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!

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!

/cry

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 :)

Flying, hunting, choosing.

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.

With a Song in My Heart!(?)

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.

While My Server Gently Weeps.

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.

Sooner than expected.

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.

En attendant WotLK

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!

Changes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short-term Plans.

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

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

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

Before dinner.

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

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

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

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.

5 pm, cloudy.

Sadly, summer seems to be thinking about going on vacation. It's been a sweet one, though - lots of ice cream, late nights gaming, and that warm weather I'm so fond of (yeah, yeah, I'm oh so original) - and I'm already looking forward to the next one.

The husband returned from a work trip on Monday evening - as stated earlier he's spent a week in Canada - and he's still recovering from jet lag and waaay too much limp coffee. He made an interesting discovery while abroad: The fact that he uses the english language every day while playing WoW, doesn't necessarily mean that his spontaneous "every day-english" is flawless. Apparently the phrase popping out of his mouth when greeting people was "Hi 2 U!" All I can say about that is /faceplam.

As I've said earlier, I've been playing my druid quite a lot lately - mostly because I rediscovered the fun parts about being a moonkin, but also because the next expansion is coming closer, and there are things I'd like to have done before the level cap is raised, and the rat race starts all over again. Now, I'm not much of a raider, even though that part can be so much fun - I had a short stint as a resto druid in Karazhan - so I'm not aiming at Kil'jaeden, but there are a bunch of other things I want to have done on my druid before going to Northrend:

• Reaching exalted with the pre-TBC Alliance factions
• Getting a Tiny Sporebat (which requires exalted rep with Sporeggar)
• Collecting a decent set of PVP-gear, for battleground fun, and in order to manage the odd heroic. Yes, I'm one of those people. (Welfare epics ftw-people.)
• Actually getting the fancy pants Swift Flight Form

There's probably a whole lot of other things I want to do too, but these are the ones I can think of at the moment.

I do have other, non-druid related, plans too, though, such as getting my rather new human priest to 70 (she's still only 25), and playing around as holy for a bit. Should be doable with all the fancy tailoring gear. I'm also aiming at getting my mage and my shaman to 70 - both have been stuck at 65 for a while.

Anyway, enough talk, too little action.