Hallow’s End Cheer, and Slàinte!

Yup, my Paladin is full of holiday cheer, she’s got her mount AND a Sinister Squashling but I’m talking about the lack of holiday cheer. I don’t know if anyone else has had this experience but I’ve noticed it on all the holiday bosses. My experience has been that in the first few days a holiday boss is available, when you queue you’ll get a group that is very well geared, you get more greetings, and the whole instance takes about 3 seconds.

As the two weeks wear on this sort of just devolves into chaos. I can’t figure out why. I’m still trying to get that darn horse, did all the well geared people get it in the first two or three days? How’d they manage that? You know something’s up when my level 84 warlock in quest greens is the top dps. She doesn’t really care though as she has the horse, it’s my poor druid that’s still trying for it.

Yesterday my druid once again queued for the horseman hoping to find the reins in her pumpkin. If you don’t have a character high enough to have done the headless horseman let’s just say this is a very easy boss, I don’t think it’s possible to actually die here, you’d really have to work at it. Almost immediately I realized all was not well. My kitty seemed to have become the tank. I felt bad that I had pulled aggro, I thought that was supposed to be a thing of the past but hey, I’m sure it’s my fault. I decided I’d just change to bear when it looked necessary. I noticed no one was getting healed either, then I noticed the tank wasn’t even on the boss, he seemed to be doing some willy-nilly running about as far away as possible.

As it turned out I never needed to go to bear form and we completed the fight with a kitty tank. Everyone lived, all good. Well, apparently not.

Our initial tank seemed to be upset by the lack of healing so I guess that’s why he took a little break. I dispensed with my usually cheery “Thanks All” and just left before it got really ugly. Do people’s moods get nastier and nastier as days go by without the drop they’re after or what. I did notice that the non-healing healer was with a guildmate who rolled need on the drop so maybe he was trying to lessen the competition for him, lol. My druid’s feeling conflicted today, one more possible chance at that horse, worth the nastiness, she’s not sure.

Other than trying to get that horse I’ve been leveling my Paladin. I don’t know why this time the pally’s made it this far. Maybe the race/class combination. My husband thinks I’m overdoing it. I’ve started answering him with “aye” and told him I had to run to the store for “me” carton of milk. I also have an almost uncontrollable urge to see Riverdance when I play her. I think there’s a chance that she’ll be queuing for the Headless Horseman next year!

Death of a Character

Yes, our characters all die, some more than others but in Azeroth death has no lasting effect other than a huge repair bill on occasion. But there’s the other death, the eternal sleep of DELETE. I’ve deleted lots of characters in the past. I don’t get all weepy when deleting a level 8 or 10, I don’t give it much thought. Yesterday I deleted a level 77 priest and I was surprised at how bad I felt. She was born because I wanted an enchanter, that was her sole job. She leveled up in clothes she tailored, nothing fancy, and at 77 she had only died 7 times. She was a tough shadow priest but I never warmed up to her, I just never had much fun playing her, I guess I’m not a priestly sort. R.I.P. little priest.

The reason she finally had to go was that I wanted to once again try a pally. Paladins are a class that I’ve tried before and they always get deleted around level 8 or 10, same with warriors but I thought I’d have another go at it and I wanted her on Fenris, so somebody had to be … terminated.

So my priest’s twin sister was born, a paladin, holiness seems to run in their family. She really is a clone of my priest as far as looks go and I wanted another dwarf which got me wondering about my race preference and what caused it. I was surprised when I realized it was based as much on sound as looks.

Your character does a lot of talking to you, especially when you do something wrong. Try to equip the wrong weapon, you’ll be told about it. Macros are great for getting a lot of chatter from your character if you don’t suppress errors.

I like my dranei’s accent a lot, my humans are just kind of vanilla, not bad not great. I love my night elves voices, very calm and polite. I jump every time my male worgen speaks, I can’t seem to get into being a male. Goblins I’m fine with but I remember when blood elves and dranei first became available I rolled one of each. I still have my dranei shaman but the blood elf didn’t last past level 6 and I’ve never made another … well, another female blood elf. She was always yelling at me, in fairness to her I guess I was doing a lot wrong but still she was kind of mean about it.

