, but funerals are never exactly fun), and so, I'm blogging on a tuesday.

Yesterday I took a longshot, and applied to a guild. I think it's one of the oldest guilds on my server (the server opened in late january 2007, so not ancient, but still), and it's also one of those guilds you only hear positive things about - no drama to speak of, no serious idiots are seen with their guildtag above their heads, and its members come off as nice, smart, levelheaded and fun. They call themselves a "mature, relaxed guild of casual players", and that, along with the fact that one needs to write an application to be considered for membership, adds up to basically what I'm looking for. I got accepted as a trial member within an hour, and my priest was invited last night. In my application I hinted about having alts, and there's a possibility my younger druid will join their ranks in a bit. I just want to see how I fit in first :)

As I was exhausted last night, from studying, and from a bit of workout (my lower back has suffered a bit lately - too much time spent reading, too little exercise - something had to be done), I had to turn down an invite to Drak'Tharon Keep, and instead go to bed, I have yet to "physically" meet any of my new guildies in-game. On the other hand, I got to take part in the guild chat for a couple of hours, and that was fun - everyone seemed really sweet, and I'm looking forward to logging on later this afternoon.

It feels a lot like being the new kid in school, though, or what I imagine that it must feel like - everyone else know each other better, they have odd nick names, and you don't really know how things "work" yet. Yes, I'm horribly nervous, but aiming at laying low, being helpful, and trying to whip up the courage to maybe join in on some mid-70's instance run. It'll probably be fine, I just have to get past that initial period where I don't know anyone. And the nausea :D

____________________________________________

Now, about druids: When Cataclysm was announced, a lot of us were a bit shocked by the news that Kalimdor (and Eastern Kingdoms? I've no clue :S) is going to change a lot, that Darkshore will be flooded and the Barrens will be ripped apart. Now, I have quite a few alliance characters, and almost all of them have quested their way through both Darkshore and Ashenvale - I took my first character through those areas, and I've grown quite attached to them, in spite of the fact that all the running before the recent changes to mounts was mind-numbing.

My experience horde-side is very limited - I think I have a level 26 belf pally on some server, and about 20 lowbie trolls, tauren, undead, orcs and other belves scattered across different servers, so it's basically the same, short experience, over and over again. And now to the druid-part: I finally started my "real" tauren druid, a couple of weeks ago. She's level 23 and feral specced - oddly enough I've never leveled feral before, atleast not all the way - which is partly because of the awesome new kitty look. I've been talking about getting myself a (female) tauren druid for a long time, but with my comfortable network of alts and friends on the alliance side, the horde alts tend to not get the attention they need in order to actually reach some kind of respectable level.

I guess I could have said all this in a lot fewer words, i.e. something like: I've started a tauren druid, and I'm actually leveling her, so that I can see all the stuff on the horde side before Cataclysm rips the world apart, and leaves us with pools of lava. That would've worked too, yeah.

Anyway, I'm really excited about my new guild, and also about having my tauren girl work her way through the Barrens and beyond - it's a bit like starting to play all over again, mostly with the tauren project, but also with the guild - in short, it's all quite a thrill.

sneaks back in

2009-09-09T10:26:00.003+02:00

What's that? Absence from the blog? I have no idea what you're talking about. None whatsoever. I've been here aaaall along...

...

Well, in spirit, atleast!

The truth is, I've been busier lately than I had expected, and most of it hasn't been connected to the internet or WoW, and the online time I've managed to scrape together has more or less been dedicated solely to the game. And right now, I'm on a break for tea, and just logging in here to write something of a "I'm still alive!!"-post.

I'm hoping and intending to get back into some kind of regular posting soon, probably during the weekend, provided - of course - that nothing unexpected occurs. I know it's not like my blog is revolutionary for the WoW-community in any way, but one of my primary goals here is to keep a kind of "gaming diary", and that's something I'd like to continue doing.

So, new nonsense-post fairly soon, it might even be druid-related!

*props up Annie-shaped dummy to make people think I'm always here*
(not a creepy one, though, promise)

"Waiting for patch"-randomness.

2009-08-03T22:12:00.005+02:00

Waiting for the servers to come back up again, I'm feeling a bit too unfocused to write a "real" post, so I'll just list a few things that have been going on:

Went (semi-)oldschool the other night, and farmed adamantite ore and Kurenai rep in Nagrand. Adamantite is way too expensive to buy in my server's AH, and I really miss the talbuk mounts my old druid has. Paladin is halfway through revered - should be able to get her all the way to exalted in a few more hours of killing ogres, and doing the two group quests I have left there (Durn and Corki's Ransom).

On a sunny evening last week my sister took me out on their boat. Sister: "It handles like a dream"= me holding on for dear life, making sure my lifejacket's strapped on tight enough. Yes, I know how to swim, I grew up by a lake, and I'm fairly used to boats, but on a windy day, in the middle of the lake, I want to make sure I can stay afloat under all circumstances. She was quite amused.

I've started re-reading The Sandman, and I've just gotten started on Season of Mists. Such an amazing story, and so, so pretty. I really should try and pick up the final three volumes, though. >.<

I still haven't gotten around to doing something about the whole "guild thing". I'll get there, I just need to take my time. Or, I just need to do it, and not think so much.

This morning I had so much fun reading the paper: One of their summer temps is so mindnumbingly bad, and her articles are hilarious. Did I mention I'm a major nitpicker? Whenever she's written a new article it's like Christmas. (Edit: I know my english isn't exactly flawless, and I don't mock just anyone for their bad writing, but being swedish, reading swedish newspapers, I consider myself free to laugh out loud at rubbish written by a paid writer.)

I spent the last few minutes before server shutdown last night (well, 3AM this morning) on my druid, in catform - me and a whole bunch of others were dancing on the steps to the alliance bank in Dalaran, to celebrate the new patch!

The first character I log on when my server goes online again will probably be a druid. Even though I don't do feral, I'm very, very excited about the new kitty and bear, especially on behalf of feral tauren druids everywhere - the nelf cat was OK, but the orange Richard Simmons-form was... Bad, to say the the least.

One of my more neglected alts is a level 69 shaman, and one reason for said neglect is the totems. I love totems, and when I play her I want to use totems, but they have been stealing my global cooldowns, and since I haven't gotten along with any of the totem addons I've found, they've been hogging space on my hotbars, and I've had trouble organising the whole thing. Now shamans are getting a major UI boost, and the ability to drop four totems in one GCD, so... Time for shaman action?

That's all I can think of at the moment - I know there's a whole lot more, but if I go on, I'll just end up quoting the patchnotes :D I might as well do some laundry and have lunch, since the servers aren't planned to come online until about 3PM (i.e. in about an hour) - then it's time for "ooh" and "aah", and "wth happened to Seal of the Martyr?".

Plans, and how not to stick to them.

2009-07-25T13:59:00.009+02:00

I really, really wanted to write a post with the title "Pallies and druids and priests! Oh my!", partly because I love The Wizard of OZ, but mostly because it would mean I had stuck to my unofficial plan to spend fairly equal amounts of time playing those three characters. That, however, has not happened, and it's not that big a deal, after all. So, which character have I been playing? Perhaps not a big surprise, considering what I've been blogging about lately:

There it is - last night my paladin dinged 67, and while she is dual specced ret and prot, I have yet to use her prot spec. Retribution is ridiculously powerful while leveling, and she's gaining XP so fast by questing I have found myself rushing past the whole instance thing in Outland. It's not that I don't like instances - I love dungeons - but I've been soloing so much for so long, the questing/grinding/leveling process is almost running on autopilot, and I don't realise until four levels later that "ooh, maybe I should've done Ramparts", and by that time Northrend feels so close, I just keep on going. The fun I've had in dungeons in the past has been with friends/guildies, and when I'm on a roll with leveling I can't really find the motivation to do a pug.

Anyway, new plan: Getting pally+priest to 70(-ish), and giving the whole "find a casual guild"-project another try. But then again, every now and then the nice weather lures me outside, and I end up reading a book in the shade instead of hanging out online, so we'll see what happens. Summer seems to be having that effect on a lot of people, and it's probably good with a bit of a vacation, even from fun :)

BRB, cake.

2009-07-19T12:04:00.009+02:00

Annoyingly enough, I haven't had a lot of play-time during the past week. Instead of being a druid/paladin/priest/hunter, I have been a manic amateur confectioner. The result:

It's a Dobos torte. Nowhere near as pretty as the ones you might find in a so-called "upscale" hotel/restaurant/pastry shop, but oooh, it satisfies any chocolaty needs you might have. Mine is a tiny bit different, since it has seven layers, and chocolate buttercream on the sides, but it's really the same thing. Apparently it's a Hungarian torte, so a big thanks to Hungary!

The reason for this cake? I turn 29 for the second year in a row tomorrow. Well, OK, I turn 30. No big deal, really, but I like having a Cake for my birthday, not just, you know, cake. Well, actually it's a Torte. Anyway: Omnomnomnom...

So, I started this post off with the word "annoyingly", and then there was chocolate. The thing is, I've just gotten my paladin to Outland, and she's just so much fun, and I really want to get my druiding going again, and the priest too, and the hunter needs to be taken out for a spin, and... There aren't enough hours in the day. Annoying. But yeah, I have chocolate.

The how and why, and ooh! Shiny lights!

2009-07-14T11:54:00.003+02:00

I finally chose to take my alt out of that guild a couple of days ago. Even though it was nice having a guildchat again, it was actually worse than how the trade channel gets past midnight on weekends. Also, I found myself getting whiny about the whole thing, and that's never good, so I left.

Instead, I'm continuing to look into a few of the "casual, mature and relaxed" guilds on my server - the only thing left to do would be to pick 1-3 characters to apply with (I couldn't possibly - and wouldn't want to - bring all my alts into a new guild, but just one... That'd feel like a betrayal to the ones left behind!), and hope for the best. I do think the odds for a good guild/player-match improve a lot if the guild has its own website, and requires an application to join. Even though the kind of guild I'm after wouldn't be a very "professional" one, chances are you spend as much time with your guildies as you would with your colleagues at a part-time job, and most jobs require you to apply - not only to see that you're qualified, but also to make sure you fit in personality-wise. I very much doubt that the friendliest workplaces recruit random, unemployed people off the street, figuring that they can always give them the boot, if and when they're caught stealing from the cash register.

Right now, though, I'm going to be a lolret for a tiny bit, before it's time for lunch. Leveling is more than fast these days, even without heirlooms, and with a retribution specced paladin it's just crazy! You're wearing plate, you have the bestest bubble in all the world, and if you play your cards right, you never have any downtime! She's almost level 54 - the highest I've managed to get a plate wearer so far - and becoming more fun every time she dings. Leveling is easy, though - I'm quite convinced I'll have my work cut out for me if I am to try and play her in a more organized environment (like, you know, in dungeons and all that). I have, however, managed to keybind - and use - nifty stuff like Righteous Defense, so I'm not entirely clueless :D

Nerf paladins! Or no, wait a minute...

2009-07-10T23:25:00.004+02:00

I've been checking out paladin stuff a bit - the reason being a new-ish alt, was featured in the screenshot of the Alliance tauren - and as Outland comes quicker than one might expect while leveling an alt these days, I wanted to check out what librams will be available through quests and the like. The three "classic" relic wearing classes - paladins, druids and shamans - all get one BoE relic each, and every now and then one might find them on the AH. Druids get Idol of the Moon, shamans get Totem of the Storm, and paladins get... Wait for it, wait for it... Libram of Fervor.

OK, so maybe the spellpower bonus on Moonfire isn't mindblowing, and neither is the bonus to Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning, but still, it's a small (teeny, tiny) bonus every time you use a certain spell, and since the spells in question are used quite often, as part of rotations and all that, the difference is there. You'll have to look really, really hard to see it, but it's there.

Then we have the pally relic. There used to be a time when a paladin's seal was consumed by her/his judgement, and he had to reapply the seal all the time in combat, in order to be able to judge his foe. The seal cost mana - it still does - and hence this libram must have been a buff for the paladin who got her/his hands on it back in the day. Now, however, times have changed, and so has the whole seal-judgement business. Seals last for 30 minutes, and are not consumed by judgements. Hence, you usually cast a seal every 30 minutes, and huzzah! You save a mighty 22 mana every time if you're carrying this baby! Well, I think it's safe to say that I won't be buying it.

While reading the comments regarding this item over at Wowhead, I found this and this as examples of amazingly useless epics, and a small part of me wants to make a "posing-by-the-bank"-set, including those two trinkets, the fabulous libram, and some other outdated/useless from the start (vanilla) high-level items.

Now I'm about to log on to my guilded alt, to try and gain a few levels. I've played her a bit lately, and I've seen a bit more of the guild, mostly through the gchat, though, since most of the active players are level 80, doing level 80-stuff. There does seem to be a steady stream of players coming in, and a fairly steady stream - albeit a smaller one - of players leaving. The guild has grown from about 360 members (when I joined) to about 390 in a week. Haven't logged in yet today, though, so it may have changed. Am I the only one who thinks it's a questionable idea for running a guild? Invite everyone you can find, let them stay until they misbehave? The "misbehave"-part has so far been the cause of a slightly uncomfortable gchat, and frankly, I have a rather forgiving sense of humour, even when it comes to what people say/do on the internet. Then again, several people seem really nice and intelligent, so I'm giving it a few more days, and I'll see how it goes.

Fancy weather and its consequences; new acquaintances.

2009-07-06T15:45:00.006+02:00

Sooo, anyway. The Midsummer Fire Festival ended really early Sunday morning (i.e. yesterday morning), and as much as I love in-game holidays, that was something of a relief. Between the great weather we had here during the past two weeks, and me having a bunch of RL obligations, I gave up on getting the Flame Warden-title on hunter+druid. Instead, I got the Captured Flame on both of them, and on a couple of other characters, and got them about half-way through the meta by visiting a lot (but far from all) of the fires. Barbecue and a glass of wine in the evening sun won the race against stealing/putting out/honouring flames all across Azeroth more often than not during this holiday. But next year, next year!

