Vacation!

Tuesday, August 30, 2011
I just got back from a mini vacation.  Sorry for the radio silence.  I'm raiding Firelands tomorrow, hopefully will have a post up sometime later about that!

Playing Dress Up

Tuesday, August 23, 2011
So, with all the transmogrification news, my husband has caught the 'old tier gear' fever.  He has spent the last few evenings (honestly, probably ever since the announcement was made) looking over old tier gear and other 'special' items.

Last night he spent a ton of time with Wowhead's model viewer, looking at teir 6 and his favorite shield of all time.  It's really cracking me up.

I know I just made a post about this, but honestly, I thought the actions of my husband were too funny to share.  It's like he's playing dress up with dolls.

Heh.

Shared Topic Aug 22-28, 2011: Transmogrification Reactions

Monday, August 22, 2011

So, by now, we've all seen the tidbits of Patch 4.3 that Blizz has decided to release to us. The hype, in particular, surrounds two things directly related--Transmogrification and Void Storage. If you do not have any idea at all about what the two of those are, you can view the blue posts here (Transmogrification) and here (Void Storage).


What are your thoughts on these two new things Blizz wants to put into the game? Has it fulfilled your need for bank space (a recent ST)? Will it make you more interested in the game? Could you care less? Is there anything you'd change? Let's have at it, ladies and gents! Nitty and gritty!

I have mixed feelings on the tidbits Blizzard has released so far about 4.3.  I can use the Void Storage.  I have tons of old stuff that I have kept just because I love them.  However, I did get rid of a lot of stuff recently when I was cleaning out my bank.  I have been farming old instances with my guild so that they could get certain items, like the Bulwark of Azzinoth  for my husband.

Which leads us into the transmogrification part of the announcement.  The items I want need to be purchased with valor points.  Some people are planning out their new outfits but honestly, I don't really care.  I like wearing the newest outfit.  However, I'd be happy if they'd let me transmogrify myself into a tree again!!

Acheesements and more dailies

Sunday, August 21, 2011
I haven't been doing a lot since raid last week.  My weekend has mostly been taken up with BBQ's, house painting, grocery shopping and cleaning.  However, I started leveling my shadow cow through Eastern Plaguelands and I got it into my head to look at the guild achievement 'Critter Kill Squad' and see how far along we were.  Well, there was only about 3000 critters left to kill so I drug my 85 priest out to the Terrorweb Tunnel and spent my Saturday (when I was at my keyboard) holy nova-ing my way to glory.

I didn't get it done on Saturday, but when I logged in today, I ground out the last 1000 or so and ...


Stupid, I know.  But yay!  The husband was really happy.  He's wanted that pet since Cata came out.

I've spent the rest of my time doing my dailies on my priest. 


Today, we unlocked the Druids of the Talon.  And ended up spending a ton of time trying to do the achievements and getting knocked off island by the ancient charhounds.  Stupid charhounds.  Besides doing Molten Front, I'm forcing the husband to do the Tol Barad dailies with me.  I have 80 tokens as of today and I need 125 for my spirit trinket.  So yeah.   But I can't do both completely, so I do all my Molten Front ones and then whatever I can do in TB.

This coming week is going to be really hard as I have a vacation that I'm leaving for on Friday and I'm spending most of the week preparing for that.  (I'm spending Friday through Tuesday with a friend of mine's family.)  Plus my boss is on vacation this coming week so it's going to be really hectic. 

However, I finally looked at the new troll hairstyles.  And hot damn.  My lowbie troll warlock actually looks troll like to me now. 


Lastly, one of our friends came back to the game today and we ran a regular random heroic with him.  When we got to Mindbender Ghur'sha (the guy who's controlling Erunak Stonespeaker), the following conversation took place:






It was amusing!!

Defender of a Shattered World

Thursday, August 18, 2011
Tonight, for our 2nd raid night, we entered Throne of the Four Winds and proceeded to kick ass. 1 try for the Council and then 3 tries for Al'Akir.


It's pretty much the same group as last night, except our new hunter didn't show, so we got a replacement healer who used to be in our guild.  Which let our priest go shadow, which was fun for her!

And now I'm the proud owner of a pretty glowy bird and a shiny new title.


On to Firelands!  I'm so excited!  I've wanted this title for months now.  I know it's late, but I don't care!

Still riding high ...

