Goodbye Midsummer

I got home in time to catch the fireworks in Booty Bay. Druid wanted to view them there, to compare it with a shot from four years ago when she was a mere kitten. One of the few screen shots that survived a hard drive meltdown.

I like most holiday events, I almost ruined this one by forgetting to ONLY do things I find fun. I mean in real life there’s enough anguish and pain that has to be endured, so why in the world do things in game that cause anguish and pain. Picking at a hang nail again, so I stopped. Felt much better after I stopped queuing for Ahune and hoping for an Ice Chip.

Hopefully I won’t have forgotten come Brewfest. So now that the narrowly avoided Ice Chip burnout disaster has been averted I can get back to wrapping up bucket list items I don’t mind doing, and trying to make money.

Wrapping up old faction rep, I started with the Sha’tar as I also have Ogri’la to do but I hate doing that one.

Anyway while doing the three instances to get to exalted I’m finding so many great clothes I want to wear, but they’re never leather. All the leather drops have been so somber. I want to wear these.

Oh well, I did keep an incredibly cool plate chest but the odds of getting the Death Knight to transmog anything are pretty remote. All she does is mine, kill things, and keep her own council.

This week I won’t see much headway on my bucket list as my husband’s on vacation and all we seem to do is drive around putting the car in the shop, getting the truck inspected, and then eating somewhere … and then I come home and fling myself down and moan because I ate too much. I’ll have to go on a three orange a day diet to counteract this week, sigh.

And really, if I have to go on a three orange a day diet here, that certainly must absolve me from having to do the Ogri’la rep grind. Yay! There is an up side!

Stupid Ice Chips and Ersatz Poultry

Yeah, I’m beginning to think that whole Ice Chip thing may not be worth it. Stupid pet. Maybe I don’t even want it anymore. Okay, that’s a lie, I do want it but this is ridiculous. Maybe it’s the time of day I’m queuing, is there a good time of day?

The first couple of times no problem, which there really shouldn’t be but the last two times, OMG. My queues are usually around 25 minutes and I should have realized something was up when after only about fifteen minutes I was in. I guess someone lost patience with the group. They were all dead, well one was still alive with about 5hp left. I thought, okay, since I haven’t engaged I’ll just Shadowmeld back here til they’re dead too, and then I can Revive them.

Apparently that’s not an option because the freaking water elementals have some type of psychic abilities that allow them to sense things a mile away and stealthed, so alright, kill me already so we can get this show on the road. Okay we’re all dead now, happy?

When everyone was back I asked,”Does everyone know how this goes?” No answers. Okay, then they know it I guess. I GUESS NOT. No one seemed to grasp the concept of the frozen core being there at all. To them it was apparently just a fight to the death with water elementals or they were waiting for a giant boss looking thing to appear and walk ominously towards them. Phase two came and I’m the only one on the core, everyone else is kinda of milling around waiting for more elementals to fight.

I don’t know why this struck me so funny, hysteria probably, so I’m laughing and shredding and occasionally flying around in the air and wondering how many times this had happened before the other person dropped the group. Obviously I didn’t get Ahune down on the first go by myself and I started wondering how long I’d be stuck in this endless cycle of doom. For a chance at an Ice Chip. When he emerged again I attacked him with a single minded fury of someone possessed. I didn’t know if anyone was still alive and didn’t care, enough, enough, stop the madness!

I don’t know how many hours later, it was finally over. I bid adieu to my silent compadres. Still no Ice Chip. So I went back to Stormwind and Druid and I consoled ourselves by seeing how close to a humanoid Moonkin we could make her look. Not very it turns out. So I’m thinking of going to the Blizzard store and just buying a pet. Seems a more sensible course of action. Hey Ice Chip, look at him, he’s WAY cuter than you.

Yeah, I might try just one more time. Just one. Stupid little Ice Chip.

What’s in a Name and Free Pets!

One of the things I love about WoW is even early in the morning when I insist on playing without being able to see, there’s always something to do. Children’s Week! Free pets! Aside from getting the pets I’m pretty much done. I’ll go kick King Ymiron’s butt once my contacts are in but that’s it for me. I am not doing School of Hard Knocks regardless of what I’m offered. There will be no Reins of the Violet Proto-Drake for me.

