The things some guys do to pick up girls.

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...

...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!

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 skins 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

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.

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.

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.

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".)