I was so happy and excited over our successes last night that I didn't get to sleep until 1 am and then woke up at 6 am.  I don't care.  It felt so good to succeed.  

Due to our roster issues, we had pugged a hunter last week.  And this week, we invited him back to finish off Blackwing Descent.  He'd never seen the fights before but he looked them up online and did a lot of research and was READY!  I loved that.  He would die to some mechanics that he didn't understand from just watching the videos and reading the strats, but he would rarely die to the same mechanic twice.  It was awesome.  

Apparently, he had been interested in joining our guild last week but our guildmaster asked him to hold off and take his time.  So this week, we down Nef and there's a little conversation in Officer chat about how we would love to have him join us but if he wanted to just raid with us under a different guild tag, that would be great too.  

Our raid team regroups and heads to Bastion of Twilight next.  We one shot Halfus, two shot the Twins (people didn't group up for the Blackout and the meteors), one shot the Council (which was a first kill for us) and then saw Cho'gall for the first time.  We did have 1 guy in our raid who had seen it on a different toon, but the rest of us were fresh.  I didn't listen to the strat, nor to the abilities.  (I was still in shock from Nef's death.) And still, we got him to less then 200,000 on our first attempt.  And then POW!  Second attempt, he dropped.  

And best part, right after the Twins, our pug hunter joined our guild.  So our first Cho'gall kill was a full guild group.  Yay!


As for uptime on Harmony.  I did okay on some fights but bad on others.  Even with a HUGE power aura saying "Hey idiot, Harmony isn't up", I managed to only get 81.7% uptime.  And that was my best fight (Nef).  On the Twins, I only managed to get 49.2% uptime.  Every other time was 73.1% (Halfus), 64.4% (Council) and 71.0% (Cho'gall).  I need to figure out a few tricks to keep that up a lot more.  

Then there's overheal.  My best was only 16.5% overheal.  But my worst was 52.6%.  However, I think that's skewed a bit.  Every other fight was about 30%.  Give or take a bit.  I could do better.  But sometimes my hots get stomped :)  (I'm running with a resto shaman and a disc priest.)

Lastly.  I'd like to put a shout out to my beloved raid team from last night.

Our tanks: Paliclaus (prot pally) and Alama (prot warrior)

Our healers: Shonokoko (resto shaman),  BachuĂ© (disc priest) and myself (Karegina, resto druid)

Our Melee: Indale (assassination rogue)

Our Ranged: Payne (survival hunter), Pyrodoom (fire mage), Slipknoth (beast mastery/survival hunter), and Kahlanah, (affliction warlock)

Good job guys.  I've never been more proud of you then today.  




Yay for my guild!

Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Tonight was our first raid night of the week.  We decided to to pick up where we left off last week.  (We had done Blackwing Descent, up to Nefarian.)  So, we zone in, go over the fight for our hunter PUG.  And then proceed to one shot him.  For our first kill as a guild. 



So, we spent maybe 30 minutes in there, so we decided to go to Bastion of Twilight.  We go in and down Halfus in 1 shot, the Twins in 2 shots, the Council in 1 (which was our first kill on them) and then stare at Cho'gal for the first time.  We get him to 200,000 hit points on our first attempt.  And we down him on our second. 


So.  Yeah.  My guild, who hasn't seriously raided in MONTHS, downed two of the three tier 11 raids.  I'm so proud of us.  I know it's after the nerf but really, once we down all tier 11 content, we'll move on to Firelands. 

And THAT is what is truly exciting me.  Congratulations Ascension.  I'm so proud of you!  (Tomorrow night, we're going to the Throne of the Four Winds.  Let's get us some titles and the pretty pretty birdy!!)

No more dailies! (Or am i wrong?)

Sunday, August 14, 2011
My delightful main got all the achievements from the Molten Front and the pet from the satchel.  So now I don't 'have' to run them anymore.  (I'm extremely happy about that.)  Instead, I've picked up my neglected alt and have started doing the dailies on her. 

She had been doing them for a while before Karegina's dailies overwhelmed me.  So I've unlocked the Molten Front and am collecting tokens to recruit the Shadow Wardens or the Druids of the Talon.  (The husband is doing them with me on his warrior tank alt as well.)  We've decided to unlock the Druids first since there are more achievements to get there.