And yeah, I've finally joined a "real" guild with one of my characters. It's not exactly what I had planned, but I'll see how it goes. There's a pinch of scepticism in there, though. Here's how it is:

I was playing one of my 40-something alts, one of the few I haven't bothered putting into my bank-guild, and was browsing the AH in Stormwind for possible upgrades. Suddenly, I get a whisper about joining a guild, and since I recognize the guild name, and haven't heard anything bad about them, I join on a whim. I get a warm welcome - lots of people saying hi and all that - and that's nice, but what bothers me is that within one minute of joining I get whispered by another member "Can you boost me in Stockade, please?". I was a bit surprised, but I figured that since I was the "new" one, and didn't have anything special planned, I'd do it to show some good will. Also, I haven't been in a "real" guild for quite some time, and maybe boosting is what people do in guilds these days. So I ran this guy through the Stockade.

Now, after doing said boosting, I started to check out the guild info, and I was, again, a bit surprised. There are two major... Rules?

The guild in question has "boost night" on early Friday nights, which I'm assuming means that high level characters are required to drag guildie alts through low level dungeons. Hmm.
The guild seems to put a lot of energy into recruiting, and promotions are partly based on how many new members you have recruited. "Recruit as much as you can!" Even more hmm.

The thing is, the people I've come in contact with in gchat have all been nice, and it seems people put effort into their characters, but the whole "quantity before quality"-tendencies bother me.

Now, I know what you're thinking: I shouldn't expect too much from a guild who recruits the random level 40-something character standing around in SW AH. And frankly, I'm not. The sad part is, I'm expecting to get needy whispers from people who prefer getting boosted instead of questing, and actually playing the game themselves.

I have never led a guild myself, but I still believe what many guildleaders say: A casual guild often has a greater need of strong leadership than a hardcore guild, (I feel a bit like Monica Geller here: "rules help control the fun!") and I honestly have difficulties seeing myself sticking to a guild that rests on the two principles mentioned above: Boosting, and "recruit as much as you can!". I am, however, going to give it an honest try.

Today it started raining, a lot, so WoW is looking a bit more attractive at the moment. Having some tea first, but later I'm off to Azeroth!

The things some guys do to pick up girls.

2009-06-29T15:52:00.005+02:00

The real summer came to Sweden, finally! I've been seriously distracted by the great weather, and have not been playing as much as I usually do. Still, I'm slowly working on the "Flame Warden"-title with druid+hunter, and I've also seized the opportunity to gain some "free" XP and cash with a few of my alts. While doing that last thing, I noticed something in Desolace:

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't tauren, you know, Horde? Yet, here we have Mr. Thunder Bluff, Alliance flag up, chatting up draenei ladies.

A couple of nights ago I had my druid run into Orgrimmar to steal their flame, and oh, holy repair bill did she die a lot. Yeah, yeah, I should've taken her equipment off, but she didn't have the bag space, it was late, and I simply wanted to get it done. For some reason a leather-/clothwearing level 71 druid has a hard time living through being hit by 12 level 75 guards - who knew? ;) Only Undercity and Silvermoon left with her - Bunnyhop still hasn't stolen any flames, but since she has both more armor and levels, it should be less painful.

Speaking of painful - I spent a couple of hours on the beach yesterday, and realised afterwards it might be a good idea to buy a new bottle of sunscreen. Blonde scandinavians tend to get overly excited by sunshine, and I'm no different (dark winters FTL). I also like pickled herring, with some akvavit on the side.

Summer leads to...

2009-06-18T11:16:00.003+02:00

...laziness? Well, even a non-raiding player, such as myself, can see a change in the playing schedule when summer arrives. It's mostly been a rainy one in Sweden, so far, but there's something about the season that seems to distract me a bit, both when it comes to playing and blogging. I've been following the news regarding the next major patch, though, and I'm excited about most of it. I think we've already established that I adore the new tauren kitty :D

Then there's the whole "mount overhaul"-business. On one hand, I love it. Cheaper + earlier = win for altoholics like me! On the other hand, there are still people who are new to the game. A lot of other bloggers have covered this subject, and I don't really want to go over it in detail as well, but the bottom line is: We do end up with players who have rushed through great content, without grouping, and without learning any of the basic instance "rules" (kill order, don't pull aggro, hug your healer, and so on). So, I've come to two conclusions: My lowbie alts are getting cool rides - w00t! and I'm thinking about actually getting one or more of my higher level characters into a "real" guild. Soloing is flexible, but it gets lonely at times, and being guilded can save you from some of the worse PUGs :) Also, I miss having a guild chat. Nothing is decided yet, though, but there are some nice guilds on my server, with, you know, non-Dirge-spammers in them.

And hey, Negathle has graduated (congrats again!), and is adding a pinch of druid to her playing! More druids to the people!

Also, a while ago Lady Jess mentioned the screenshot addon she's using - Multishot (and of course I can't find the specific post in which she mentioned it, oh well) - and it's lovely. Before downloading this one, I used AchievementSnap, and I was mighty annoyed by how it included a /played in every screenshot. Multishot does exactly what I want: It takes a screenshot whenever I get an achievement, kill a boss, or gain a level. Nothing more, nothing less. And Multishot has a configuration menu - always a bonus! Thanks, Lady J. for the tip!

You mean, like a dog-cat? That's fantastic!

2009-06-05T18:56:00.007+02:00

So, I'm back in business. The computer is working again, after a lot of swearing, and thanking nature for my fairly small hands and long fingers (making stuff like replacing parts in my PC a lot easier, than if I had big giant man hands), and now I'm getting back into reading blogs, and back into the game.

I've spent quite a bit of time ooh-ing and aah-ing over the new s kins for cat- and beardruids, and if it wasn't for the whole "tanking as a bear turns me into a nervous wreck"-thing, I'd have my Rahamra moonlight as feral, and run around as a super cool kitty all the time. Maybe I'll be running around as a kitty anyway, as resto... I have to say this, though: Tauren kitties are the winners here. The nelf cat has always been fine, if you ask me - sneaky, panthery, with a nice colour - while the tauren cat has been... Well, you know. Open-mouthed, yellow thing, with horns. Like the really, really ugly cousin of those cool lions in the Barrens. But now, now they're just beautifully sleek and cool. I mean, the black one with a grey mane? How cool is that?

Most of all, I love the new face. Like Allison Robert pointed out over at WoW.com, the new tauren cat looks a lot like a Bull Terrier, and I love it. Even though I haven't played horde past level 25 (yet!), this seems to be a Thunder Bluff-worthy cat, and I can't wait to see what it looks like in motion. The new nelf cat skins look great, too - softer edges, nice colours and all that - but it's just not as cool as the new horde kitty.

Being more of a caster druid, I'm of course waiting for new skins for the moonkin, and the tree, I guess. I haven't used my tree form a whole lot, so I haven't really had a chance to grow sick of it the way many raiders seem to have done. So far, I've considered it quite funky, with the best dance in game <3 The moonkin form, on the other hand... I like the fact that you can see the weapon you have equipped, but since my old druid was a moonkin most of the time, and since Rahamra is using balance for questing, I've spent a lot of time during the past two and a half years staring at a nelf moonkin. Yes, it's a thousand times better than the (old) tauren cat. Yes, it's cute and cuddly. But. It's a fat bear-owl. With horns. I'm not asking for anything huge, but having the colour of the feathers change when I take my girl to the barber shop would be sweet. And I guess that's what it's going to be about, whenever they're ready to release new moonkin and trees.

Well, as much as I love playing a druid, and being able to shift into different forms, I also love playing other classes, where a piece of armor can change their look entirely (which means my priest is still running around Outland in what looks like underwear and Pretty Woman-boots). OK, I'm off to get something to eat, and then I'll be doing some druiding :)

Absence

2009-05-31T19:21:00.002+02:00

Playing/serious posting is annoyingly enough a no-go at the moment, since my computer's CPU fan is acting up :( Ordered a new fan, though, and it should arrive on Monday or Tuesday. Keeping fingers and toes crossed that my PC will remain with the "living"!

What to learn from rejection.

2009-05-27T23:03:00.005+02:00

Just added a tag cloud, to the right, below the blogroll. Found the code, and an excellent guide, here. My labels-list got a bit out of hand, and didn't really fill any purpose, so it was removed a while ago. I much prefer the look of the cloud - I like to think it neatly organises the disorganised structure of this blog.

Today hasn't been a very WoW-ish day - logged in before lunch, did some Argent Tournament dailies - since I've mostly been doing laundry, and finally managed to get a hold of the person responsible for a job I've applied for. Apparently there are still people who think checking their inbox is "optional", even when they've published their e-mail adress in the paper, below words along the lines of "send questions about the job/apply for the job here".

"Ooh, I see you mailed me last Tuesday[i.e. more than a week ago]! Yeah, maybe I should read it - I'll get back to ya!"

Not exactly what you'd like to hear, especially when you suspect he's already given the available spots to the first people who happened to stumble into his office. -.-

WoW-wise, I've come to the conclusion that my priest will probably have to get dual-specced, and that shadow - in spite of the boredom that creeps up on me whenever I think about it - will be her secondary spec. At 80 I'd love to have disc as secondary spec - for pvp-utility, and tank healing advantages - but while leveling I think being able to both heal and dps will get me more pugs. And no, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get into that pug by flaunting my awesome smite-crits :´( But I still have to say this: I'm amazed by how easy it's been so far, leveling with a smite-spec! Holy Fire + smitex3 = dead mob, and zero down-time as a result of points in Spirit Tap and Meditation, and it's still nice for healing! I think you need to be able to spec into the mana-regen and damage/crit increasing talents before it runs smoothly, though.

OK, I've got a cookie, and a glass of water. Time to check up on a couple of my characters, and then I'm off to bed.

I long for Northrend fashion.

2009-05-24T01:15:00.003+02:00

A while back I logged on to Delinda, the priest who recently had jewelcrafting power leveled, and I noted how her outfit made her look like a street walker. Well, after the jewelcrafting adventure, I kind of got into leveling her a bit - it's probably surprising to some, and not to others, but leveling as holy dps is a breeze! (I developed a severe shadow-allergy when I leveled her to 50, so that was not an option..) She's now level 60, and has done a few of the earliest quests in Hellfire Peninsula. And this is what she looked like before hearthed and logged out:

"Hi, I'm Delinda - just your average, holy priest. And yeah, I like going out in public, wearing nothing but my underwear."

Hmm. I'm hoping for an upgrade. Soon. Preferably some kind of robe.

What really matters.

2009-05-21T13:26:00.004+02:00

Off topic:

I just drew a huge sigh of relief - the power adapter for my Gameboy Advance SP didn't get lost when I moved house! Rechargeable batteries are divine, as long as you have a means of charging them. It was hiding in a plastic bag, along with an old cell phone and my TI-89 - we can call that my "nerd-bag". (The bigger bag next to it, containing a PS2, a pile of old computer games, and various camera accessories, is, of course, not a "nerd-bag".)

Fever + wealthy bank alt = win!

2009-05-18T13:19:00.003+02:00

Oooh, it's been a while since I posted. Why that is? Well, it all started with a birthday dinner. Someone in my family turned 60 recently, and I had volunteered to help out with the preparations for said dinner. I didn't do a whole lot of cooking, but I did do quite a bit of cleaning. Anyway, the dinner thing went smoothly. There was, however, someone at this dinner who carried with them an evil, sneaky virus. So yeah, I've had (and am still having) a major cold. A fever of about 38, 4 °C, and all the fancy stuff that comes with it. I'm recovering, though, and today the fever is gone.

Yesterday I was a bit too tired for actual play, ie didn't have the patience required for the jousting dailies up at the Argent Tournament grounds, so instead, I put a crazy plan into work:

I have a lovely priest, a level 51 human, named Delinda. She's been a tailor/enchanter since... Always? Out of habit, almost every mage or priest I start, more often sooner than later, end up with tailoring and enchanting for professions. In Burning Crusade, being and enchanter was a BIG DEAL, due to the fact that you could enchant your own rings - a bonus regardless of the level of your gear, something that most other professions couldn't provide. Jewelcrafting was good in a similar way, but enchanting isn't dependant on sockets. Come WotLK, every crafting profession has a bonus like that (I think?) - leatherworkers have great wrist enchants, scribes have the shoulder enchants, blacksmiths have extra sockets and so on.

So, long story short: I realised I had three characters (one level 72, one 60, and one 51) sporting the tailor/enchanter-combo, and no active jewelcrafter, so I checked some online guides, mailed a whole lot of ore, bars and gems I had on a bank alt to the priest, along with a couple of hundred gold, and at about 11 pm last night she hit 350 in jewelcrafting. I haven't taken her skill beyond that yet, though, since the cost would be way bigger than her budget at the moment.

Now, all I have to do is level her up! Most people would have started in that end, but my bored, feverish mind didn't work like that. Oh well, I've heard tailor/jewelcrafter is nice for priests.

Turtles, rats, weird, floating eye-balls..?

2009-05-06T13:18:00.005+02:00

I wish I could be all sage and grown-up about it, but this will bug me. I've decided to not go for the For the Children-achievement this year, mainly because I can't make myself do School of Hard Knocks. My PvP-skills as a huntress are basically non-existant, and I can't work up enough energy to find a premade that would be OK with my nab-ishness.

While I know it's the best I can do in order to keep my sanity, the little OCD-part of me is going "WTF GO FOR IT!!! COMPLETE THE ACHIEVEMENT!!! KILL!!! KILL!!!", and well, I suppose I could complete it. But I wouldn't have fun, and that's ultimately what I'm after when playing the game.

Maybe I'll have had the opportunity to improve my hunter PvP-ing in time for next year's Children's Week, but for now, I'm happy with the pets. I'm a bit bummed we didn't get a Northrend version of the event, though :/

Anyway, a big, giant congrats to all the players who have gotten their Matron/Patron title, and a big, warm hug of encouragement to those still working towards theirs :)

OK, I'm off to get some lunch, and then my retired druid will be getting her Willy, and with him Veteran Nanny <3 (It might be just me, but that sounds awfully wrong. Still, leaving it as it is :P)

Sanity FTW.