So here’s my new paladin with the lovely voice. I notice that in every screen shot I took of her she’s in the vicinity of a flask, mug, or bottle of some kind of alcoholic beverage, hmmm, dwarf first I guess and holy second. I have high hopes for her, I thing we’re very similar. If you notice she closed her eyes right when I took the picture, just like me. I have a mountain of photos with me looking drunk with closed or half open eyes that I keep meaning to destroy.

I need to read up on paladins, I send her heirlooms with strength and stamina. Don’t know if that’s appropriate. She’s going to level ret so would that be correct, or have I just made her look like a little noob dwarf, I hope not, I don’t want to embarrass her.

And why did she have to be on Fenris, I know, what’s that about. I have never leveled another character to 85 on another server except for Ironsally. I have many characters scattered all over the place but to make it to 85 it seems they must live on Fenris. I wonder what my server loyalty is all about. I don’t know if it’s because it was my first server or because we’re about the same WoW age. According to WarcraftRealms.com Fenris went online November 6th, 2006 and I installed WoW and logged into Fenris for the first time November, 18th, 2006.

She’s reached level 8 now and I’m going to log in and repeatedly try to equip a shield just to hear her tell me, “I need both hands for me weapon.”

House Guest from Azeroth and What’s in a (Guild) Name

On occasion I get visitors from Azeroth here, I mean it seems only fair since I spend so much time in their world. I should have seen this one coming though. My warlock wanted to visit to see what our Hallow’s End decorations looked like. That sounds innocent enough doesn’t it? Considering she’s a warlock I should have known she’d be up to no good, but this!

I happened to look out the window (sorry, the photo was taken through the window screen so it’s a little blurry) and OMG, she was stalking deer in the backyard and she had her Creepy Crate with her. I managed to get out there before anything happened but it was close. She didn’t see my point, she kept saying that they were only critters. I told her we have strange customs here and that we absolutely do not let Creepy Crates eat our critters. She was a little put out, said she thought she was doing me a favor as she’d heard me complain about the deer population eating all my Azaleas last year. Anyway, if you decide to let any of your characters visit, watch out, make sure they know the local customs. Avoid a bloodbath.

My guild is a hand-me-down that I was really lucky to get. I love having all those bank tabs to store all my junk. I was really lucky too in that the name was fine, Starflare, not “I Ate your Mother’s Underpants” as it so easily could have been. Trouble is, it wasn’t MY name, I didn’t get to pick it. I wanted to name my guild. This is kind of stupid as in all the time I’ve been playing I think only two characters got to have my first choice name, somebody’s always beaten me to it.

So yeah, as soon as I saw yesterday that you could now pay (real money) to change your guild name I rushed to Blizzards’s site to “read” (that’s what I told myself) about it. It would be silly to pay to change the name of my one person bank guild, really.

Yup, of course I did it. I did have a limit that I wouldn’t go over, I decided I WOULD ONLY PAY up to 25.00 for this service and it turned out to be 20.00. I wanted to name the guild “Tyranny” kind of an inside joke with myself, but no, already taken. I don’t know how many variations on tyranny I tried, still no luck.

Ah! Tyranny in another language, maybe that will work. I asked a bilingual friend how to say it in Spanish and that’s what I named it. Amazing what will float your boat but I’m so pleased with my new guild name, it’s the best thing ever. I just hope, really, really, hope that my friend wasn’t pranking me. It wouldn’t be above her to tell me the Spanish word for tyranny and it was actually “I Ate your Mother’s Underpants” in Spanish. Geez, I hope she didn’t do that, WoW is serious business.

Oh, I got a Fiery Belly Ale Hangover

Oh those damn Pandaren Brewmasters, what is IN this stuff. I checked my personal stash of Padaren brew, seemed to be the time to break it out and have a few. I found some Fiery Belly Ale I got years ago from Chen Stormstout. I played the RTS games so I’ve met the Pandaren before so I don’t find them as offensive as some. Surprised maybe, but not offended.