However, I don't know who to unlock first.  I know that I want to unlock the moonwell for the trinket.  But we unlocked the moonwell first last time.  And I told the husband that he could choose first this time, which means we might do the blacksmith first.  Which means that my priest could get a pair of gloves.  (She has the BOE gloves from the Zandalari heroics.)  If we do the ancients first, she could get a ring.  (She has a 333 and a 346 ring right now.)  But, if we unlock the moonwell, I get a offhand and a trinket!!  (I have really crappy trinkets, I don't even have the TB one yet.)

So.  My plan right now for my priest is to unlock the Druids, then the Shadow Wardens and then go along with the husband's requests first.  All the while doing as many Tol Barad dailies as I can to get my trinket.  (I did get the weapon from TB already.  I know I could get the weapon made but that won't happen for a while.)

In other news, I have a new alt.  A tauren priest.  As of 11:30 am Pacific time, she's level 34 and she's a shadow cow :)  I love it :)  Except when I switch from doing dailies on my level 85 priest (who quests as disc) to leveling my baby priest, it weirds me out because the controls as so different :)

And in real life news, this weekend my husband decided he'd start painting our house.  And as a side 'quest', he would replace the outside water spigots.  Well, when he replaced the one in the front, he caused a pipe under the house to come apart and now we have no water.  It's dripping something crazy, even with the water turned off.  So we can't repair it properly.  (By 'we', I mean the husband and my stepfather and my father in law.)  And I need to do laundry today.  This is so awesome.  Heh.

WoW Parody Videos

Friday, August 12, 2011
In my group of friends, it's well known that I love the WoW parody music video scene.  For some reason, the idea of popular music set with WoW related lyrics tickles me.  I also like original songs about WoW too, pretty much anything that is WoW related makes me happy.

I got into the music when I was going through Youtube and found a video by Nyhm about Kara.  It made me laugh, plus I actually liked the original song.  I would play it on repeat during our Kara raids.  And I linked it on my guild webpage so everyone else could hear it too.

I loved all of Nyhm's videos.  My favorite is probably "Just Loot It".  I didn't know the original song but the parody was so awesome.



Nyhm introduced me to Summergale which in turn introduced me to another song that I fell in love with.



From there, my obsession grew.  I discovered Greyfoo, and my favorite parody artist ever, EmberIsolte.  She has not come out with a WoW parody that I haven't liked yet.  And she's done a couple about druids!!  (None about tree druids yet, but I know that's coming up!)



I drive my husband up the wall when I run around the house singing the Meow song.  My cat, however, loves it and will meow back at me.

Some of these songs you can download for free or for a small fee.  (I've not actually bought any songs yet but I have most of the free ones.)  I burned them onto a CD so I can listen to them while I drive around.  (Of course, the CD player in my car is busted now and the CD player in my van won't read burned CDs.  What the hell universe?)

Now, what caused me to post about this?  Nyhm put out a new WoW original song that made me laugh.  It really summed up a lot of players attitudes.  (At least players that I run across.)



I love that he can make fun of himself.  What are some of your favorite videos?  Do you have any?

Broken ...

Tuesday, August 9, 2011
I finished my WoW 20 in 20 this last Sunday.  I really enjoyed doing that.  It was nice to write every day.  Now I'm at a place where I want to write but I'm unsure what to talk about.  It's very frustrating.

Also, my doctor has started fiddling with my medication, making my moods slightly unstable.  (One of my medication was causing me to have a reaction that, while not life threatening, is painful and annoying.  So she's taking me off it and replacing it with another one.)  As a result, I'm feeling depressed and unmotivated.  And that's coming across in my playing.

My last post was mostly written before the change in my medication, but the end was written after I started to 'crash'.  I'm not a good editor when this happens.  Oh well.

I made a new priest.  A moocow shadow priest.  She's level 26 now.  She's adorable.  I made a list and I have 16 horde toons that are level 20 or above on my server that I play on.  Apparently I love me some alts.  What I need to do is level my shaman so I have a high level skinner and then level my pally.  That would wrap up all the alts that I had at max level in Wrath.  Then I need to get my warlock and death knight up there.  Then my rogue.  THEN my hunter and warrior.  Can you tell I don't like melee classes as much as casters?

That will get me 1 of each class at 85.  I wonder if I can actually buckle down and do it?  Heh.  I want to try!

I know I'm an altaholic.  And I love it.

Dailies and Randoms and Raids, Oh my!