2009-05-01T12:54:00.003+02:00

It's time to stop the madness!

Neither my senior druid, nor my mage will be getting the Noblegarden-meta, in spite of what I planned the other day. I've realized I'd rather do other things with my playing time, than get every single achievement on every single alt. I'm very much a sucker for achievements, and it makes me cringe to see incomplete ones, but with the number of seasonal events we're getting I have to limit my achievement hunting to Bunnyhop and Rahamra. And, since you have to be at least level 75 to try and get the Children's Week meta, Rahamra will be like the other ones on this one too - only baby sitting to get a pet.

It's the obvious way to go, really - the reason for me having a variety of characters of different classes and races, is not to do the exact same thing over and over again in a short period of time. Hunting eggs is easy, and sort of fun, but it really made my head spin when I did it for the fourth time.

Now for something completely different:

I was having tea out in the garden earlier, when I notice something tiny and black on my left knee. Thinking it's just a tea leaf, I try to brush it off, but it's stuck! The plot thickens, eh? Turns out it's a... Tick! Before thinking, I pulled it out, and luckily it hadn't had time to get a very good grip. Let's hope I don't have Lyme disease or meningitis waiting for me down the line...

Someone to watch over me.

2009-04-29T17:52:00.004+02:00

Ever since patch 3.1 and it's features was announced, I've been pondering the question of tenacity pets. Bunnyhop has been sporting a gorilla since level 32 - she started out with Fonzie, a Mistvale Gorilla from Stranglethorn Vale, and traded him in for Fonzarelli at level 64 - initially because of Thunderstomp, an ability which used to be gorilla-exclusive. Fonzarelli has been with Bunnyhop through thick and thin, and even though he's that kind of "special looking" pet everyone has, I don't think I could ever give him up.

However, nowadays any tenacity pet can learn Thunderstomp, while Fonzarelli has gotten a new ability: Pummel. I haven't tried it out yet, and even though it should have situational uses in PVE (interrupting mobs healing themselves or something similar), it feels very much like a PVP-move. So, I'm looking into other tanking pets, trying to find one with a more "all-round" family ability. With three "permanent" pets in her stable (Juno the spirit beast, Leah the wasp, and said gorilla) Bunnyhop is left with two slots for testing.

As I've just started this little project, and since I've been leveling a new druid, I'm still on my first two "contestants":

Judy the turtle - can use Shell Shield when things get hairy. This should be useful when soloing old world raids, and hopefully when trying to solo the sons of Gruul (to unlock the Ogri'la faction).

Butter the crab - uses Pin. OK, this feels like a PVP-ability - keeping rogues in place and such - but it might come in handy when you need to keep a runner from pulling an extra pack. But most of all, I'm attracted by the idea of having a red crab. If only he sang - then he'd be my new tank for sure!

It'll probably take me a while, since I want to level them up to 80 for testing, but I'm not really in a hurry. Doing the Argent Tournament- and Ebon Blade dailies, and going for the occasional farming run in Sholazar should have them both leveled within a week or two.

OK, I'm off for a walk in the evening sun - I'll be taking the turtle out for a spin later, and have Rahamra finish up Zangarmarsh (level 64 - w00t!)!

More bunnies, please. No, really!

2009-04-27T13:30:00.008+02:00

Noblegarden, from an achievement point of view the "easiest" world event" has been up and running for a bit more than a day and a half now. It's one of the easiest titles one can get - it seems to be possible for a level 1 to do it (with a bodyguard and portals, of course, and yeah, the character would level up from exploring and such) - and I bet everyone who wants it will have it by the end of the event, ie Sunday (I'm guessing it ends at 00.01, when Sunday starts, so Saturday will be the last day to do stuff). So far I haven't actually gotten the title on any character, but Bunnyhop and Rahamra have gathered all the Noblegarden Chocolates and merchandise they need to complete the meta. I'll probably try and do the whole thing on my mage and the semi-retired druid as well.

Now, the next world event will be quite a bit harder, achievement-wise. Children's Week starts on May 1st(?), and the meta associated with it requires you to complete School of Hard Knocks. I don't like it. Sephrenia feels that this is what stands between her and the Violet Proto, and I have to say it feels the same way for me. OK, the characters on which I'll be trying to get this achievement done are a hunter and a druid - not very squishy at all - and I bet a lot of people would go "QQ moar" if they heard me complain, but I still think this achievement is unnecessarily hard. A lot of people will be trying to do the exact same thing at the same time, and, well, BG:s often seem to bring out the worst in people as it is.

Once an Orphan (kill 10 players with their orphan out) was removed completely, due to it being politically incorrect, and that's something I can definitely sympathize with. However, I'd rather have an achievement along the lines of "win one of each BG:s with your orphan out", or a better version of School of Hard Knocks: Make someone's capture/return/assault count for everyone of the same faction within 15 yards or so from the "acting" player. That way, better battleground pvp would be promoted, we wouldn't have 30 people camping the flag in EotS, and healy clothies would be able to get Violet Proto's.

However, with the situation being as it is, I'm hoping for good, achievement orientated pre-mades, much like the "hey, let's kill the boss in normal Utgarde Keep enough times for everyone in the group to get the flowers"-pugs. Let's keep our fingers crossed there will be many patient, achievement-hungry non-regular-pvp:ers who can help each other out with this one! "Matron Bunnyhop", that'd be something.

Back to Noblegarden, though: I'd love love love to have a mini pet like the bunny you sometimes get turned into when opening the hidden eggs! Pink bunnies ftw :D

Click, click, click... Yay! It's true!

2009-04-19T14:41:00.004+02:00

Just remembered one of my favourite aspects of the new patch:

Clam meat stacks again!

They made clams stack when WotLK came, I think, but for some reason this buff caused clam meat to not auto-stack anymore (I think it did before, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Seriously, I celebrated the new patch by logging on to my young druid and open the two stacks of clams I had saved in her inventory ever since I heard of the buff to clams! Of course, I'd like a title for having played pre-clam nerf: The Clam Opener, but this stacking craziness is quite amazing in itself.

When I come to think of it, I really should have taken a screenshot of this exciting event, or even made a little movie!

A bit like Christmas, and things the trade-crowd doesn't get.

2009-04-17T17:31:00.005+02:00

Easter has been over for a few days now, but then The Patch came, and I've been totally engulfed by it! OK, I'm not part of the Ulduar-going crowd (never say never, though - I'm leveling a healer, and I want to heal people, dammit!), but there are so many new features that just warm my casual WoW-heart:

New fishing features: Fishing anywhere! New dailies! Cool turtle mount! New fishing rod rewarded by my favourite fisherman!
The Argent Tournament is like a new and improved Shattered Sun Offensive-thingie - fun for a casual solo-player like myself, and you get quite a bit of gold from the quests.
Dual spec! As I haven't bothered grinding cash for a while, I've only been able to get it on two of my characters so far - Bunnyhop, BM-huntress extraordinaire, and Rahamra, my baby tree (52 and counting) - but ooh, I love it! I was a bit annoyed before I realized I had to dismiss my pet before switching specs - if I didn't, the pet had its talents wiped, and I'd have to do them all over again... Dismiss first, then switch. Bunnyhop is sporting two different BM-specs atm, but I'm looking into MM and Survival as well, planning to explore those talent trees soon. Rahamra is a tree and a moonkin, as planned, and I love it. Being able to have a "real" healing spec, and still having an efficient solo-spec, all while leveling - its just so sweet.
Improved quest tracking! By looking at the tooltip of a quest related mob, you can see the name of the quest, and your progress. Also, if you got a "use"-item when you picked up the quest, there'll be a little clickable icon next to the quest in the tracker by the mini map. Now, I've used addons that did these things, but 95% of the time I've gotten along fine without it, so it's really not necessary. But at the same time - why not? It's really annoying when you're grinding a certain type of mob for a quest drop, end up with nothing, and you check on Wowhead only to discover you should have killed the other type of mob. However, if Blizzard puts something like QuestHelper in the default UI, the game will be too casual even for me... I like reading the quests, taking in the stories behind them - if I want arrows showing me in what direction to go next, I'll go to IKEA.
Lots of more stuff, probably - I just haven't taken it all in yet.

Now, a new patch isn't all hugs and puppies. The servers have been shaky, to say the least, and it usually takes a couple of weeks before things run smoothly again. Also, addons tend to get messed up by patches, and as a lot of addons are made by pure enthusiasts, not all of your favourites will get updated immediately, if ever. Yesterday I had to turn off Spammenot, since it caused my chat to malfunction, and sadly it seems like it won't be updated anymore :´( I do hope there's another way to filter out all the goldsellers and Dirge-spammers...

So, what to do if something in your UI isn't working correctly? You can't see whispers, your unit frames are weird in some way, your character keeps pulling bunnies out of hats for no reason (yeah, I made that up, aren't I crafty?) and so on?

First of all, try turning off all of your addons, just to make sure the problem is addon related.

Secondly, turn on half of your addons. If the problem appears again, you know it's caused by one of the addons you've activated, and you move onto the next step: Turn off half of the activated addons, check for the issue, and by doing this over and over, you rule out the innocent ones in chunks, until you've found the one causing you trouble.

I hope I'm making sense here :D It's a really simple, basic thing to do, but a lot of people in trade and general chat have been endlessly clueless and frustrated during the past few days - low fps, not being able to click links in chat, bunny issues - and they simply don't seem to understand the concept of the addons they are using every day: They are not an official part of the game, and it's not Blizzard's fault if they don't work.

If something doesn't work, turn it off for the time being, and wait for an upgrade. Or, if you're able and willing, write your own addons! But something tells me the people complaining in trade and general aren't equipped to do that :D

OK, I'll be spending my evening doing Argent Tournament-dailies on Bunnyhop, and on my old druid (temporarily pulled out of retirement, to check out the Icecrown-action), and hopefully I'll be able to get a level with Rahamra - I'm very much looking forward to taking her to Outland.

Not yet a tree, but we're getting there!

2009-04-12T23:47:00.006+02:00

So, Easter is upon us, and hanging out with the family and such things obviously leads to less posting. Good food, candies and sunny weather - it's all good :)

There has been some druid leveling action, though - level 46 has been reached, and it may be because of the "first character ever"-clumsiness I suffered from with my first druid, but a healthy amount of points in the resto tree seems to make leveling a whole lot smoother. OK, so I've invested a few gold in a fairly nice staff with a decent enchant - 70 extra spell power is a nice boost at this level, and I'm counting on it to last until she gets to Outland - but seriously, I was able to solo this rare elite I found in Swamp of Sorrows, by alternating rooting, nuking, and throwing HoTs on myself, even though he was one level higher than Rahamra at the time!

I'm sure my first druid would've gotten her feathery ass handed to her, had she encountered this mob at level 44.

OK, she does need a respec - I'd rather take the two points from Naturalist, and put them into Master Shapeshifter, but still, as she doesn't yet have her Tree-form, the latter wouldn't be of much use to her anyway. There's at least a tiny chance one might get to benefit from the cast time-reduction on Healing Touch while leveling. But yeah, I'd like to get those "mandatory" points, so I'm looking forward to the promised free respec in the upcoming patch. Every time I've taken a new character to Hellfire Peninsula, I've been shocked by how much harder the mobs seem to hit, and I doubt this time'll be any different, so being able to switch between leaves and feathers (almost) whenever will be yummy. It changes the rules by a huge amount - suddenly one might be able to find quite a few characters with an actual healing- or tanking spec even at lower levels!

The Basics.

2009-04-07T20:13:00.005+02:00

After something of a hiatus from druiding, I'm getting back into it, and slowly I'm finding druid blogs to read. I've already put The Daily Druid and Resto4life on my list, and that's a good start, but now I'm adding a new one, simply because it has exactly what I'm looking for at the moment: Druid Main is starting a basic, straightforward tree 101-guide, to help people prepare for dual-speccing!

I love it! We get to know about the healing spells, and when to use them, talents, glyphs and all that - really basic stuff, knowledge many healers seem to take for granted.

I've been looking for guides like this one so many times, and not only for resto druids, but for mages, moonkins, priests and whatnot, but a lot of the time Google just gives me 15 different discussions on how to heal some rather complicated 25-man raid. "But how do you do it in a 5-man, then? Oh, that's easy, you just roll your face on the keyboard." Yeah, right.

OK, I might be exaggerating a tiny bit there, but still, a lot of people who run something like 2 heroics and 1 raid every night have been through it all a zillion times, and the whole "do x when y if z" is simply a reflex to them. To me, a guide like this makes all the difference - a bit like learning which pedal is which in a car when learning how to drive.

Aww, you're gonna make me cry!

2009-04-07T11:21:00.003+02:00

TJ has put together, and posted, a movie dedicated to our favourite dwarf hunter!

She advertised for people to contact her regarding a "top secret project" (stupid me, didn't do so, blaming RL), and it apparently consisted of people sending her pics/screenshots/video clips of themselves/their chars celebrating the awesomeness of BRK. She has put a whole bunch of these things together in a beautiful little movie, added music, and the whole thing brings tears to my eyes! Serious WoW-blog community love! I think I'll have to go play my dwarf hunter alt for comfort...

The List.

2009-04-06T15:20:00.005+02:00

I'm not the most consequent blogger - sometimes weeks and months pass between my posts, for a number of reasons - but I tend to come back. I have so far, at least. However, a lot of blogs fade away, and this sadly seems to be the case of Incompetent Warrior. I've kept him on my blogroll for quite a long time, but now it's been 3 months since he last posted, and since I feel the list should be limited to active blogs, he's out until he starts posting again.

While I'm on the sudject of removing inactive blogs: BRK stays until he gets too outdated, even though it won't be updated anymore - his blog is still a great resource of information (and silliness). And oddly enough, I'm adding Resto4Life to the list, in spite of the fact that it's closed - it will get outdated eventually, come new patches and changes, but it still is a great read for druids. In short, I'm kind of breaking a rule I just made up. Simply because I can.

Want to see my slides from 30-40?