I know I said that I wasn’t going to “worry” about the Mists of Pandaria anymore and I’m not worrying, but it’s impossible NOT to read reactions to it right now. I draw the line at Twitter. If I start following on Twitter the dogs will starve, my husband will drive off for a loaf of bread and never return and I won’t even know it, as I’ll be here with my nose stuck to the screen slowly starving to death. Yeah, I’m that bad.

I feel kind of squeamish, I feel like I’m one of those morons that backs up traffic by gawking at the accident in the other lane. So much passion. And to me, they are all valid. Everyone’s history and experience with WoW is different so the responses to this expansion are just as varied.

There seem to be two schools of thought on what produced this expansion. One is that Blizzard is run by arrogant idiots and WoW has bought the farm, bitten the dust, kicked the bucket and so on … shark jumping has been done.

On the other hand there are those who think the expansion is the result of astute businessmen who are changing WoW into a game that they can milk as much cash from in it’s declining years as possible.

I didn’t see it mentioned, doesn’t mean it wasn’t but couldn’t it be that they thought this is what people wanted. Maybe they’ve had 5 million requests for playable Padaren, you never know. Now I would have jumped at the chance to play a Vrykul. I can think of nothing I’d like more than to be a giant amazon woman running around screaming, “Ill wear your intestines for a necklace!” I could definitely go for that. Now that is good times to me.

Me? After my initial suspicion of the World of Warcraft Annual Pass I realized that there is no way I won’t buy the next expansion. After all this brouhaha? Are you kidding, I really have to see it. I’ll play SWTOR but I’ve never unsubbed WoW before when taking WoW vacations and I knew I wouldn’t this time either so I made the commitment. Who am I kidding, I still love the world they’ve made and I’m not leaving yet.

And oh, this is kind of embarrassing, after whining for a year about not getting Stood in the Fire. I was checking my achievements yesterday. I was going to do some archeology and wanted to see if there were critters I needed to kill or kiss or whatever where I was going. At the top of the summary there was my most recent achievement, Stood in the Fire. I had been paying for flights all over Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor to find every last candy bucket. It got boring so I’d minimize WoW and go about my business and occasionally check to see if I was at my destination. I usually had to log back in but she was never dead, that would have been a clue. So three days ago my druid got Stood in the Fire someplace without me knowing.

So my druid still hasn’t seen Deathwing up close and personal. She told me she’s going to ask Ironsally to interview him, at least she could watch him on Stormwind News Center 9.

Of Padaren And Wickermen

Okay, I’ve calmed down a little since yesterday. I owe this in part to Little Wickerman who increased my spirits and watching video of the Blizzcon dance contest. I owe the Little Wickerman to this post at Revive & Rejuvenate that has the location of all the candy buckets listed. I was able to find all those I had missed which enabled me to get my Wickerman TODAY, rather than later. I needed my spirits boosted right now.

Now about the Mists of Pandaren. First, I am not an analytic thinker. I was one of those kids that sat in the back of class, listening but not taking notes while I drew pictures of horsies and kittys so anything I say can be taken with a grain of salt. My thought processes are more holistic, I hear or read a bunch of stuff and then I get a feeling about it. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just kinda there. So these are just feelings, nothing more than feelings …

I think what alarmed me first about the news from Blizzcon was “Sign Up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass and Get Diablo III Free” because the thought that first came to me was why are they bribing me to commit to a whole year. Is it because they won’t be releasing this expansion until a year from now? Do they want you to commit because they know other games will be releasing before they ever get this out and you might jump ship? That’s a frightening thought to me, I was hoping for early 2012 release, I’m still hoping. I have no plans of jumping ship, but say if SWTOR releases this December and it’s incredibly good and Blizzard doesn’t get Mists out until a year later then who knows.

I am excited about the Monk class, I would definitely roll one, but a Padaren, not so much. I’m fine with them in the game, but they’re not for me. They look … chubby. I have spent my whole life fighting chubby with exercise, diet and by denying myself all the things good, I’m not going to play a chubby character. It’s the same reason I don’t play a male Dranei. Sorry guys, you’re just too hefty for me.