Sunday, August 7, 2011
Ever since Blizzard implemented the idea of quests you can do every day, I've thought to myself 'Why? Why would I spend 30-60 minutes a day (sometimes more) doing the same quests over and over and OVER again?' When Sunwell came out, I half-heartedly did them to make my husband happy.  Sure, I got some gold but having gold is not something that drives me to do things in game.

During Wrath, I did just enough dailies to get all my faction reps to exalted and to get a few pets from the Argent Tournament.  However, I did do my jewelcrafting daily every day, unless I was not near a computer that day.  (I think I missed maybe 7 days total on my JC daily.)  But I disliked the grind.  I hate to grind things out.

Well, now we're in Cata and there's the Molten Front dailies.  I've done them all, unlocked the entire area and yet I'm still going back every day.  Why?  I want those silly achievements.  However, I don't really care abut achievements!  What's wrong with me?  I'm two mobs away from my Death from Above achievement and then I just have the Firey Lords of Sethria's Roost and then I have 1 mob to kill for the Ready for Raiding II achievement.  I want that Flamebreaker title.  And it's driving me crazy that I don't have it yet.

Speaking of dailies, when Blizzard put those quest npcs in Shattrath that would send you somewhere each day to collect something from someone in either a heroic or a regular instance, I was skeptical.  I didn't want to have to run instances every day.  How boring, more grinding.

In Wrath, they kept the same model for a while but then they put in the Random Dungeon Finder and gave that a bonus.  Hence I started to pug, for a title and a pet.  I hate every second of it, but I did it because I wanted that title.  I didn't do it every day because, like I said earlier, I hate grinding.  Everyone would ask if I wanted to do to 'my daily random' and I would always say 'Oh no thank you, not today'.

Now, they've made it better.  I love that I can run as many dungeons at one time and get all the points I need at my own pace.  It doesn't seem like a grind now.  It's something fun I can do with my friends on nights that we're not raiding or on the weekends when I have 6 hours to spend chain running dungeons.

However, the only raid I've stepped foot in the last few months has been Baradon Hold.  We're down a couple people again for raiding.  My mage guildie who just had a baby has quit WoW indefinitely which makes me sad but real life trumps WoW every time.  Another one of my guildies has disappeared as well.  So we're down two people out of 10 and while we've gotten a new hunter (who I love) we're still down one person.

We're not actively recruiting because we're not sure what we want to do.  Also, our server is pretty dead and the pool of recruits is pretty poor.  It's really depressing but I don't know what to do to fix it.  I look around at other bloggers and eye their guilds but who would want to take a resto druid who's only been in Firelands to grind rep.  Especially one who comes with a prot pally, a resto shaman and either a prot/fury warrior or a mage.

I don't know.  Sometimes I feel like giving up.  But I'm not ready to be done with WoW yet.  It's too much fun and I know that if I can find a niche, I'll be happy.  But I can't find that niche.

Day 20 – If this was your last day playing WoW, what would you do?

Saturday, August 6, 2011
If I were to quit WoW, and if I knew I'd never be coming back, I'd sell off everything in my bags and banks.  Then I'd make a deposit into my guild bank and then head to the newbie areas and start giving out gold.

I'd fly around, look at the world one last time, visit my favorite NPCs, kill the NPCs that I really dislike (I have high level toons on both factions!) and then log off in a pretty spot in Mulgore.  My druid should be home forever.  She would like that.

Day 19 – In your bags/bank

Friday, August 5, 2011
My bags and bank are a disaster.

Right now, I have a full kitty set in my bank along with many other old shoulders, hats and tier tokens I've picked up over old raids we've done.  I also have tons of holiday items that I've gotten from doing each meta achievement for the purple protodrake.  Add in 2 bag of current gems and 1 bag of current enchanting materials and it's just a mess. 



Okay, so maybe it doesn't look messy right now.  But I did just spend some time cleaning it up.  (AKA sending everything to my bank alt.)

I have a bank alt that has a 5 tab guild bank plus his bags and his bank.  All my low level crap goes there.  I have a tab for enchanting, a tab for crafting mats, a tab for mining, a tab for gems and stones and questing mats, a tab for runecloth/netherweave and another tab for random crap.


My bank is semi organized right now because I just put a ton of stuff up on the auction house. 



In my bags I have 1 bag full of food, drink, potions, flasks and things like that.  I have two empty bags, 1 bag that's half full of PVP equipment and moonkin gear and then half a bag of random crap like fishing poles, hearthstones, etc.