2009-04-06T14:43:00.006+02:00

I've had the opportunity to experience the addon AchievementSnap in action - no biggies, but screenshots were made at the right moment. There's one thing that bugs me a bit, though. Well, it doesn't really bug me, but I'd like to be without it. For some reason, when ASnap screenshots my achievements, my /played shows up in the chat, posted immediately after "[charactername] has just earned the achievement [achievement]". Not that it really matters, but it's not a feature I'm after, and I'll try and find out if I can do anything about it.

(Browsing WoWInterface.com)

Hmm. Can't seem to find anything. Considering I have an array of addons installed, this may, of course, be caused by something other than AchievementSnap, but since it is the kind of feature I suppose a lot of people might be interested in, I'm assuming ASnap is doing it. The hunt for a solution continues...

Loving the addon in every other way, though - it really opens up for the possibility of having a long, boring post, comparable to those evenings when you're visiting your friend/aunt/colleague, and they insist on showing and commenting every single picture they took on their trip to Thailand/Mallorca/Turkey. But instead of "here's me and hotel plant no. 53", you'll get golden moments such as "here's my lock, getting her first tabard"! Sounds like a treat, right?

1. Put on Shoes 2. Go for Walk 3. ??? 4. Profit!

2009-04-04T18:17:00.003+02:00

The background downloader is up, and due to my relatively slow broadband connection I'm very interested in downloading the patch in advance - 3-4 hours on patch day simply isn't fun - so right now I'm at 73%. Will probably take a break from downloading in a bit, to actually play, and then leave the computer running over night to get the rest of the file.

Today has been a nice, warm and sunny one, and I'm aiming towards at least getting a healthy beige tone this year. I've never been the kind of person who spends her summers frying on the beach, but I do prefer the slightly tanned situation, where people don't have to avert their eyes because my bikini-clad bod is a blinding shade of white. However, I haven't spent the day trying to get a tan, but I went for a walk in the sun - mens sana in corpore sano, and all that.

I'm hoping to get the opportunity to try out a newly downloaded addon soon: AchievementSnap. I found it via this WoWInsider article, and since I often find myself without a screenshot after having completed some achievement, even though I'd love to have one (for posting, or for sentimental reasons), it sounds like a nifty little thing. So, I hope it works.

Lunch FTW + my little friend

2009-04-01T13:44:00.009+02:00

Just finished my lunch, so comfortably full. I've been doing some cleaning up in my Firefox bookmark list, reading up on blogs I haven't visited for a while, and browsing iTunes. The snow we had last week is way gone now, and yay, one can go outside without putting on the whole hat-scarf-mittens-mega moonboots of doom-extravaganza! Jeans, hoodie and sneakers is perfect - my kind of weather.

The state of my new druid:

Half-way through level 28,
half-way through the quests in Ashenvale,
in love with the idea of getting her a mount in less than two levels :) Spotted Frostsaber on the horizon!
A bit of a weird spec, but I refuse to respec her before 3.1, since talents will be reset when said patch arrives. I'm hoping to get her to 40 by then, so that I can kick off the tree/moonkin plan as soon as possible. So, keeping fingers crossed the "dual spec at 40"-thing makes it to the live servers - can't see any reason why it shouldn't, though.

Been poking around a bit on the PTR version of wowhead, and am very much looking forward to getting this cutie! Being the pet collector that I am, I'll be going for all of them, of course (a bit bummed I don't have a high level horde character, so I could really get all of the pets easily), but the thought of a tree druid with a tiny tree companion is almost too good to be true. Moonkin baby companion, that, on the other hand, would be too good to be true.

And finally, I'd love for the Frostsaber mentioned above to sport some nifty exhaust pipes and awesome flamez!

No more Brain? Or all Brain from now on?

2009-03-30T22:42:00.005+02:00

I've been trying to load BRK for a while this evening, to read his farewell-post, but the server keeps timing out on me... :( When I first saw the title of the post in my RSS-feeder-thingy I thought it was just TJ saying bye and thanks after having done some guest posting, but then WoW Insider told me the harsh truth.

Oh well. Reading BRK's blog has been great for me as a new hunter-player, as a WoW-player in general, and in the end he's one of the funniest WoW-bloggers around - I'm most grateful, and will miss him! I hope he gets his RL-stuff back in order, and that maybe we'll hear from him again, sometime in the future.

Anyway, I guess the traffic is quite heavy on his site because of the "taking a break"-thing, or maybe he's simply shut it down? That would be weird, though, doing that so soon after the final post. Will have to check again tomorrow.

While we're on the subject of bloggers leaving the game, and shutting down their blogs: I'm a bit bummed I didn't read Resto4Life before Phaelia decided to stop posting. On the other hand, I wasn't really in the mood for resto druids before, so I probably wouldn't have been able to do anything constructive with it anyway, and since she's going to leave the blog up until further notice, I can read it now instead.

OK, I'm off to do some late evening questing in Duskwood and Ashenvale, and then it's bed time. A good night's sleep really helps in that thing one refers to as "real life".

Quick Like a... Well, Cat.

2009-03-30T15:34:00.008+02:00

During the last few days I've done some dailies on Bunnyhop, but most of my play time has been spent on my baby druid. She reached level 26 earlier today, and finally got Dash! Even though you may not be feral specced, it's really nice to be able to prowl around every now and then. Thing is, though, that prowling is slow, mind-numbingly slow, and that's when you love the fact that you've reached level 26, and are able to get a speed boost without breaking prowl! It's wonderful for whenever you want to sneak past patrolling mobs.

Prowl and dash were around when I leveled my first druid, but the "new" Shadowmeld wasn't. I found the old one useful too - it was nice to be able to eat/drink while being hidden from nearby mobs, and it was obviously good for pvp - but since my moonkin could be a serious aggro monkey at times, I'm very grateful for the change. It's saved Rahamra's bum more than once, and even though I haven't had the chance to try it out, it must be great for healers/dps in instances and raids, wipe-preventing, even. I do miss being able to snack while hidden, though :D

New Dark Legacy Comic - demonstrates very nicely why I never go into Stormpeaks on the PTR.

I saw a funny thing on my way to 80...

2009-03-27T16:05:00.008+01:00

"My" part of Sweden has gotten a fair amount of snow today - hence, haven't set foot outside the door - and most of mid-morning was spent cleaning the house, replacing the ink cartridges in my printer, and a number of other little boring things.

Rahamra, the new druid alt, has reached level 22, and is so far specced 8/0/5 - not raiding material just yet :D - and she's moving along quite fast, partly because I know the spells and the quests, partly because I've run her through both the night elf zone and the draenei zone. And yeah, I've realised I may have to budge a tiny bit when it comes to my "more resto than balance, even before 40!!!"-plan - with the lack of caster leather at lower levels, she's a bit squishy, and I don't think I can (comfortably) get out of investing a bunch of points in extra damage and crit. But, come dual spec, she'll be heavy resto and a viable dps/solo-spec! Probably moonkin, but being a kitty can be fun too... We'll see.

The situation might have been different, had I started her on a fairly new server, where there's usually a bit more healthy activity in lower-level dungeons. The server on which I have my primary characters opened in January 2007, and during the first 6 months or so, people were putting together serious groups to go through Deadmines, Sunken Temple, Scholomance and so on, but two years later the activity there seems to be limited to boosts. And of course, I too like it when I get to higher levels - you can do a lot more, travel more freely, and the chances that you'll run into people who actually know what they're doing seem to increase, the closer to 80 you get - but there are a lot of things along the way that I don't want to miss:

Duskwood questlines. I love the "haunted" atmosphere in there, and the storylines are good.
Ashenvale. I like the quests, and "wild forest"-feeling. The same goes for Feralas.
Un'Goro Crater. A lot of people hate this place, but I love it - it's like Nintendo-paradise, quest- and lookwise.
Gathering materials for, and leveling my professions of choice, without having the main pay for it. (Rahamra is a herbalist/tailor (flying carpet? I'm so in! Also, nice leg enchant for healer/caster.))
Silly little traditions, like swimming from Theramore to Tanaris instead of taking the Great Lift, or if you're playing a hunter - at level 10 insisting on running to the other end of the map to get a "special" pet, such as a Strigid Hunter if you're horde, or a Springpaw Lynx if you're alliance.
In general, getting a feel for the character while leveling - I'm not an RP:er, my characters don't really have a well thought out story attached to them, but I tend to bond with them a lot, and I think I'd lose a lot of that if a friend/someone I paid 20 gold would run me through Scarlet Monastery for three levels and gear.

I could go on and on, but I think my point is already quite clear: I like leveling. I often complain about it somewhere around the 40s, when it seems like nothing is happening, and you feel like you're never going to catch up with everyone else, but in the end, it's nice putting the pieces together, finding out what works and what doesn't, discovering the advantages - and disadvantages - of different classes and builds.

So, even though leveling is mostly a solo-project on a server like mine, it's nothing I would like to fast-forward through. Well, there are always areas and questlines that bore me to bits (Read: Desolace. What has anyone ever done to deserve it?), but in the end, I'm always glad I've been through it, and hopefully it'll make me a better player.

"Yeah why do you have a cat?"

2009-03-26T10:37:00.003+01:00

I found this linked on WoW Insider - loving it! I always knew Sargeras had to be "that" guy.

It's a Girl!

2009-03-24T11:45:00.009+01:00

The druid action in my life, and in this blog, has been quite sparse lately, to say the least. My first character - my first main - was my druid. I'm writing it in past tense, since the status of "main character" has gradually drifted over to Ms. Bunnyhop, a certain huntress :) Am I retiring my moonkin? To some extent, yes. I could never delete her, and I'll keep logging on to her to do the Mysterious Egg-thingie, and maybe some seasonal stuff, but when it comes to actually playing her - she's on an official break.

Now, this doesn't mean I'm done with druids - oh no! You see, I have a new alt:

Meet Rahamra. So far, she's put points into the Balance tree, but I see Restoration in her future. The whole dual spec-thing in patch 3.1 is something I'm really looking forward to: Bunnyhop can rock both a BM-soloing spec, and a spec for, you know, playing with others, if and when my schedule allows it. My mage will be even more fun to level if I can switch between her regular frost-spec and something more spectacular, and it will finally be possible to be a tree or a moonkin whenever I want while leveling a druid!

I'm going to try and put most talent points into the resto tree, even before level 40 (and the upcoming patch), but let's face it: Resto isn't the most comfortable solo-questing spec. She'll probably be a moonkin on the side, but I'd really love to give healing another try.

The last time I "healed", I kind of got thrown into the (for me) deep end, when trying to be a raid healer in a semi-pugged Kara-group. I didn't know my heals, I didn't know my gear, I didn't know anything, really, and, most importantly - I hadn't really healed before. The group stuck together for a couple of months, but after it fell apart, I decided that if I'm ever going to try healing again, I'll have to start doing it while leveling.

And that's why I'm not just respeccing my level 80. Might seem a bit crazy, but provided I get Rahamra that far, I might be able to get some of that "LF healer Ramparts"-action I've heard so much about :D

Now, off to get a bit more Exodar-rep, and to see if those sassy draenei have any good druid gear for me :)

Unexpected error -> Rediscovering... Working girl?

2009-03-19T19:34:00.005+01:00

My play-time has been quite scattered and limited lately, and hence I haven't really had anything to blog about, but today I think something slightly blog-relevant actually happened!

As stated in this blog's subtitle, I'm a serious altoholic, and every now and then I start yet another priest/hunter/mage/hunter/warrior/hunter/druid... Well, you know, just to check out looks and animations, to get that great feeling of a fresh character on a "new" server, or to hog a specific name on a newly opened server. The result of that has been a lot of level 1-10 characters, of which a majority have been deleted. Anyway, I haven't reached the character limit (50 across all servers) on either of my accounts, yet, for some reason, when I wanted to make a baby belf pally today, it was a no-go!

"You already have the maximum number of characters allowed on this account"

lolwut?

OK, so I may have 31 characters in total on the account in question, but that's obviously less than 50! So, what to do? Clearing the cache, renaming the WTF-folder, restarting - nothing has worked, and googling the problem pointed towards opening an in-game ticket. Still, I decided to try a slightly less impatient approach, and wait until tomorrow - if nothing has improved by then, ticket-time it is.

What did I do instead of opening a ticket, then? No fresh belf pally available - how would I survive? Well, I suddenly remembered my old dream of having an incredibly self righteous holy priest, and decided to log on to Delinda, a shadow priest safely parked at level 50, and I'm playing with the thought of leveling her as holy. I'll have to do some research in order to come up with a decent spec, and then I'll have to try and find something less skanky to wear:

A bit Pretty Woman, isn't it?

Late Night Fishing.

2009-03-07T14:40:00.007+01:00

I was up late last night, flying around Northrend to get all the fish and meat I needed to get 450 in cooking, and after learning and cooking the Fish Feast recipe, I went to Outland to do a couple of BC-dailies before heading off to bed. I'm slowly grinding Sha'tari Skyguard rep on Bunnyhop, so I headed up to Skettis, and on my way there, I fished out all of the Highland Mixed schools I could find, 'cause that's what I usually do when I'm in those parts. After finishing the Skettis quests, I see a yellow dot on the minimap as I head back down towards Alliance Stronghold, so I land, cast, and this happens:

Woot! As I have never caught one of those before, I could hardly believe it, but there it was! Then, after getting over the initial shock, I use my first wish:
Double woot!!! I've been trying to get one ever since I first heard about them, when my druid learned to fly back in 2007, and you could make some cash from Furious Crawdad. If it hadn't been so late, I would have gone looking for the Time-Lost Proto Drake, gold at the end of the rainbow or something like that :D

About the TLPD, I do keep my eyes open, and my finger scrolling the target macro whenever I'm in the supposed spawn/patrol area in Stormpeaks, but since virtually the whole server wants that fancy mount, my chances of getting the kill while casually looking for it are pretty slim. I have been thinking a bit about camping for it, but camping the books for the Kirin Tor Familiar for several days really got to me, and some people speculate that the TLPD shares it's spawn with Vyragosa, and that 9 times out of 10 Vyragosa spawns instead of the more sought-after, mount dropping TLPD, so it could end up being a ridiculously long camp. Also, some say the Vyragosa/TLPD spawn is on a 6-24 hour timer, so until further notice, I'm just hoping to get incredibly lucky. It worked with Loque - could work again ;) (Yeah, yeah, I'll get that mount when hell freezes over and Elvis kicks off the event by selling popcorn. (And no, I'm not insinuating that Elvis ended up in one place or the other.))