The new talent system will get rid of cookie cutter specs, well yeah, we’ll see. I know that was what was supposed to happen with Rift too. I played Rift for a month and a half and by that time there were cookie cutter specs. I’m actually a fan of cookie cutter specs. As I said I’m not a analytic thinker and left to my own devices I would come up with an outlandish spec filled with fun things that got me killed. I read what the math geniuses tell me my spec would be and why it should be. I then do what I want, but I’m informed and very grateful. I love you math whizzes.

I don’t really care if there are five levels or ten levels in an expansion if it provides enough high level content. I don’t think Cataclysm had enough. I’ve read that Blizzard says they’re going to make sure that this expansion has plenty of high level content, I just hope their idea of enough and my idea of enough are the same.

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs and comments so I’ve forgotten where I read this one but I sort of agreed with it. The person posited that Blizzard was changing WoW so as not to be a competitor to their Titan Project whenever that releases. This expansion really seems to be morphing WoW into something else. I don’t know what really, maybe free to play down the road. Also Blizzard knows more about what people want than I do. I’m not sure whether it would be what existing WoW players want or what potential WoW players want, but I’m sure some of these changes must have been based on that information.

Anyway, it’s not world peace I’m talking about so I’m not going to worry about it anymore. I just hope it releases sooner rather than later, and that it has a lot of high level content. Really, don’t take too long I might get attached to my lightsabers over there in the Old Republic if you take too long.

Infinitesimally Tiny Sad Post — 5 Levels???

I know, I know, my mother always told me if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all, but, really, someone tell me it’s a mistake. Level cap 90? I’m happy for those people who may be excited to play a Pandaren, I’m happy for those psyched by the thought of playing a Monk class … but I am a very sad … well … panda.

Muhahaha … Best Pet Ever!

Okay so I’m easily entertained, but this is the best companion pet ever! Hallow’s End (guide there if you need it) has always been my hands down favorite holiday event. I liked my new Feline Familiar to begin with, but this cat comes with their own ride, so we’ve been flying around while waiting in the queue for another attempt at getting The Horseman’s Reins.

Didn’t get it, instead my druid got the The Horseman’s Horrific Helmet which she’s kind of sad about because she’d love to be able to Use: Let the Horseman laugh through you. But it’s soulbound and plate so she can’t use it and no one else can but she hasn’t vendored it. She just won’t let it go. This girl has a problem, first the festival dumplings now this. No wonder I’m going to have to buy another guild vault tab.

She did A Time to Lose, as a druid she had no problem getting to the Wickerman undetected. I had hoped at 11:00 am there might be no one there defending it but there were. Unfortunately about six of them. I had promised myself if it was just one defender I’d make an effort to PVP instead of just standing there in shock but six, no way, I just went bear form so I’d live long enough to get somewhere where my corpse wouldn’t be camped. I need to take a remedial PVP class.

I wanted to get back at those horde for that but since I couldn’t actually get back at those particular horde players when I got back to Stormwind I stationed myself in stealth behind our Wickerman and took it out on anyone who tried to sneak in that way. See, Hallow’s End makes me crazy! PVPing no less. Except the warlock, I like warlocks so he got a pass. Oh yeah, well, to be honest there weren’t any other Alliance around when he showed up so I would have gotten my butt kicked.

After getting into the holiday atmosphere and ruining a few people’s attempts to complete their quest, as usual I felt guilty about it. I’d made my token attempt to defend Stormwind so that was enough. I also hate it when my side. whichever it may be, kills fishermen, ah come on, let ’em fish.

Now I have to quickly level up my warlock to 84 and see if she can queue for the horseman. I had thought she’d be able to get in at 83 but no luck. I’ve read differing opinions on whether you can queue at 84 or you have to be 85 so might as well find out for myself.

Well, gotta go, lots to do, level my warlock and hit the candy buckets with my druid. I need 150 Tricky Treats for my next purchase the Little Wickerman! Happy Hallow’s End!

Edit: For anyone looking for information on the required level to queue for the Headless Horseman 2011, it is level 84.