At least I have close to 3 bags empty!!

Shared Topic: Identity & Affiliation

Thursday, August 4, 2011
How does your character define themself? What part of their identity is most important to their personality and self-presentation?

In meatspace, we have so many affiliations, it's anyone's guess whether we consider ourselves a tuba player first, or a student, a Gators fan, a New Yorker, a mother, a nerd, a liberal. Our identities are comprised of so many different aspects of li
How does your character define themself? What part of their identity is most important to their personality and self-presentation?

In game, there are less game-related ways to identify.

You can identify as:

  • your class - your spec
  • your race - a particular subgroup (Mag'har, Wildhammer)
  • your faction - a faction other than Horde/Alliance

**************************************************

Karegina is very much a resto druid first and foremost.  When I first made her, I made her to be a healer for Vanilla raids.  I never got her past level 32 or so, but she did spend a good deal of time in Warsong Gulch, healing the flag carriers.  (She did it so much she got her Scout title.)  Now, 3 expansions later, Kare is still a healer.  She's dabbled with tanking and melee dps, as well as caster dps but she will always be a healer in her heart.

She was a tree and would spend every moment she wasn't on a mount or in bird form, in tree form.  As other people have mentioned, when Blizzard removed perma-tree form, a part of me and a part of Kare died.  I actually would get upset when we'd have other tree druids in guild because damnit, I was the tree druid, not them.  (Stupid I know.)  

Secondly, she's a tauren.  Her loyalty is to the Cenarion Circle first, then to her tribe, THEN to the Horde.  There are things that the Horde does that she does not approve of at all, but her chieftain has led her there so she will follow.  

My other characters don't have as much personality as Karegina.  I am glad I don't roleplay in WoW, I don't think I'd be able to separate myself enough to tell a story with her.  She and I are too entwined now.  

Day 18 – Your favourite outfit

Wednesday, August 3, 2011
I don't really have a favorite outfit but I do have pieces of equipment that has made me happy over the years.

I love my current shoulders, the feathers that molt.  Mmmm, it's so cool.

My favorite hat was the tier 8 druid hat.  It was just a crescent moon.  I loved it.

I don't have a favorite weapon or any other item.  Mostly because I just notice the hat and the shoulders on my character.

Day 17 – Your favourite spot (in game or outside it)

Tuesday, August 2, 2011
My favorite spot in game is probably Valley of Wisdom.  It's where I spend most of my time.  I am always there if I'm online and not doing my dailies.  My guildleader calls it my 'cave', which is a throwback to BC and Wrath. I was always in the banks and they started getting referred to as the 'cave'.  I loved that, since in BC I was a bear half the time.  Made me happy.



My favorite spot out of game is probably my bed.  It's soft and comfortable and safe.  When I don't feel well, or am sad, I crawl into my bed and snuggle my frog ruggle.  (My best friend made it for me!)  My husband keeps the world away from me and makes things safe for me.  My cat climbs all over me while I'm in there and purrs and meows.  It's awesome.

 Dante and Frog, hanging out in the doorway.

My Gaming Set up

Monday, August 1, 2011
I have been very interested in gaming mice and keyboards for the last couple of years.  However, I've never had the money to put together anything beyond a simple keyboard and mouse setup.  I did try to use a friend of mine's old keypad but it was too difficult for me.  So this is my current set up.


It's very simple and as you can see I'm using a old, big ol' honky keyboard.  I love my mousepad however, even if sometimes it causes my drawer to not come out easily!

My husband's is a little different.  He has a Wolfgang Warrior keypad thing, a crappy keyboard and the same mouse that I have.  See below.

My husband doing Tol Barad.  ACTION SHOT!

He loves it and has always encouraged me to go out and find a new keyboard or mouse that I can easily use. However, I'm not sure what I want.

My current mouse has a button right where my thumb is that I can use to autorun or use to dispel harmful effects.  I love it!  I hear there are special mice that have 10 or more buttons but I'm at a lose to figure out how to use them.  My best friend got one of those Razer Naga's (I think it's called) but I don't know if she ever used it.

I don't do a lot of mouse over macros.  I prefer to push my buttons for my spells, I know that's not the 'best' way but it's comfortable for me.

I wonder if she'd loan me that mouse if she's not actively using it.  It might be interesting to try.