Cat has the four BC pets, and the two Northrend pets but she must have really been distracted by something as I found that she didn’t have even one of the vanilla pets, what a slacker! I’ll have to remember to have the alts get the other three this week so that when Mists of Pandaria releases she’ll have them all.

I was looking at some of the screen shots I took at JD’s going away party. It really was like a fancy masquerade party. We all have so many WoW related names. (Look at that darn chicken, hey, you’re with me, get over here!) Some people I recognized right away, like the famous fashion queen Navimie, some I didn’t. It was kind of fun guessing who might be who.

For example, I have a real name that if you use, I will cast a look that will turn you to stone. Yeah, don’t like it much. Then there’s the WoW me list.

I answer to Tome or Ancient because of the blog. Tome of the Ancient is long and I’m lazy so I type TotA and will answer to that too.

On twitter I’m Ancient8 because someone had the audacity to have already taken Ancient, I’ll answer to that too.

I’m Cat, Sasche, Ironsally, Shamimi, Lessismora, Zor, the list goes on. Soon I’ll be a battletag too.

So you might know someone from Twitter, but not their blog, or the other way around. Or you only know their Horde character, geez, get’s confusing.

I don’t know, are we going to have to start coming up with callsigns like fighter pilots that display under our character’s name. In a cross-server group you’ll see something like Gloria the Kingslayer and then under that it’ll say “Wombat” and then we’ll know who they are. Be great if it could be used across all the games you play, kind of a universal gaming identifier!

Yeah, I know probably not going to happen but I can dream. Poor Bolvar, sorry man. Well I know it’s never going to happen but I’m going to go browse callsigns. It looks like you don’t get to pick your own irl, but this is Azeroth so I’m going to have a really cool one ready just in case.

Noblegarden, Blizzard’s Revenge

When I realized Noblegarden was here my first reaction was … meh. I was shocked, I usually love holiday events and I couldn’t remember why Noblegarden got  that initial bleh reaction from me. Okay, now I do, it’s all coming back to me now. This is the holiday designed to bring all our nerd-ragginess to the forefront and it does it’s job well. I’m SO SURE this is Blizzard’s revenge for all the ungrateful ranting we do at them on the forums. I just know it.

I want the mount. It’s not very pretty, but damn, it’s a mount and I gotta have it. Pictured above is my Druid losing her mojo about half way through. That’s just the ONE bag of the wrong junk. I can not begin to explain the rage I felt each time another freakin’ Spring Rabbit’s Foot dropped instead of a chocolate, and what’s worse I deleted them all, didn’t pay attention I was so nerd raged, my alts might have liked them.

So yeah, you got the Druids that fly ahead of you to get the egg, you’ve got the campers, you’ve got the racy racy guys who use whatever means available to rush ahead of you and get the egg. Then you’ve got the ones on a giant drake mount flying around getting stuck in-between buildings. Then you have the ones that decide you stole an egg intended for them, so they follow you around for an hour trying to beat you to each egg … oh wait … that was me. My bad.

Now that I’m finished, because I didn’t want to tip them off before I was done, you have the Noblegarden Bunnies. Thank Elune for these guys, if it hadn’t been for them I’d still be out there. They kept rushing around missing almost all the eggs, I’d follow along picking up all the eggs they missed. Thank you guys, I couldn’t have done it without you. The only good thing I can remember is that some of the campers really did it with style. Set up a camp complete with Tol Barad Searchlight and Romantic Picnic Basket at that one place in Dolanaar where three eggs would spawn.

So yeah, it’s over. I got the mount. But I’m still having flashbacks today. Sorry alts, I can not do that again … just can’t. You win Blizzard, you turned me into a nerd-raging twit who still has a nervous twitch today, happy? No matter where in Azeroth I’ve been since then, I still see phantom eggs hiding in the bushes and have to stop myself from running off to pick them. So in an attempt to wash the memories of the gory egg battles from my mind my Hunter went to Netherstorm and tamed Nuramoc.

He’s been renamed Euphy, can’t imagine why … NO, no, Goblins are not food! Stop it! So that helped take my mind off eggs for a while.