These are not my People

I’ve been spending a lot of time in rl this week, I have to finish packing and moving my mother, and then settlement on her home next week. She’s moving into a senior apartment where there will be eternal bingo and sunshine, I hope she’s going to like it. Yesterday we spent a fair amount of time there signing contracts and paying up. When you have to accomplish something like this there are certain behavioral expectations that are well, expected of you. If I decide to play along I wear the face above. You know, you dress appropriately, don’t pick your nose, those kinds of things. It’s not really the real you, but it’s the socially acceptable version of you that you dust off for certain occasions.

Unfortunately I was pressed for time yesterday and rather than get there late I came as I was, in my usual attire. Looking more like this, just not as well dressed.

Since I started working from home I’ve kind of gone native. I’m not much for beautying, I used to get frequent hair cuts and dye my hair but kinda let that go. WHAT!! I’m PREMATURELY gray. My mother says my father’s hair was completely gray at 24, so seriously it’s prematurely gray. The woman that cut my hair and bullied me into making appointments quit, I don’t know, three years ago. That was the end of the dying and the cutting so imagine one of those guys wearing jeans and a ten year old Alienware T-shirt and you’ve got me.

I’m getting to the WoW part, just hold on. Now I’m sure that being judgmental was a seriously useful survival trait back in the day but nowadays it gets a little trying. After eyeballing the Mad Woman of Borneo and her mother we were left to cool our heels in a lovely reception area that had a freaking huge piano playing show tunes. I thought I would die, I wanted to die. If that was my punishment for looking so unconventional, man, those old folk specialists know their stuff, sadistic fiends. I’m still having audio flashbacks.

Anyway, my mother started wandering around “meeting people” and I was left there to amuse myself. On long waits I amuse myself by playing the guess who plays WoW game. Before WoW I used to play the game where I’d imagine the people around me and myself were suddenly in one of those horror movies and I’d try to guess who would be the hero, who would be the first to get killed, etc. Now it’s the WoW game.

Admittedly this was a little tougher than usual since I was in a Senior Living complex, but hey still doable cause you can include the people who work there too. People kept coming by assuring me someone would be with us in a moment. They were frighteningly cheerful. Imagine a squee wrapped in furry pink polka dots and velvet ribbons. These are not my people.

We were finally collected and first, given a tour. We came to the computer room, I inquired about the activities. This woman was late twenties I’d say, and replied that you’d be able to use the computers to browse the internet for news and such. I asked about games and got a blank stare. These are not my people.

No where could I find a possible WoW player. Not that they weren’t there, but if they were, they were exceedingly skillful at hiding behind their socially acceptable facade. Finally finished, we walked back to my car. The place is new and there’s construction being completed on the outside. I got hit on by a construction worker. God love ’em, you can always count on them. They weren’t really rude enough though. I miss my people. I am so ready to login and queue for the headless horseman where no one will say hello and if anything goes wrong blame will be flying. Oh, it’s good to be home. These are my people.

Disclaimer: All Ye Who Enter Here …

Eeeeeeee, I am so excited, I’ve hit the big time, I’m in the catbird seat, I have arrived!! No power in the verse can stop me now! Woohoo! I know, I’m supposed to be digging in my closet of computer curiosities but I had to post about this. What has caused this jubilation?

This comment on my YouTube Channel:

“WTF DID I WASTE 15 SECONDS OF MY LIFE ON?”

I feel like I’m really a citizen of the interwebs now. This blog is just about a year old and not one rude comment, not once, a lot of spam but everyone that comments here is exceedingly polite and kind. I know I don’t say anything controversial, mostly because my WoW space is my “happy space” and I don’t want no steeking negativity here but I thought considering the denizens of WoW, I’d still get some.

I should have known YouTube would come through for me. YouTube is the other side of the tracks, a really scary place inhabited by scary people. I don’t even know what some of the dirty words in comments there mean, and I worked in the headquarters of a macho labor union for years, so I know most of them.

Anyway, without thinking, I responded with a snarky comment:

Lol, perhaps you should make better use of your time then. And you wasted even more precious life commenting here, tsk, tsk.

I love the word snarky, I also love underused antique words like strumpet, and scofflaw, but I rarely get to use them so I’m happy snarky works just right here. After thinking about it a little I decided I’d been too hasty, I’d wronged dragonlord540 and I should do something to avoid the chance that some other unsuspecting innocent may lose valuable seconds of life viewing my videos.

