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

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.

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 :)

Building A New Main.

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.

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!

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.

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.

The how and why, and ooh! Shiny lights!

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...

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.

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!

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!

Decisions, decisions...

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

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

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

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

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