And world traveler Navi is back! And you can imagine how jealous I was after I read that story! So anyway, while on her trip she posted pictures of many fine meals at posh places and I just couldn’t resist returning the favor as when I saw this, all I could think of was Navi’s lovely food pictures! Bon Appétit!

A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing in the Paws of Kittys

Yeah, I know, it’s crazy. Suddenly my Druid thinks she knows math which when you think about it is impossible. I am math challenged, always have been so I think it unlikely that in Azeroth there’d be any change. So really she has no idea what she’s doing. Silly cat.

I knew this would happen. I should never have downloaded that DPS meter. I don’t use many addons. I always had a threat meter to keep from rudely pulling aggro but that’s about it. I just thought it would be informative and to make sure I wasn’t being the cause of any problems. I really didn’t know it would snowball into the cat from hell.

I play for fun; I’m not competitive so a good group for me has always been based on whether it was fun and whether the objective died. That’s about it. Dying a few times never bothered me as long as everyone remained pleasant. I’m kind of an underachiever of WoW which has always been okay with me.

But the meter may have created a monster … a scary monster cat. I was intrigued by the huge range my DPS had. It varied from 7k to 21k, why was that? Could I do better, what should I do? I started thinking stuff like that, yeah, really crucial to get those holiday apothecaries down real fast to frisk ‘em for the Love Rocket. And I have little time to figure it out, I mean the holiday will be over soon and then I’m looking at waiting until the ice stone has melted for the next holiday boss.

So the last time I queued I was horrified with myself afterwards. I usually try not to take unnecessary damage. I’m used to being solo so I never take for granted any healing I may get. I try not to stand in dangerous stuff. I use Barkskin and other druidy spells as needed. But the last time I queued? I ran in there like an axe murderer on meth. I ignored stuff on the ground, didn’t pay attention to my health, just flailed madly about trying to bite everyone on the rear end as fast as I could. I heard a voice in my head say, “Ah, It’s okay, the healer will keep you safe! Rip, shred, shred, shred, faster, faster, aarrggh, I’m the KITTY OF DOOM , FEAR ME AND DIE!”

And as it turned out everything was fine because there was a Mage who killed them all in, I swear under a minute. But I had become the stereotypical rude, inconsiderate dps. Like almost overnight. Because I was so taken with my damage meter. I was ashamed. I quickly logged out and removed the damage meter. I’m not even keeping it for the rest of the holiday even though it was fun. I’m going to have to go cold turkey. I hope the regular Druid returns. I guess I’m not as uncompetitive as I thought. Who knew?

I Visited the Crown Chemical Co. and all I got was this …

Yup, no big Love Rocket yet. But my Druid wanted me to take her picture in case this is all she gets from those apothecaries. That Druid has been causing a lot of trouble lately. I should have known better than to let her read the blogs I follow. And it’s had a domino effect because she showed the alts how to do it.

First, Druid troubles. Yesterday she saw a hawt human male at the Darkmoon Faire. Because of the extreme level difference I thought it most unsuitable so I made her leave. She was mopey after that and apparently visited Matty’s post Lovesick. GAWD! She discovered Fleetwood Mac and now all she does is mournfully play Go Your Own Way and Silver Springs on her Goblin Player and she keeps giving me accusatory looks.

But that’s just the start! She apparently gave my Hunter, Euphyley’s blog address. Yes! WoW Rare Spawn Guide, are you kidding Druid. You can imagine what kind of ruckus that caused! Every time I login my Hunter yells, pick me! Pick me!

And it only gets worse. My Druid must have visited Navi at The Daily Frostwolf. OMG! So now she is asking all kinds of questions about raiding and she told me this morning she wants to go to a training dummy and see if she can improve her dps! WTF! That’s it; I’m going to uninstall that DPS meter. Don’t tell my Druid but I’m kind of fascinated by that thing too. Same fight, same Druid, different group, her DPS has ranged between 7k and 18k. I didn’t know it was that variable. I’d better get rid of it before I’m as bad as the Druid.