My few videos on YouTube pretty much mean nothing out of context of this blog, it’s debatable whether they mean much IN context but just for argument’s sake we’ll assume they do. There they are, sitting on YouTube where anyone might accidentally view them. I haven’t even found out if there’s a way to delete the mistakes, like when I uploaded the wrong one and the things on the desk are hovering mid-air. SOMEONE MIGHT VIEW THAT and waste valuable seconds of life so I thought I should put up some kind of disclaimer on each one in honor of poor dragonlord540 or else this might happen again, oh the tragedy, the horror, when this could have been so easily averted.

Would something like this work?

Disclaimer: All ye who enter here, warning! This YouTube Channel holds nothing of interest to you. Valuable seconds of life WILL BE WASTED if you view them. Proceed at your own risk. These videos are meant to only be viewed in conjunction with posts at Tome of the Ancient (another second stealer if there ever was one) and if you proceed you risk a life shortened by seconds!!!

What do you think? I could call it something like The Dragonlord Alert to honor the channel’s first victim. So dragonlord540, I salute you. You’ve done well today, countless seconds will be saved and you’re responsible. Attaboy!

When WoW Imitates Life and Other Random Bits

First off, what I’ve been doing is stalling. When I have something to do that’s going to be a long, arduous, pita I stall. Stalling for me means spending hours doing what I think of as free association web browsing. What I’m trying to avoid right now is a switchover from one computer to another. On the one hand I’m absolutely overjoyed to have a shiny, new, fast, quieter, smaller-cased computer. On the other hand I am so not looking forward to locating my mish-mash of downloaded and boxed software, remembering to locate and copy all my FTP login info for the websites I maintain, oh geez, the list goes on and on so I stall. So pretty much all of this post is a result of my stalling.

I seem to have a new Ironman. I don’t know how far I’ll take her but meet Ferricat my little, very serious, druid entrant in the Ironman Challenge. I recently had to take her to the Barbershop to change her hair color. I had inadvertently made her hair the same as my level 85 main which was causing all kinds of trouble. I couldn’t seem to remember that she WAS NOT all powerful and needed to pick on things well below her level. Now she’s a black cat which helps me remember — four levels below her is who she needs to pick on.

So she was doing the quest (see shot above), The Dawning of a New Day and I was watching the Moonbrook Rally unfold and it just seemed a little eerie. Maybe it was because I had just watched the evening news but I felt like I was at an OCCUPY TOGETHER rally. WoW imitating life? And there had to be some sort of prescience involved on Blizzard’s part as Cata released well before these rallies started. I wonder if that’s a job requirement at Blizzard. Okay, and then I found this.

Diego Stocco – Music From A Dry Cleaner from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

I love this, I need this in my WoW playlist. This is just aaaaawwwsssome, don’t know what else to say.

After that I did my usual WoW blog browsing. I could subscribe and read these through Google Reader but I seem to have this visual thing that I HAVE to go to the actual blog to read it, I have to be there. So I frequently find a great post at a new (for me) blog and I think I’ve bookmarked it and then when I remember that I wanted to go back, I can’t find it. So Yay! I found it!

This post on self-consciousness in WoW at Tree Heals Go Woosh was so spot on for me. Ignorance was indeed bliss. Like Tzufit, when the realization hit me that I had a lot to learn I was determined to learn it. But unlike Tzufit I never got over the self-consciousness and performance anxiety so I became a solitary player. Only person to judge me here is me. Yeah … I know … go ahead. /chicken.

Alrighty now, enough rambling and stalling. It’s time to attack the software closet from hell. I mean I have a box with SCSI cables in there. I KNOW, why? It’s like a computer parts and software museum in there.  There’s a Jaz drive, I bet I’ll find floppies even. It’s like a wayback machine in that closet.

I don’t know, maybe I should wait ’til the weekend, yeah, I think this is a weekend job. I really don’t think I can lift this space hog of a computer by myself, I need help, yeah …

Okay then that’s settled. Lookout interwebs, here I come!