Chasing Chickens in the Desert.

2009-03-02T20:30:00.002+01:00

It took me a couple of days, but I eventually managed to find all the cables and stuff needed to get my PC up and running again! So far, moving has worked wonders for my workplace - apart from the mouse, keyboard, monitor and speakers, the only thing on my desk is a glass of water. I'm feeling very... Something. Spartan? Minimalistic? Organized? I'm afraid it only applies to my desk, though, since I, as usual when I move, in the end just started emptying my drawers into bags and boxes, thinking I can get all these things sorted later. Hmm. We'll see about that.

I've been reading a bit about the new seasonal event they're testing on the PTR, and it might be exhaustion or old age, but I don't really understand how it works, or what it's about. Is it a pvp event? How do you get those token thingies? I think I might just get on the PTR myself, to check things out. Those mini pets are looking mighty fine, and so are the mounts...

This afternoon I've been running my hunter around Feralas and Tanaris, doing two out of three escort quests needed to get a Mechanical Chicken! It took a while, since these chickens are slow, and I had the time to come to a few conclusions:

I'm really glad I saved the two beacons she found while leveling, since it'll probably take a while to get the one in Hinterlands to drop.
Yay - I'm not on a pvp-server, and hence won't get ganked when doing lengthy escort quests.
I kind of wish I had a third conclusion, since it would look good, but no.

Ooh, by the way, I did get the last book needed for Higher Learning - Enchantment - and I believe it took almost three days of camping for up to an hour, with three hours in between. Seriously, I started to believe it was bugged, and that the "real" book would never spawn, but then there was a magical moment in the afternoon the Saturday before last. I'm a bad blogger, though, since I forgot to screenshot the event - me and my fellow camper, a nice paladin, went bananas when we got our final book, and we were both just so relieved to get off of that stupid balcony.

OK, enough rambling (I'm going to have to make a "real" post one of these days, organized and insightful and all that), it's time to do something about that PTR-plan before the evening gets too late.

WTB 50 slot bags, and a portable guild bank.

2009-02-23T10:34:00.003+01:00

Finally the day has come. Well, almost. I'm moving tomorrow, and am in the middle of the giant project of packing all of my worldly possessions into cardboard boxes. And I have a lot of stuff. Not only have I studied law for several years, but I've also taken a few literature classes, and to top it off I simply love books in general - paperbacks, hardbacks, heavy books, light books - and while it is (of course) possible to pack all these books into boxes, I'm starting to wonder whether the trailer will be enough!

Well, jokes aside, I won't be filling a trailer with books, but nevertheless, I've lived in this area for about 9 years, and that's plenty of time to get your hands on a lot of things you're not willing to part with. Luckily, I don't have a whole lot of furniture.

Oh, crap. I can't sit here any longer. I need to take a shower and get my ass downtown - there's still a couple of things I need to get in order before the move. Also, I'm a bit behind on my packing schedule. >.< Sadly, this means no WoW for me for a couple of days, but on the bright side: The broadband problem solved itself - my new (albeit temporary) quarters now have a regular broadband connection - yay!

Books can lead to frustration. Ask me how!

2009-02-19T14:49:00.003+01:00

Last night, and on and off since this morning, I've been camping books in Dalaran. My hunter is missing two books, my druid needs three, and since these girls are on two different accounts, they can camp the book they're both missing together. To make sure my PC doesn't commit suicide I've deactivated all addons on both characters, and have connected my laptop to the router, so I can browse teh internetz to pass the time. Because camping books is boring. Feel free to write that down.

On the other hand, I feel the reward is worth it, and even if the RNG factor is there, it's only a matter of time before you get it. Since I actually got the "Love Fool"-meta achievement done, and hence got all of the candies from the candy bags, I guess a lot of people (who didn't get said achievement) feel that I don't have the right to express my opinion on the Be Mine!-part, but I don't really think they read this blog :D So, here it goes:

If you ask me, it's just as it should be. What people really want out of completing these achievements is ultimately a 310% Violet Proto-drake, and yeah, I'd like that one too. The thing is, as far as I know, there are only three other ways to get a 310% mount (please, correct me if I'm wrong):

Arena. Be a part of a really, really great arena team, and get a super fast drake when the season is over.
PVE. Complete all of the WotLK heroic raid achievements, and get a super fast Black Proto-Drake.
Be incredibly lucky when rolling for an incredibly rare drop from a raid boss not too many people bother to kill these days, and get Ashes of Al'ar.

Piece of cake, eh? Honestly, when the 310% mount takes either a huge amount of skill, or a huge amount of luck on a loot roll to get your hands on, why do so many people seem to take for granted that they "deserve" this status symbol after having simply participated in seasonal events during one year? Reading discussions and arguments regarding this subject, it seems people want a gold medal for just showing up.

Now, some people say that you can't compare RNG with skill-based accomplishments, and while that is true, it isn't what I'm after. These are completely different races, and I believe the only thing they have, or should have in common, is the rarity of the "winners". Not a lot of people will get the Purple Proto within the first year, and I don't think a lot of people are going to get the PVE- or arena equivalents either. Unless you have the time+skill to be great at PVE/arena, it is, in some ways, a big lottery - get over it!

OK, rant-mode off. This book camping thing is leaving me a tiny bit frustrated and bored, which leads to walls of text.

RL-stuff, turtles and wings.

2009-02-17T16:01:00.003+01:00

Today started out on a very efficient note: I got up at about 8.45 AM, and had to clean up the apartment by 11 AM, since I had arranged for a woman from my landlord's office to come here to perform an "inspection" of said apartment. Since I'm moving next week, I want to sign over my "half" of the lease to my flatmate, and to do that, the place has to undergo an "inspection". So, I managed to get in order a lot of the stuff we've managed to neglect during the past few months, and even take a shower, with about 5 minutes to spare!

The "inspector" arrived at 11 AM precisely, and she had brought with her a gadget (palm pilot, for easier "inspection" :D), and a colleague, who btw wore really nice heel boots (I want to call her Penny. Or Brain.). The whole thing took about 40 minutes, and there are two things which will have to be corrected, should my flatmate decide to move out aswell:
The wallpaper on one wall in the "den" didn't pass due to a minor flaw, and they didn't like the bright green colour we have applied on two walls in the living room.

So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed Mr. Flatmate will go "I'll take care of it, just as long as you get your ass out of here next Tuesday!", but we'll see what happens. Since even the smallest thing can get us on each other's throats these days, I doubt that painting walls in panic during the upcoming weekend would be a good idea.

Yeah, yeah, boring personal post.

WoW-side of life atm: Grinding cash for Bunnyhop's Artisan Riding skill, which feels really slow. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I bought this baby for 800g on the AH. My mage can now turtle stuff. Mainly critters in Dalaran, since I mostly take her out to do the cooking daily, but still. Anyway, about 1200g to go, I think. If I hadn't bought that tome I could've been done today, but then again, turtle!!!

Aftermath.

2009-02-15T01:44:00.004+01:00

Valentine's Day has been over for almost 2 hours here in Sweden, and I celebrated it by going out to buy some sushi, cursing the cold weather on my way home, and finishing it all off by eating said fish dish in front of the TV, combined with a so-not-sushi-kosher Coke. Fish and soda - what more can one ask for? ;) But honestly, I've had a great day.

Friday night was a big one for Ms. Bunnyhop:

Her first title! And my first seasonal event-title! However, now that I've gotten it done on one char, I'm quite tired. I've been half-heartedly trying to get the achievements done on my moonkin, but I just don't have the energy... If the event had lasted for a few more days, then I might have been able to whip up a bit more spirit, but the way I feel at the moment she can wait until next year (provided I still play then, of course - a lot can happen in a year). Oh well, I might feel different in the morning, and try to rush the few parts she has left. (I do sound like a bundle of joy, don't I?)

Right, off to bed. Sleep is usually a good cure for grumpiness.

Unbreak My Heaaaaaaaart!!!

2009-02-12T21:38:00.004+01:00

I've been very much into the current holiday event during past two days, and am right now hanging around in Stormwind to try and complete Be Mine!, so I can finally, finally get a season related title on one of my characters (missed out on the Elder-thingie, due to lack of time and general laziness)! It will, surprise, surprise, be Bunnyhop who gets it first, but I'll get around to the druid :)

Anyway, a friend found a pic that nicely illustrates this event:

(Picture from http://www.wasabineko.com/)

Edit: Seems it doesn't fit perfectly into this blog - it's horizontally challenged, it seems. Please click to get full image :D

Need more hours in the day, srsly.

2009-01-29T14:18:00.005+01:00

Lately my posting here has been quite infrequent, partly because nothing much WoW has been going on, partly because blogger has been acting up, screwing up posts I've tried to publish, resulting in me grumpily deleting and logging out. Anyway, here's a post!

My "other" hunter, Nysnö the night elf, is being leveled, as kind of a side project, almost solely because of her engineering skills. Thing is, I really want a Mekgineer's Chopper, and it would be cool to make it myself. Of course, I'd also like the Nesingwary 4000 for Bunnyhop, but I think I'll be able to scrape together the 1800-2000 g they cost on the AH way before Nysnö gets 450 in engineering (she's at 405 now...), so I'll have to settle for a gun made by a character called "Shadowretlolzdk" or something like that.

In reality, I probably won't be able to get that chopper anytime soon, unless mobile broadband turns out to be fabulous and stabile. I'm moving in less than one month, and have started getting boxes, filling out forms to change my adress, trying to remember to go to my gym to cancel my membership, and a gazillion other things, and it's all stressing me out a bit. My current plan WoW-wise is a bit fuzzy, but mainly I'm trying to have fun while playing. I'm also trying to get my bank organized, so I won't have to deal with that on the probably very limited playtime I'll have for a while in the near future.

I'd like to finish with a screenshot from last night, dancing my ass off while doing one of my favourite quests in Borean Tundra:

Big, blue, and kickin' ass!

2009-01-21T11:48:00.004+01:00

The patch is downloading, and even though it's fairly small - 56 MB - it sure is taking its time!

Yesterday was another draenei huntress day, and I got around to unlocking the Sons of Hodir, as a faction, and as a flightpath. During the questline leading up to this, one gets disguised as a frost vrykul female - it works basically the same way as the fel orc disguise one gets while grinding rep for Netherwing - and while in disguise, one can use mounts.

When my druid did this, she looked a bit silly while flying, since you don't switch to flightform visually - your frost vrykul just starts swimming through the air! My huntress, on the other hand, has a mount. A majestic Snowy Gryphon. Behold:

Not feeling so majestic anymore, are we?

A WoW-blog Moment.

2009-01-18T13:21:00.004+01:00

I've been laying low during the last few days, doing dailies, checking up on lowbie alts - nothing special. I was just doing just that, turning my hunter's slow flyer into Sholazar Basin, thinking I might aswell do a couple of quests I had left in the northern parts, when I casually thought to myself: "There's always the chance I'll find Loque'nahak in here, I shouldn't pick up my gorilla for farming - I'd hate to ditch Fonz" followed by a "yeah, right, the spirit beast is RARE, I'll probably never even see one in the wild". But, wait a minute, what's that?

Right there, at 36,30, my adrenaline went up to insane levels - trap, tame, presto! No name yet, but I'll get there. Sadly, Raquel the devilsaur is no more, but to be honest, she always was a placeholder. Off to play with freaky cat-like super beast!

IRL, my character's place would smell really bad.

2009-01-14T17:03:00.006+01:00

Yeah, it's been a few days since my last post, but that's life for ya.

Anyway, I saw Guild Mum/Sephrenia had found new info on how the requirement for the new mini pet achievement has been lowered to 75, down from 100 - yay! None of my characters will complete the achievement anytime soon - as I think I've said before, my druid is leading the race with 63 - but 75 is definitely a much friendlier amount.

Now we'll just have to wait and see if anything happens with the 100 mounts achievement :) I have no idea what amount is possible, or if lowering from 100 to 75 would be a good idea - note: I'm not saying anything will happen, just speculating and keeping half a finger crossed! 50, for my moonkin, was cake - basically a matter of finances. That, and having done the attunements and/or grinds for the home cities, Kurenai, Ogri'la and Netherwing.

Even though I'm more into mini pets than mounts, I've been playing with the thought of getting tailoring and engineering on a warlock, and simply get a shitload of mounts on one character. I guess a pally would be OK too, but tailoring on a paladin... It's been done, but if I'm playing a class without any ranged attack, I at least want to be hot in plate. No mount crazy lock right now, though - I have my WoW-hands full with druid and draenei huntress (78 last night - tamed the Sapphire Hive Queen, since huge pets rock, and had to put her in the stables after a while due to a growing fear of getting seizures from looking at the huge, fluttering orange thing that took up most of my screen), and that will most likely be the case for a while.

Rock, Paper, Dailies.

2009-01-07T21:21:00.003+01:00

I've been laying low on the WoW-front today, so nothing much to blog about. But there's still a few things, some WoW, others not:

Will have to organize the bank character I send all my mining materials to - she's had hundreds of metal bars and stone waiting in her inbox ever since I leveled mining on my nelf huntress before Christmas - simply by buying her a lot of new bags and bank space.
I believe I'll be changing history a bit when I'm moving house in late February, since I actually packed my first box today. Whenever I've moved in the past, I've usually done all of my packing at the last minute, ending up shoving a lot of stuff into plastic bags, but my fancy wine glasses are now safely wrapped in old newspapers, and put in an actual box!
Plackers are amazing! For a long time I've thought they were the most useless invention ever, and used regular floss, but my sister praised them when I saw her during Christmas, and I finally gave in to the Plackers craze. No more putting half of both hands in my mouth!
There should be, and hopefully will be, less WoW-playing for a while, at least during the day. I really want and need to finish my final school work, and graduate before, you know, the four horsemen decide I've postponed things long enough. Go, tort law! But evenings are still dailies- and general silliness-time :)

Right, time to make some more tea, do a couple of dailies on Bunnyhop (dual-wielding the Fang of Truth has been presented as the shiznit for non-hit capped BM-hunters for a while, and since they look cool too, I have no choice but to try and get honored with the Wyrmrest Accord by 78), and then I'll be off to bed with Game Theory and the Law.