If they don’t watch themselves I’m going back to my Forsaken Warlock who hardly EVER says anything and I’ll get a little peace. So you’re on notice guys, watch it. And no more blogs, I MEAN IT!

And Druid, best one’s Tusk, just saying.

Apothecary Hummel Guide (unscientific and likely flawed)

Okay it’s all coming back to me now. I now remember that last year I had the same problem. Why does no one want to beat down Apothecary Hummel? I realize I have to queue for these things off peak hours but I don’t remember having any trouble getting into The Headless Horseman or Coren Direbrew in less than ten minutes at off peak hours. So what’s going on?

Admittedly, Coren and the horseman are pretty easy but so is Apothecary Hummel if you know what to do. Purely in my own self-interest I’m going to give you my McLonewolf’s guide to Apothecary Hummel. If like me, you only poke your nose out for holiday bosses, no problem, it’ easy. Just humor me and do this so I can get my chance at the Big Love Rocket, what do you say?

I downloaded TinyDPS as I remembered there was a lot of running about involved, being melee dps I wanted to make sure I wasn’t screwing everyone up trying to run around and bite those apothecaries on the butt. On seeing the meter after the fight I can only assume people don’t understand what’s going on. Cause I would have thought the caster would out dps the melee dps. No one was AFK, they were all running around doing SOMETHING, I just don’t know what.

So here follows Wolfie McLonewolf’s Totally Unscientific Guide to Apothecary Hummel. Probably shouldn’t pay too much attention to it but it works for me.

If old Hummel isn’t showing up as available in your dungeon finder, find a Steamwheedle Shyster Dungeonmaster. In Stormwind he’s right outside the bank. I haven’t verified this but I was told his Orgrimmar location is between the bank and Grommash Hold.

If you get in the instance and don’t have a bottle of perfume and a bottle of cologne, pick one of each up at the table on the left. MOST IMPORTANT STEP.

Apothecary Hummel does nasty purple damage so use the pinky purply perfume bottle if you’re in purply gunk.  Apothecary Baxter will do greeny damage so use your yellowy green cologne bottle if you’re being sprayed with or standing in green gooey stuff.

Apothecary Frye is the third and final guy who runs around willy-nilly tossing both purply and green gunk on the floor and attacking random people. Don’t worry, he can’t really hurt you. It’s the stuff on the floor that can, but yay! You have neutralizers! Just make sure to stand in purply stuff if you’re wearing the purple bottle and stand in green stuff if you’re wearing the yellow-green bottle. Or don’t stand in any stuff at all if you can manage that.

Yeah, there are some other things going on like Chain Reaction but just remember to wear the color coordinated perfume or cologne and then kill ‘em. Okay? Wowhead has a nice write up about it but seriously, do they really think anyone stops to discuss strategy in these LFD groups? I mean really?

So anyway, there you have it. I am not responsible for any deaths resulting from the use of my guide. Don’t try filing a civil suit against me at the Stormwind Courthouse.

Okay now please queue for Apothecary Hummel, all you all, go ahead, do eet. Pretty please?

Going to get me a Big Love Rocket!

Through some miraculous convergence of the stars, I woke in Azeroth to not one or two but three simultaneous events! Just saying a quick Hi! Got things to do, people to see. Don’t even know if I’ll have time to watch the Superbowl.

Oh, and a warning for the Fenris server.

Generally I try not to inflict my lack of groupery skills on the general population … as a courtesy. So … you know … no needless deaths. But Fenris, the stakes are too high today. For the possibility of a chance at the Big Love Rocket I’m sad to say that I find the possibility of your death an acceptable risk to take for this prize. Consider yourself warned.  I’m queuing for Old Apothecary Hummel right now, look out.

After that I’ve got to get 270 tokens for a Swift Lovebird! So I gotta go. And oh yeah, if you’re a fun sucking meanie in there with Apothecary Hummel I’m so going to whine about you here, just saying … watch out!

Grindgear Gorilla Manufacturers Recall

I felt kind of guilty; my header was implying that I would be talking about one game. NP, it’s fixed. Now I won’t feel bad if I talk about SWTOR too, you’ve been warned. And yes, I do mean talk. I don’t consider this writing; I’m talking with my fingers. Writing, on the other hand implies well thought out posts, countless edits, grammar, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I don’t do that.

