*sneaks back in*

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)

Summer leads to...

...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!

What to learn from rejection.

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.

The Basics.

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.

The List.

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.

No more Brain? Or all Brain from now on?

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".

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

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.

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.

More changes.

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

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

The Nerd in Me

Instead of making that cup of tea, I made some changes on this blog. I got an Entrecard, and little tooltip-thingies for my links. Don't know if there's any real point having the first one, but now it's there, anyway. The tooltip-thingies, on the other hand, I find most functional. Most of all when it comes to Wowhead-links. It really annoys me when I have to open yet another tab for every piece of equipment, just because I want to see and compare the stats.

Now I'm going to make tea. Really.