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

2009-01-06T15:38:00.000+01:00

Due to renting a couple of movies last night, while I was out for sushi, I didn't find enough time to get my druid started in Icecrown. I did, however, do a few dailies, and open the Mysterious Egg she's had hatching in her bags since before Christmas. In my last egg I got the stupid Aged Yolk, but yesterday I looted an über cool Proto-Drake Whelp! It has the special ability of following your character up in the air while you're out flying, and that's very nice. However, it can't keep up with epic flying speed, and I guess it ends up getting dismissed if you get too far away from it. It's a nice special effect, though, since all the old "flying" pets - parrots, whelps and so on - can't really fly.

The druid now has 63 mini pets, and I'm getting a bit curious as to how many people will be able to complete the Lil' Game Hunter achievement I've read about over at MMO-Champion (scroll down a bit, it's under "Achievements", right above the pics of the blue dragonhawk mounts).

I really don't feel like spending a lot of RL cash on in game-stuff, so all of the TCG-loot and pets from old Collector's Editions are out of bounds. New CE's are of course OK, since I already got the WotLK one :D But no ebay for me.

In total, I think I'll only be able to round up about 84 pets, not counting Mojo, Phoenix Hatchling and the two engineering specialization pets, so getting those 100 mini pets together will certainly be an achievement! I'm assuming they'll add a few extra pets, attainable in game, to make the achievement possible to complete without going on ebay, since I'm not sure it's even possible to get 100 at the moment (without buying TCG-cards, I mean).

Through a bit of, you know, looking around on the interwebz, I stumbled upon myself in Lady Jess's blog roll! As stated earlier, I'm in no way after getting linked, but still: Cool! and /wave!

A bit of catching up to do.

2009-01-05T14:33:00.005+01:00

I got back from spending Christmas and New Year's at my parents' a couple of days ago, and am trying to get over the fact that I don't have a dishwasher :D

As I left here on the 23rd, and didn't get back until the 2nd, I totally missed out on the Winter Veil gifts, and couldn't really get the Merrymaker-title this time around. I do hope they'll change the achievement to include something other than Crashin' & Thrashin' next Christmas, though, since I'm quite sure I'll be able to take part in the festivities then. Who knows, in a few years one of my characters might even be flying around on a Violet Proto-Drake! But yeah, a few years, if ever. My druid's only missing the Hallowed Helmet for Hallowed Be Thy Name, though, and she's in the Brew of the Month club, so she's off to a good start, for a casual player!

The title of this blog is (as you can see) Druid in Denial, but the subtitle is quite important: I'm a casual player, but I have more alts than would be considered healthy by a lot of people. Also, I don't really have an ambition to change the history of WoW-playing with this blog. It's a trivial little thing I spend a bit of time on every now and then, and of course it's great if other people enjoy it too.
However, I just wanted to point out that I'm leaving all the "serious" stuff to others, who do it better. It's not that I don't read up on specs, gear, rotations and tactics when I need to, it's more about me loving the silly parts of the game, smelling the roses and whatnot :) And, RL changes recently and in the near future have left me with a lack of motivation for instancing and raiding. That may very well change in the future, when things stabilize, 'cause it's so much fun, but for now my play time is more or less a solo spring break.

My moonkin has been on something of a vacation lately, since I've been working on the new huntress for a while, but I think I'll take her out for a spin tonight - there ought to be some cool balance gear in Icecrown!

And ooh! A /wave to Negathle, who put me on her blogroll! Seriously, if you want the dish on MM hunters, and general opinions from a far more seasoned hunter than myself, her blog is, you know, it. I've read her blog (and Pike's and BRK's blogs) for quite a while, learning and laughing a lot, and while I'm not really after getting linked, it left me a bit excited, in a terrified sort of way.

OK, long, slightly incoherent post ends here. I'm off to find out if my favourite sushi place is open.

The Crazy Parade.

2008-12-20T13:56:00.003+01:00

Today started out really good: I woke up all fresh from a night's good sleep, and had a quiet morning in front of the online papers, since my flatmate watched some alpine skiing event on TV in the other room.

Last night I got my draenei huntress a couple of new pets, since I realised a gorilla might be a bit annoying for everyone else if I use him for questing in Northrend, and quite stupid for general BM-hunter 101 activity in an instance. Not that I will ever give him up, though - I love him like crazy - but for precision work I'll probably be using another pet.

So, what's new in the stable?

First, I went to Winterspring, and picked up a Frostsaber Pride Watcher:

I really wanted to name him Sam Spandex, but that was a no go, so Spandex it is.

After that, I flew all the way down to Un'goro Crater (one would think I'd had enough of that place after camping for my gorilla, but no way!), to see if I could find another ferocious companion:

Lo and behold, the tamed version of that endlessly scary and annoying thing that squished you super dead around level 50 (the vanilla-WoW version of the Fel Reaver, I suppose) - a Devilsaur! This one doesn't have a name yet, but I'll get around to that.

A couple of days ago my huntress and her gorilla friend was in Zangarmarsh, kickin' some butt, and they stumbled upon Marshlight Bleeders, who give you a glowing debuff. The result?
Discorilla!!!

And yeah, he's got a name now - Fonzarelli. As in Fonzie, or The Fonz. If I ever find an even cooler pet gorilla, I guess I'm going to have to name him (or her) Arthur.

The dangers of working from home...

2008-12-19T17:22:00.003+01:00

I just discovered it's Friday today. Whoops. Doesn't really make a difference in the long run, or the short run for that matter, but I was surprised, since I was convinced it was Thursday. I'm going to have to keep better track of things, so I won't miss the train on Tuesday :D

No, really, it would be dreadful to be stuck here - friggin' alone - during the holidays. Sure, I'd get my Winter Veil gifts, but that would be it...

Right now, I'm waiting for the oven to get warmed up, so I can make some dinner, and after eating, I plan to continue leveling my huntress. She's currently about half way into level 65, and I'm hoping to get her started in Northrend before the weekend is over. With the offline-time I have looming on the horizon (starting late Feb - early March, may go on for a while), it would be really nice to get her well on her way (maybe all the way) to 80 as soon as possible.

I'm still playing with the thought of trying out mobile broadband for a bit, once I've moved, to see if and how it works. If it does work, nothing much would change, WoW-wise. Time will tell.

Not enough mana!

2008-12-18T17:46:00.003+01:00

Right now, I'm a tiny bit too hungry to not go shopping for food, but my hair is a bit too wet (from showering) for me to want to go to the store immediately. So, here I am, making a post.

When I'm hungry, a number of things can happen:

Nothing. I calmly and patiently make sure I get something to eat soon-ish.
Full-on bitch mode. Nothing good can happen if you try to communicate with me, or just pass me on the street. Unless, of course, you're getting me something to eat.
Uncontrollable giggling. Everything is absolutely hilarious, no exceptions.

Right now, it's no. 3. WoWInsider has another "You know you play too much WoW if..."-article, and I just realised how I really want a "Ding!"-buddy IRL. You know, someone you run into every now and then, you go "Ding!", and they reply with a "Gratz!" - wouldn't that be just perfect? Too bad I don't have too many IRL-friends who would get it, and I guess even fewer would find it funny. I doubt I'll find it funny once I've had dinner, but still... It would be like an MMO equivalent of that Scrubs episode, where J.D. meets a patient with the same initials as his.

My baby!

2008-12-17T13:06:00.005+01:00

Guess who finally decided to show up?

I'm in love. Seriously. Haven't decided on a name yet, but the important part is done - in my opinion one of the coolest skins/colours in the game! <3

(For anyone interested: I started camping at about 1 AM this morning, then there was a break for weekly maintenance, and I logged on again at about 10.20 AM. Uhk'loc spawned at approximately 1 PM, I abandoned my old pet, cleared the three mobs that were in the way, did the trap->wait for cooldown->aggro->2nd trap->tame-routine, and there you go!)

Off to level my new pet, I guess :)

Not very exciting, no.

2008-12-17T11:47:00.005+01:00

Guess what? I'm still camping the gorilla. No, I haven't camped constantly since last night - Wednesday is maintenance day in Europe, so the server went offline at 3 AM, and was back up when I decided to try and log in at about 10.20 AM. At that time, I was alone in Un'goro Crater, so I'm assuming no one has been here and snatched him away.

A lot of people suggest that one levels up fishing while camping in there, to fight the boredom, and that would have been great, if it hadn't been for the fact that my darling huntress hasn't fished a whole lot before. I think she's got about 52 in fishing... But I'll get it up, some day. So, instead of fishing, I melee down the handful of gorillas that spawn around the spot where I'm standing, slowly getting up the skill in 2-handed axes (and the defense skill, of course). I do kind of wish I had brought several different melee weapons, though. Also, this is a pretty good way to get rugged leather for the Winter Boots people should be wanting this season!

What's really important.

2008-12-17T01:19:00.005+01:00

OK, so... I have a recently dinged level 80 moonkin, a bunch of level 70s just waiting to get moving in Northrend, the Feast of Winter Veil goin on, and what am I doing? I'm camping the spawn point of a rare gorilla on my level 64 huntress. Looking good, aren't we?

Sadly, my faithful Fonzie will be abandoned the moment Uhk'loc spawns, and I'm obviously keeping him on passive - it would be so dreadful seeing the blue-white beauty die from thunderstomp.

I'm hoping that a lot of hunters are either doing Winter Veil stuff, or are grinding to 78-ish to try and get Loque'nahak, so that no one comes along to steal my baby.

(Yeah, yeah, not the best screenshot, but the boring ss kind of illustrates how boring it actually is to camp one of these rare spawns. And he's only on a 5-8 hour timer! Luckily, I have a blog to mess around with.)

It wasn't just me, apparently.

2008-12-16T15:09:00.003+01:00

Weird morning. I went to sleep quite late last night - showered, and read a few pages in some book - and was a bit worried I'd oversleep, just because I had arranged to see a friend early today. That, however, was not an issue. At about 6.20 AM I was shook awake by what I thought was the construction work in the railway tunnel they're building beneath our house, and since the activity in said tunnel has been quite loud at times, I went back to sleep for another hour. Later, when I met up with my friend, she asked me "Did the earthquake wake you up?", and I finally managed to add things up, realising that construction work probably doesn't make your bed sway for 10 seconds! The papers say it was a 4.7 - the highest in Sweden since 1904.

Christmas preparations are coming along rather nicely: 2 ½ gifts done, 2 ½ to go! Train tickets were booked a couple of months ago, and since I'll be away until January 2nd, I've even arranged for my mail to be sent to my parents (which obviously is where I'm going) for the duration of my stay.

OK, nonsense, OT, personal post today, but it's what I've got for now. I believe it's time for a quick nap now, and later the Feast of Winter Veil awaits. :)

Am I tired? Don't know, better not check.

2008-12-15T15:20:00.004+01:00

I only slept about four hours last night, due to some RL turbulence, but oddly enough, I'm not very tired. At least not as long as I keep myself busy. After spending some time on the phone, and reading stuff online, I think I'm going to make my self look a bit less like an unmade bed, and go out on the town to see if I can find some Christmas presents.

WoW-wise, I don't have a lot to say - I'm kind of excited about the Winter Veil event, and will check it out later tonight - mostly I'm just sick of my own voice, in general.

Ah, I just got a message from a friend - we'll be having coffee tomorrow morning, and I think I'll postpone the Christmas shopping until then. It'll be nice to actually meet someone in person, for a change - it's been a while, since everyone's so caught up in the pre-Christmas-craze.

SWE???

2008-12-13T18:51:00.003+01:00

Yes, I'm swedish, no, I'm not one of those people. And, most importantly, I don't feel obliged to talk to you just because you happen to live in the same country as me. When I hang with people online, wallowing in the swedishness we may or may not have in common is not my number one priority. The game, music, movies, food, general silliness - yes! SWE??? No. And no, I'm not going to help you simply because you're swedish.

/rant off

I believe this happens almost every time I decide to play my nelf huntress - Nysnö. I have brought her out of retirement for a bit, to level mining on her, instead of skinning (which is one of my new hunter's professions). Suppose I may as well get used to it, and keybind /dnd.

Other than this rather trivial issue, I'm kind of enjoying playing her again. My draenei huntress still kicks her ass, but the nelf has her charms too :)

Weird Science.

2008-12-11T11:43:00.004+01:00

Just found this, after seeing what I at first thought was a joke at Lady Jess' place.

So, how many male draenei will have a sex change? To me, most other races are quite equal when it comes to the look of the different sexes, but I've always had a rather hard time understanding why people choose the big, blue, self righteous look. It's like a smurf version of a not-so-incredible Hulk. Oh well, people are different, and so are their preferences when it comes to picking a WoW-character.

I doubt that I'll change the look of any of my girls (well, I do have one male character - I finally started that male dwarf hunter - but he's just level 6, and already perfect) - since I don't really feel that I've made any huge mistakes when it comes to skin colour or eye shape, and I have certainly not made any mistakes big enough to pay RL-cash to adjust them! But I can understand that there are people who want to make changes - I'm guessing that a person who've named one of his/her actual characters "Trklsie" just to show how little he/she cares, may also have chosen one of the ugly/angry faces, and is having regrets.

Still, though, I guess I can understand the sex change-thing. But it's bound to have interesting effects on RP-servers!

I really need to stop QQing online, this is getting silly.

2008-12-10T00:03:00.003+01:00

I've spent most of the evening trying to organize my bank characters, and cleaning up the inventories and mailboxes of some low level alts, and I'm planning to open up another tab in the guildbank. I've also spent a little too much gold in the past few days, so I've done some dailies on the druid. I did the Oracle dailies, the cooking daily, the Kalu'ak ones, and the two I've found for Wyrmrest Accord, and unfortunately, my computer seems to enjoy the trips through Northrend less and less each time I move around a bit there. My fps in Dalaran rarely goes above 15 if I'm moving, and if I'm standing perfectly still it can get up to 35 - yay!

