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 :)

"Waiting for patch"-randomness.

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?".

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!

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

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.

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.