Now, let this be a lesson!

I stayed up rather late last night, hoping and wishing that my druid would open a treat bag or a crudely wrapped whatever, and find a Hallowed Helm inside. This, of course, did not happen. Instead, my level 48 priest got a helm, so, I now have 6 characters with the Sinister Calling achievement completed, and only one of them is level 70 - my nelf hunter. What do we learn from this? A classic, obviously: Random loot is random. Le QQ.

Anyway, I'm pretty much over it - considering I only pugged the Headless Horseman three times, getting about fifteen kills, and only trick-or-treated and did the fire-daily, I did pretty well: Next year I'll just have one thing to complete on the druid to get the title, quite a few of my alts got a boost in the form of one or two levels, and ten(!) of my characters got a Squashling! Also, all the switching-like-a-crazy-person between alts made me realise which one to delete in favour of my future Death Knight. (A poor, forgotten human mage, abandoned at level 23. Unfortunately her name is boring, so I'll have to come up with a new one.)

Some time last night I noticed a rather common conversation in trade chat:

Person A: "Why do people talk so much crap in trade chat? It's called "Trade chat", and should be for just trading..."
Person B, C, D...: "Who cares, yada yada. L2P, u r stoopid!"
Person P: "Why do people have to point that out - don't they know it just makes things worse?"

And this is where I just had to jump in:

Me: "The first rule of trade chat is "You do not talk about trade chat"."
(If you ask me, this is a well known pop culture reference - not for my parents' generation, but certainly should be for the WoW community. For the uninformed: I made a cheap parody on some famous lines from the movie Fight Club.)

After this I get a whisper:
"but thats just what u r doin", to which I reply:
"I think you missed a highly relevant pop culture reference."
Now, the answer I get back, I don't really know what to do with:
"NK u should get a relative life".
What? I make a joke, including a reference to something outside WoW, and I'm told (I assume) to get a life? There's really no way to please the average idiot, is there?

Of course, I can't take for granted that everyone will understand and appreciate my sense of humour, but what's up with sending rude whispers to random people in trade? I guess I should also point out that I very rarely say anything in trade, so I'm not exactly a "public" person. I mean, the Dirge-spammers are begging for it.

So, rant over. I'm off to buy sushi.

Sigh.

This day is starting to make me exhausted... My druid only needs one more item to get her "...the Hallowed"-title - the Hallowed Helm - and I've spent all day trying to get it. I've trick-or-treated at least seven times, and I've pugged the Horseman twice, unfortunately with only four summons each time, since the healer in the first group disconnected (and I had to take over), and in the second group I was the one with no summon left. The helm dropped with the second group, but someone else got it. :´(

On the bright side, though: While it was cake healing the well geared warrior tank in the first group, I managed to heal a pally tank, who had 9.5k hp and 390 defense rating >.< , and his buddies, a rogue and two warriors (one 65), all of whom loved to steal aggro, and stand in the whirlwind... Now, with most groups, it's easy to solve the problem by going "hey, try not to take so much damage, step out of the whirlwind", but since this happened to be a group where everyone but me preferred communicating in italian, this didn't really make any difference. The tank only died once, though, and the boss went down a millisecond later, so it still worked ok.

Anyway, since Hallow's End ends tomorrow morning, at 4AM, I'm planning to trick or treat every hour until then, which gives me... 10 more chances to get the helm. Not bad, but considering I haven't gotten it earlier on the druid, I can't say it feels very good either. I'd rather have the event continue for another week...

There's always next year, but the perfectionist in me really wants to see that achievement completed, and the title above my main character's head, and not later, but as soon as possible! So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed - since I don't really have the energy to try and get a spot in a pug without being able to summon, it seems to be all there's left to do...

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!