So, trying to make my future time away from WoW not seem so dreadful, I thought to myself how I'm not really seeing the new expansion from its best side anyway, because of my crappy computer. OK, fair enough. But then it hit me like a rotten egg on a bad clown (they all are, btw): If I'm ever going to be able to play the way I'd like to, not only will I have to get a real broadband connection, I'll have to buy a new computer too :´´´( Way to make myself depressed! Well, I guess that all this will make me even more determined to find a job (any job!) as quickly as possible after I graduate. Job -> apartment -> broadband -> computer -> ? -> profit!

I suppose most people don't consider playing WoW a human right, and that I should be happy about roof over my head and food on the table, especially now, with a financial crisis going on and all that, but they're wrong, oh so wrong. ;)

/cry even more

2008-12-09T14:17:00.002+01:00

Sigh. It seems I will be without a real broadband connection when I've moved. That was not something I had expected, but I guess I'll just have to roll with the punches, meaning I'll have to prepare for a few months of not playing. >.< Still, I have until late February, minus Christmas and new year's (and the days in between), and should be able to get quite a few fun things done. What I will miss the most, is the people. I do have a few friends on the server - not a gazillion since I haven't really made an effort lately, due to studies and other RL-stuff, but a few - and I'll miss them like crazy.

On a slightly different note, it really annoys me that I'll be offline during the months when people will just race through - and past - heroics, so that I'll be waaay behind if and when I get back. Maybe I'll give the mobile broadband-thing a shot, after all. Would be nice to be able to take part in the seasonal events, and log in to say hi to people every once in a while.

Stupid Swedish countryside, and its lack of cheap and easily accesible broadband! Also, curse the lack of unexpected piles of cash falling into my lap. That really would have solved my problem.

/cry

2008-12-05T18:22:00.003+01:00

Oh, crappers. I'll be moving house some time in February next year, and I may not be able to get a broadband internet connection at the new place (which is hopefully quite temporary)... During the past 48 hours, I've been looking for a solution, and have come up with three possibilities:

Dial-up 56k modem - my WoW-time would be limited to AH and perhaps some low-level activity, apparently with serious lag. Sucky is just the beginning. Plus, I don't really enjoy playing the AH.
Mobile broadband - I've heard it's supposed to be a bit unstable, and considering the place I'm moving to is located in the backwaters of the most backwatery backwaters, I doubt I'll even get connected long enough to make it worth the money. WoW is supposed to work OK on it, though, if one manages to establish a connection.
Real, hard core broadband. It will cost a bit to get started, and it would require other people than me to give a green light, but it would be so sweet. Don't know if this one has any chance of happening, though.

Anyway, I'm going to try and savour every moment I have online, and not afk in AH while watching a movie. If I end up not having any WoW at all this spring, Buffy and the PS2 will be my best friends for a while...

Back to huntress - level 52 and counting :)

What's with the creepiness?

2008-12-02T23:50:00.003+01:00

Today my baby huntress dinged 47 (and 46 - gorilla pet rocks!), and I've been doing selected quests in Tanaris. Weird thing happened when I landed in Gadgetzan, by the way. I got on my mount, decided to head down to the "escort the turtle"-quest, and notice someone is following me. Another draenei hunter, a male, on an elekk. And yes, he seems to have put me on /follow, since he copies every twist and turn I make. Half way to my goal, I get a whisper: "were are u goin?". I'm a bit annoyed, so I answer: "very special places". A minute later, the guy is gone. What I'm wondering is this: What was the point of that? Mmo-stalking of a complete stranger? Jeez.

Anyway, I've had a cup of tea, and just about to finish a few quests in Hinterlands. No druid today, it seems - maybe I'll log on her just to do today's inscription research, but the dailies will have to wait until tomorrow.

Boo-yah!!!

2008-11-28T22:27:00.003+01:00

OK, so I didn't start a new hunter the other day, simply because I didn't feel like sorting out the stuff I kept on the character I would have deleted. Instead, I leveled up my draenei to 32, and got her a fancy gorilla! His name is Fonzie, and with him, leveling is even more of a breeze.

Seriously, I don't think I ever had this much fun while leveling my nelf huntress - around level 35-40 she started pulling aggro off her cat, and it got a bit boring holding back. With this one, with Fonzie, I can take down 3-4 mobs at a time, no problem. Also, all other potential pets have gotten little special twists, making them all that much more fun.

And now, back to Thunderstomping stuff! Weeeeee!!!

Stupid brain.

2008-11-26T08:21:00.002+01:00

Last night some deluded part of my mind thought it was an excellent idea to play WoW at 8 AM today, not realising that today is Wednesday. Frickin' maintenance day. Not that I wasn't getting up anyway, but I simply don't like plans that don't work out. Oh well, time for proper breakfast and studies, I guess. Was going to save that for about 11-ish, but yeah, we'll have to move that one around - thanks, brain!

Anyway, the reason that I was so excited to get up and play a bit before my work day starts, is a bit silly, maybe even slightly stupid. I'd kind of like another hunter. I know, I've got my hands full with my druid, and with leveling the draenei, my beautiful Bunnyhop, but this new one would probably be sitting somewhere at levels 1-12, until his/her time comes. Now, what would be so special about this hunter, you ask? Well, here it goes: It would be a dwarf! I have 2 accounts in my possession, and so far no dwarf has set his/her foot in there, at least not past the planning stage, and I have decided it's time to end this madness. Don't know if it will be a he or a she yet, though.

I'm quite familiar with the male dwarf sounds and animations, since my flatmate has a pally of that kind, but I have very little experience when it comes to female dwarves, so I might just check on Youtube to see if it might be possible to see some examples. I mean, seriously, people put up all kinds of crap there, so why not female dwarf animations? Still, I'm leaning towards a male, since I'd love to have a character with a real beard!

Flying, hunting, choosing.

2008-11-24T14:06:00.006+01:00

I'm in the middle of trying to understand, and apply, the Learned Hand rule, and am getting a tiny bit frustrated, so it appears to be time for blogging.

Yesterday my druid regrew her wings by turning 77, and learning Cold Weather Flying, and I spent quite a bit of time exploring Northrend, until I got the World Explorer achievement - it comes with a title, and you get a tabard for exploring Northrend. The tabard is very meh, and I'll probably bank it as soon as I've made room for it (I save a LOT of junk), but the title's fun, even though it's quite easy to get. Not everyone feels like devoting a day's gameplay (roughly, and obviously not /played time :D) to traveling around all of Azeroth to find every little nook and cranny, and the completionist in me is mighty proud. Also, I'd love to get the Loremaster achievement done, but I need to do another 700 quests in Azeroth for that, a lot more Northrend, and some scattered quests in Outland, so that would definitely take a while. Also, I'd like to get her to 80 within the next few days, so I highly doubt that I'll be doing any quests that don't give me xp or cash anytime soon.

Also, yesterday I logged on to my draenei huntress, and did some easy going questing in Ashenvale. She's 28, and moving up fairly fast. She is a hunter, after all! Now, I do have a level 70 hunter - a female night elf - and she and I have had a bit of fun, but somehow I can't muster up any passion for her. A lot of people would say that a hunter is a hunter is a hunter, but that is so not the case. Not only does my draenei girl get extra hit rating and a HoT, but she also has a sleeker, cooler look, compared to her nelf sister. It's not that I have anything against female night elves as such - I wouldn't want my druid to be any other race (although, a gnome druid would be adorable) - but when it comes to hunters, they just don't cut it for me. The innate reclusiveness of nelfs works great for the druid, but I'd really like a hunter with a bit more "oomph!", and along comes Bunnyhop, and her fearsome boar Hurricane!

Of course, I wont be deleting my nelf huntress - I'll probably level up her engineering a bit, and maybe do some farming - but I wont be farming for Loque'nahak or Nuramoc with her - I'm saving that work for the draenei!

Back to the books, need to get this working in my brain before it's time for dinner.

Just another one!

2008-11-19T11:28:00.004+01:00

I overslept today. Not as badly as yesterday, but still. Got up at about 9.45, when I had planned to be up and about at 8. Still an amazing improvement compared to yesterday, though. Anyway, I'm having some tea, and in a bit I'll be off to the library, after dropping off a package at the post office.

Ever since I found out about Stinker, and what I had to do to get him (I've wanted a pet skunk from the moment I first saw them as critters in the draenei zone) I have been looking for new mini pets to get my hands on, and I've collected quite a few so far - feel free to check my collection (which spans mutliple characters) at WarcraftPets.com - including Stinker. The day before yesterday I finally got my druid to Dalaran - not by portal, but by turning 74 - and I've started working on my Kirin Tor Familiar. He's kind of the reward for completing this achievement, and so far I have found one of the books. I just tried to log in, to do a quick check of the different spawn locations before I have to be off, but alas, the servers didn't come online at 11 am as usual - they'll be down until 1 pm, and by then I hope to be on the bus. Hopefully I'll get enough work done today, to feel like I can work on this little project for a while tonight! Should fit in nicely with a bit of fishing...

Eventually I'm going to have to level up to at least 76 - in Sholazar Basin there's a weird faction called The Oracles, and when one hits revered with these guys, one can buy a Mysterious Egg, which may contain one of four different mini pets, or just an Aged Yolk (eww). So, the required level for questing with these guys seems to be 76, which shouldn't be too hard to accomplish after getting some rested bonus while camping for books and doing some fishing. While doing that, there's always the chance I pick up one of these! Fishing sure does rock.

Right, I'm off to the library.

With a Song in My Heart!(?)

2008-11-18T14:17:00.004+01:00

This Tuesday has so far been slow, and off topic when it comes to this blog (which is just as it should be, since I have a lot of non-WoW-stuff to do). I got up a late, since I went to bed late, and have spent some time trying to figure out the next step in my "get a move on"-plan. I guess the obvious next step is just that: Get a move on. I just need to have lunch and a shower first.

The reason I stayed up so late last night was incredibly important: My druid finally reached level 74, and got to do the "going to Dalaran"-quest! Finally, the ultimate hearth spot! Of course, I've seen it before, on the beta, but now it's the real deal! It is a pity though, that there aren't any class trainers there, and no auction house. Well, I guess that would have been the final blow for Azeroth, and that would probably kill the game, in a way.

Now i don't really know what character to level- should I continue with the druid, and move on towards 80, or should I start levelling the mage, so she can get a bunch of low level alts to Dalaran at 74? Should I give the hunter or the rogue a bit of love, so that I get the farming going a bit? Ah, no. I have a feeling there'll be enough farming in the future, so I think I'll just stick to the druid for a while, and have fun doing a lot of new and fun quests. I did this quest last night - took 2 tries to figure out, but it was hilarious! Very Mario Kart!

You know what else is hilarious? My neighbour. She sings, and plays the piano. She plays quite well - seems to have some kind of classical training behind her - but the singing is, most of the time, just loud. About half an hour ago she almost had me rolling on the floor in fits of laughter when she did the title song from Phantom of the Opera. For a long time she was obsessed with "Wind Beneath My Wings" (Bette Midler song), and there's usually a lot of Bon Jovi and Aerosmith ballads from the early-mid nineties on her repertoir. Her playing+singing is only audible in the livingroom, so it's not really a big problem. It can get a bit repetitive after a while, though - three hours of "Did you ever know that you're my HEEEROOOO?" can make anyone feel a bit nauseous.

OK, I have to get going. I need to eat something, take a shower, get a package to the post office, and try to figure out my school work.

Checking off the list.

2008-11-17T10:55:00.002+01:00

Annoying morning. I stayed up waaay too late last night, but for a reason: There are a few "kill that named mob, get that drop from it" quests, that are heavily camped (and heavily ninja'd) these days, when everyone is doing them, and as I like to keep moving while levelling, I have simply postponed the completion of those quests. Anyway, at about 3AM the amount of players online has dropped significantly, and I could easily do Words of Power, The Assassination of Harold Lane, Cracking the Code, and Slay Loguhn - lots of nice XP and cash in my virtual pocket!

About the "annoying morning" thing: For some reason I couldn't open the Gmail website while being connected through my router, and I had to go through a bit too much dragging of cables and climbing on furniture before breakfast. Now Gmail works, and I'm going to have something to eat, and hope the rest of the day will be a walk in the park. I might even go for a walk in the park later - I really need to get some air.

While My Server Gently Weeps.

2008-11-15T19:50:00.005+01:00

Server restart. What to do? Blog.

Today's questing/exploring has so far been a bit sparse - I'm awfully old, and my body simply couldn't stand sitting in front of the computer screen all day, so I went out for a well needed walk earlier, did some dishes, and cooked myself a proper dinner.

By the way, I'm typing this on my laptop - since I grew tired of alt-tabbing between WoW and Firefox to check wowhead.com (in the middle of the unavoidable crappy fps that comes with everyone being online), I decided to connect the laptop to the router, and simply be my own QuestHelper (I have that addon too, though - as much as I enjoy the lore, it's just great getting a big green dot showing me where to go).

I managed to reach level 72 surprisingly early last night, somewhere in the Star's Rest area in Dragonblight. That place is also so pretty... It's got a lot of the look from Winterspring, but still with its very own angle - I love it. Anyway, I'm taking it quite easy - not that I'm standing around fishing for hours, but I'm trying to take time to do most (if not all) of the quests, explore, and just look at everything - since I'm not in a raiding guild, and hence don't have the pressure on me to ding asap, I'm just going to try and play through the content.

So, soon I've done all of Borean Tundra, and then I'll be heading back to Dragonblight. Eventually, I might even try and get into some dungeons - the screenshots I've seen of the Nexus are amazing, and instances are fun (if one manages to find a nice+reasonably talented group).

A last note: I've really missed the keyboard of my laptop. It's nothing special - a regular laptop keyboard - but the keys are so much softer than those on my PC one, and there's a really nice, worn spot on the space bar. If I ever write my great Swedish novel, I'll so be doing it on a laptop.

