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.

Just another one!

I overslept today. Not as badly as yesterday, but still. Got up at about 9.45, when I had planned to be up and about at 8. Still an amazing improvement compared to yesterday, though. Anyway, I'm having some tea, and in a bit I'll be off to the library, after dropping off a package at the post office.

Ever since I found out about Stinker, and what I had to do to get him (I've wanted a pet skunk from the moment I first saw them as critters in the draenei zone) I have been looking for new mini pets to get my hands on, and I've collected quite a few so far - feel free to check my collection (which spans mutliple characters) at WarcraftPets.com - including Stinker. The day before yesterday I finally got my druid to Dalaran - not by portal, but by turning 74 - and I've started working on my Kirin Tor Familiar. He's kind of the reward for completing this achievement, and so far I have found one of the books. I just tried to log in, to do a quick check of the different spawn locations before I have to be off, but alas, the servers didn't come online at 11 am as usual - they'll be down until 1 pm, and by then I hope to be on the bus. Hopefully I'll get enough work done today, to feel like I can work on this little project for a while tonight! Should fit in nicely with a bit of fishing...

Eventually I'm going to have to level up to at least 76 - in Sholazar Basin there's a weird faction called The Oracles, and when one hits revered with these guys, one can buy a Mysterious Egg, which may contain one of four different mini pets, or just an Aged Yolk (eww). So, the required level for questing with these guys seems to be 76, which shouldn't be too hard to accomplish after getting some rested bonus while camping for books and doing some fishing. While doing that, there's always the chance I pick up one of these! Fishing sure does rock.

Right, I'm off to the library.

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.

Checking off the list.

Annoying morning. I stayed up waaay too late last night, but for a reason: There are a few "kill that named mob, get that drop from it" quests, that are heavily camped (and heavily ninja'd) these days, when everyone is doing them, and as I like to keep moving while levelling, I have simply postponed the completion of those quests. Anyway, at about 3AM the amount of players online has dropped significantly, and I could easily do Words of Power, The Assassination of Harold Lane, Cracking the Code, and Slay Loguhn - lots of nice XP and cash in my virtual pocket!

About the "annoying morning" thing: For some reason I couldn't open the Gmail website while being connected through my router, and I had to go through a bit too much dragging of cables and climbing on furniture before breakfast. Now Gmail works, and I'm going to have something to eat, and hope the rest of the day will be a walk in the park. I might even go for a walk in the park later - I really need to get some air.

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.

Delirious.

Ah, it's pretty, so pretty. And my moonkin is a dream to level. She can take a beating from a few mobs at a time, nuke things down quite fast, and the downtime is basically non-existant - Borean Tundra is cake! The lag + low fps can be a pain at times, but the environments, the fancy new skins, and the quests are so effing great I don't really care! She's gotten to 71 so far - I'm taking it quite easy, but I'd like to get to 74 soonish - Dalaran awaits :)

My mage has been chosen as my no. 2 leveling project, so when the Borean Tundra starts to feel too harsh, I head over to the Howling Fjord. This rather newly dinged mage doesn't have the kind of semi-fancy equipment my druid has, though, so it's a bit slower, with a few more deaths. Not as tricky as Hellfire Pen could be at 58, but those few mid 60s quest rewards can make even my badass mage squishy...

Downside: My home server was full, and queued, last night, and it's the same thing tonight. Serious queues, too - last night I was no. 420! Hopefully it'll get better in a while, but right now there's really no way to easily switch between my two accounts.

Anyway, back to the game - aiming at getting to 72 sometime within the next 24 hours, which shouldn't be a problem :)

Hi-tech Durid.

Sadly it seems the day has come for my graphics card to retire. I haven't managed to find the correct drivers for it (no CD anywhere, and not online, since it's oooold), and now everything is either stretched out vertically (the regular interface, Firefox and so on), or horisontally (WoW). Also, since it's a bit older than what Blizzard recommends for WotLK, and since my fps has been heartbreaking for a while, I've decided to get a new one.

Well, semi-new, since I can't afford any of the ones I actually want. So, I'll be getting a Nvidia Geforce 9500GT, upgrading from the fancy MSI Geforce 7300GT - better late than never, right? Guess it's time to keep my fingers crossed that the rest of my darling computer will survive this ordeal.

Another reason for not getting a better one, is the vain hope that I'll be able to get a whole new computer sometime next year. I would love it so dearly, and tenderly keep it as dust-free as I can! Hence, also keeping fingers crossed for an improved spring economy!