Time to check if the server is back up, me thinks.

Delirious.

2008-11-14T20:15:00.004+01:00

Ah, it's pretty, so pretty. And my moonkin is a dream to level. She can take a beating from a few mobs at a time, nuke things down quite fast, and the downtime is basically non-existant - Borean Tundra is cake! The lag + low fps can be a pain at times, but the environments, the fancy new skins, and the quests are so effing great I don't really care! She's gotten to 71 so far - I'm taking it quite easy, but I'd like to get to 74 soonish - Dalaran awaits :)

My mage has been chosen as my no. 2 leveling project, so when the Borean Tundra starts to feel too harsh, I head over to the Howling Fjord. This rather newly dinged mage doesn't have the kind of semi-fancy equipment my druid has, though, so it's a bit slower, with a few more deaths. Not as tricky as Hellfire Pen could be at 58, but those few mid 60s quest rewards can make even my badass mage squishy...

Downside: My home server was full, and queued, last night, and it's the same thing tonight. Serious queues, too - last night I was no. 420! Hopefully it'll get better in a while, but right now there's really no way to easily switch between my two accounts.

Anyway, back to the game - aiming at getting to 72 sometime within the next 24 hours, which shouldn't be a problem :)

Hi-tech Durid.

2008-11-12T10:45:00.005+01:00

Sadly it seems the day has come for my graphics card to retire. I haven't managed to find the correct drivers for it (no CD anywhere, and not online, since it's oooold), and now everything is either stretched out vertically (the regular interface, Firefox and so on), or horisontally (WoW). Also, since it's a bit older than what Blizzard recommends for WotLK, and since my fps has been heartbreaking for a while, I've decided to get a new one.

Well, semi-new, since I can't afford any of the ones I actually want. So, I'll be getting a Nvidia Geforce 9500GT, upgrading from the fancy MSI Geforce 7300GT - better late than never, right? Guess it's time to keep my fingers crossed that the rest of my darling computer will survive this ordeal.

Another reason for not getting a better one, is the vain hope that I'll be able to get a whole new computer sometime next year. I would love it so dearly, and tenderly keep it as dust-free as I can! Hence, also keeping fingers crossed for an improved spring economy!

Sooner than expected.

2008-11-11T14:15:00.002+01:00

Once again I've found a mail from my favourite online game store in my inbox, and today they're telling me that I'll be getting the expansion in the mail on Wednesday, i.e. tomorrow! I'm a grown up (no, really!), so I wasn't too bummed that I wouldn't be able to go through the whole "World Server down"-craze that is most certainly going to start a few moments past midnight, and go on well into the afternoon on Thursday (everyone and their mother is going to be online, so it's bound to happen), but now I'm actually a bit stoked about being able to at least try to get to Northrend early!

About the WotLK-preparation: I just spent about 400 gold on friggin' mithril bars and solid stone, to level blacksmithing on my level 39 pally, so I might have to try and make some more gold :D I believe tonight and tomorrow evening will be filled with as many dailies as I can stand, and since the druid has access to basically all of them (Ogri'la, Skyguard, Netherwing, Isle of Quel'danas and cooking&fishing), and has epic flying, she's going to be doing a lot of the dirty work. I'll probably get the rogue out too, for a bit. Epic flying really speeds things up.

Also, still have to try and find the original CD for the graphics card. The basement is not too tempting, though...

RL: I've found an actual idea for my big, final paper-thingie! At least I hope so, will have to do a bit of research, but it doesn't look too bad.

Monday, Monday.

2008-11-10T20:10:00.002+01:00

Meh. I haven't been down in the basement to look for that CD - yet - so my WoW-graphics are still slightly fucked. But it doesn't have any real impact on my gameplay, other than the fact that I'll be endlessly delighted the day I actually get it to work, or get a new computer, and get to see all the fancy colours I know are there.

In a few minutes I plan to go out for something to eat. I had a fancy McDonald's lunch earlier, and I'm still a bit full, so I'll probably just get something small. Fruit, maybe? While waiting for the rain to stop (it won't, though, so I'll have to go out anyway) I'm camping a vendor in Aerie Peak, so I can get these blacksmithing plans for my paladin. She's at 225, and those plans are supposedly the cheapest way to get to 235. They're apparently "limited supply", so I have to camp for them /yawn. Anyway, I think I'll check a couple more times, and then I'll head out.

Thursday will come, I'm sure of it.

2008-11-10T11:25:00.004+01:00

I just checked my inbox, and found a "we'll be sending you the stuff you ordered"-mail. More specifically, a mail stating that I'll be recieving two Wrath of the Lich King - Collector's Edition on Thursday! That's right, two boxes, one for each account - Frosty galore!

Hopefully my darling computer will survive - I think I'll have to try and find the original installation CD:s for my graphics card, though - there has been a few too many glitches while playing lately... Arakkoas, epic elekks and Cenarion Hippogryphs have certain parts blackened out, and I believe that happened after a panic reinstallation of the card, using some drivers I found online. So, I 'm keeping my fingers crossed that the original CD is still in the basement, and that it will be some kind of magical solution to my problem. Honestly, this baby has been shivering and shaking so much in the last year, I would've bought a new computer if I could afford it. Maybe sometime next year, when I've found a job, and gotten settled in a new place.

Of Tauren and Boots.

2008-11-05T22:43:00.003+01:00

Just remembered: This morning I briefly logged on to one of my few horde alts, a tauren druid who goes by the name Moonberry. I got her to level 13, and then I had to go start my "work day", but I do really hope I'll get her levelled up properly one day - female tauren druids look amazing!

This afternoon I bought a new pair of winter boots. Not WoW-related at all, but if they were a piece of equipment, they'd definitely be epic. They're bound to keep my feet warm and fabulous for a few winters - at least two, hopefully more than three! :)

En attendant WotLK

2008-11-05T17:08:00.005+01:00

Over the last few days I've been laying low, WoW-wise. Not a very big surprise, considering Hallow's End left me exhausted, and without a new title (poo!). Also, my studies actually seem to be moving forward, which has required quite a bit of focus. I spent yesterday evening getting my human priestess up to level 50, and now she only has the (in my opinion) really fun areas left:

Felwood - OK, I guess some of those demon guys (if not all of them) are a bit too resilient to shadow damage, but it looks sooo cool.
Un'goro Crater - A lot of quests to do, all in one go (maybe two), as you move in a circle around the place.
Western Plaguelands - A lot of quests, of course, really close to eachother, and quite a bit of runecloth - yay for tailoring!
Winterspring - Let's grind some funky reps! OK, so I may not feel like grinding all the way to exalted with Timbermaw Hold, but I love the quests in Winterspring, and the blindingly white environment.
Silithus - On a second thought, no. I don't like Silithus. Only good reason to go there is to pick up this cooking recipe from a quest, to get cooking to 300 without too much fuss.
Eastern Plaguelands - This is where I usually do that last grind to 58, killing Scourge and gathering even more runecloth, while enjoying the (yes, once again) effing amazing environment. I like the spookiness of the place, how it feels abandoned, and how one can almost flinch in surprise if actually running into another player in somewhere like Plaguewood. It's just got a really nice atmosphere.

Still, I don't know if I'll feel like doing the final grind all the way to Outland before the expansion comes, which is next week! I'd really like to try and grind some cash (lately, it seems, I've spent it as soon as I've had it), so I can upgrade skills and stuff like that without giving it another thought, and not having to focus on gold for the first few levels in Northrend. On the other hand, I don't really plan on spending a whole lot before getting to 80, except on riding skills, since I honestly don't find it necessary to be fully enchanted when you're running around in quested greens.

Anyway, I'm probably going to try and get enough cash to pay for slow flying for a mage and a shaman, and hopefully about 1000 gold for each of the 70 chars. Should be enough.

Now, I'm going to spend some time trying not to fall asleep, while waiting for my flatmate to get back from work. I made dinner yesterday, and the day before, so I'm expecting food, dammit!

Also: Yay Obama!

Now, let this be a lesson!

2008-11-02T16:17:00.004+01:00

I stayed up rather late last night, hoping and wishing that my druid would open a treat bag or a crudely wrapped whatever, and find a Hallowed Helm inside. This, of course, did not happen. Instead, my level 48 priest got a helm, so, I now have 6 characters with the Sinister Calling achievement completed, and only one of them is level 70 - my nelf hunter. What do we learn from this? A classic, obviously: Random loot is random. Le QQ.

Anyway, I'm pretty much over it - considering I only pugged the Headless Horseman three times, getting about fifteen kills, and only trick-or-treated and did the fire-daily, I did pretty well: Next year I'll just have one thing to complete on the druid to get the title, quite a few of my alts got a boost in the form of one or two levels, and ten(!) of my characters got a Squashling! Also, all the switching-like-a-crazy-person between alts made me realise which one to delete in favour of my future Death Knight. (A poor, forgotten human mage, abandoned at level 23. Unfortunately her name is boring, so I'll have to come up with a new one.)

Some time last night I noticed a rather common conversation in trade chat:

Person A: "Why do people talk so much crap in trade chat? It's called "Trade chat", and should be for just trading..."
Person B, C, D...: "Who cares, yada yada. L2P, u r stoopid!"
Person P: "Why do people have to point that out - don't they know it just makes things worse?"

And this is where I just had to jump in:

Me: "The first rule of trade chat is "You do not talk about trade chat"."
(If you ask me, this is a well known pop culture reference - not for my parents' generation, but certainly should be for the WoW community. For the uninformed: I made a cheap parody on some famous lines from the movie Fight Club.)

After this I get a whisper:
"but thats just what u r doin", to which I reply:
"I think you missed a highly relevant pop culture reference."
Now, the answer I get back, I don't really know what to do with:
"NK u should get a relative life".
What? I make a joke, including a reference to something outside WoW, and I'm told (I assume) to get a life? There's really no way to please the average idiot, is there?

Of course, I can't take for granted that everyone will understand and appreciate my sense of humour, but what's up with sending rude whispers to random people in trade? I guess I should also point out that I very rarely say anything in trade, so I'm not exactly a "public" person. I mean, the Dirge-spammers are begging for it.

So, rant over. I'm off to buy sushi.

Sigh.

2008-11-01T17:38:00.002+01:00

This day is starting to make me exhausted... My druid only needs one more item to get her "...the Hallowed"-title - the Hallowed Helm - and I've spent all day trying to get it. I've trick-or-treated at least seven times, and I've pugged the Horseman twice, unfortunately with only four summons each time, since the healer in the first group disconnected (and I had to take over), and in the second group I was the one with no summon left. The helm dropped with the second group, but someone else got it. :´(

On the bright side, though: While it was cake healing the well geared warrior tank in the first group, I managed to heal a pally tank, who had 9.5k hp and 390 defense rating >.< , and his buddies, a rogue and two warriors (one 65), all of whom loved to steal aggro, and stand in the whirlwind... Now, with most groups, it's easy to solve the problem by going "hey, try not to take so much damage, step out of the whirlwind", but since this happened to be a group where everyone but me preferred communicating in italian, this didn't really make any difference. The tank only died once, though, and the boss went down a millisecond later, so it still worked ok.

Anyway, since Hallow's End ends tomorrow morning, at 4AM, I'm planning to trick or treat every hour until then, which gives me... 10 more chances to get the helm. Not bad, but considering I haven't gotten it earlier on the druid, I can't say it feels very good either. I'd rather have the event continue for another week...

There's always next year, but the perfectionist in me really wants to see that achievement completed, and the title above my main character's head, and not later, but as soon as possible! So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed - since I don't really have the energy to try and get a spot in a pug without being able to summon, it seems to be all there's left to do...

More changes.

2008-10-30T13:47:00.004+01:00

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.

2008-10-30T11:55:00.007+01:00

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!

2008-10-14T15:48:00.003+02:00

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.

2008-10-14T13:02:00.004+02:00

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.

2008-10-10T20:42:00.003+02:00

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...

2008-10-08T14:02:00.002+02:00

...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...

2008-10-08T13:05:00.005+02:00

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.

2008-10-02T13:37:00.005+02:00

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?

In the Meantime.

2008-09-29T15:26:00.004+02:00

I spent most of yesterday pvp-ing with my druid, in battlegrounds. Alterac Valley weekend - w00t! Managed to scrape together a little bit more than 9000 honour, partly by selling marks. All battlegrounds except one were AV, the "one" was Warsong Gulch, and I was convinced it was going to last forever. The hordelings started camping our graveyard, in an attempt to leave a clear path for their flagcarrier. Luckily, the clear path worked both ways, and we won. 3 marks, which, together with the 2 I had in the bank, led to 1570 extra honour.

My goal is this fancy staff, and yeah, yeah, it'll be old the second Northrend opens, but I still want it. If nothing else, it should be great for levelling. About 9000 honour to go, so I guess I should be able to buy it in a couple of days. I'm also planning to get the whole season 2 Wyrmhide set together, simply in order to not look like a total clown when I'm saving Northrend from undead, and bonding with walruses.

What's to come.

2008-09-23T12:24:00.003+02:00

So, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but: I got a beta-key a while back. I haven't used it much though, thinking it might be a bit like having a sneak-peek at the gifts before Christmas - basically just logged on to my copied druid, took the ship to one of the starting zones in Northrend (having trouble remembering what the place was called :S), and then the server collapsed, and I haven't bothered with the druid again. I also started a Death Knight, a gnome with pink power puffs, and I loved her. But I'm probably going to wait until the actual expansion is here before I try a DK again - the first few quests, the story, and the environment were all so... Magic? I basically want it to feel as fresh and exciting as possible when I start my "real" baby DK.

Anyway. I just started patching my beta again, and I've copied the druid once more - I've gotten a couple of things done that I hadn't the last time I copied her, and I think I'm going to try and do some basic exploring this time around. No quests, that is. I've levelled enough alts to know that most quests don't get better the second time around. I should be able to survive long enough to see stuff, and maybe I'll check out inscription. The druid is probably going to stick with alchemy in WotlK, but my up and coming priest has "Scribe" written all over her.