Today? Oh hell yes this is a WoW day. The Darkmoon Faire is back in town and I need a monkey. I mean a REAL monkey, not that half-assed Grindgear Gorilla. Do I sound bitter? Okay, could be. I killed that giant yeti I don’t know how many times and all I ever got was more Grindgear Gorillas, I have like a year’s supply. I mean he’s cute and all but he only sticks around for about 30 seconds or so. I’m really fed up with Smokywood Pastures inferior products and I think they should recall the Grindgear Gorilla. And really, I’m thinking of notifying D.E.H.T.A. about Smokywood’s inability to keep track of their reindeer. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to risk life and limb retrieving Metzen the Reindeer to find once again, they’ve let him get out of his reindeer pen or barn or wherever they keep him.  I don’t think they truly understand just how disgruntled customers who’ve been denied a Lump of Coal can get.

So anyway I went to see my homies at the Darkmoon Faire and they came through for me. Now this is a REAL monkey with a hat and everything. Take that Smokywood Pastures, I’m taking my business elsewhere from now on.

And oh, this is kinda SWTOR related. SWTOR, SWTOR, SWTOR. What am I doing? Well I generally don’t get a lot of traffic around here. I mean I know it’s probably because there’s a serious dearth of well … useful information about anything. My bad, I know. But since I’ve started talking about SWTOR, my traffic had tripled so forgive me if I insert a random SWTOR here and there throughout the post. I’m really enjoying seeing where all the traffic is coming from. Hi there Hungarians! Thanks for visiting!

Okay anyway, I keep asking my daughter for my son-in-law’s SWTOR server. She said it’s something with a K and has two words. I looked it up and that’s a PVP server, odd. So I then asked her if he rolled on a PVP server. O M G! My daughter has the ability to detach her eyeballs from whatever moorings eyeballs have and roll them expressively around … at me and probably her husband because we’re both big dorks, her words not mine. The expression “rolled on a PVP server” is what got her going. But all the eye-rolling aside I’m beginning to think he’s avoiding me. Maybe he doesn’t want to play with a terrible player. I am probably terrible, but hey I can be a lot of fun while I’m playing terribly, really. On the other hand he may not want to have anything to do with me because I have characters on the Empire side and HE IS a Jedi Knight so there might be some sort of moral conflict going on there, I don’t know.

Anyway, you know who you are and I WILL FIND YOU, muhahaha!!!!!!!! I’ve got big dork radar!

Winter Veil, and I don’t feel so good …

Alright, first … I just had to bite my tongue. It must be the mother in me … but hon … really? Don’t you think you could put some tights on or something and a shirt for heaven sakes? Is that really appropriate … okay, tongue bitten. She’s a grown Druid, if she wants to parade across the country dressed as a holiday strumpet that’s not my business.

I read somewhere that the Red Winter Hat needed for the achievement ‘Tis the Season had a 100% drop rate off of Grand Magus Telestra if you did The Nexus on heroic. I don’t know if that’s true but she was wearing it the first time my Druid went in so that completed her Winter Garb Set.

I told her I’d meet her with a piece of Graccu’s Mince Meat Fruitcake I had so she could complete her achievement. There, another one done, what’s next?

Oh wow, I think this ship has sailed, at least on my server. She stood in Dalaran forever hoping another Snowman would show up to dance with her for A Frosty Shake but no luck. The only good thing was it got her to finally take off her Winter Garb, whew. She completed Bros. Before Ho Ho Ho’s, looks like the next step is to go warm the hearts of the horde with her caroling skills.

I told her I’d be back to help her with that. I had to walk the real life dogs first. She’s met them so she said fine, take your time. I didn’t really feel all that great but IRL there is no NOT WALKING THE DOGS ALLOWED, EVER. The dogs are strict taskmasters and I must obey or there will be consequences … the kind I won’t like.

Logically, I do know that the laws governing the universe do not suspend during holidays, I really do know that. Nonetheless, I continue to treat holidays like they come with a calorie amnesty. Last night we were in the mood to watch I Am Legend. During the viewing of the movie I ate two ham sandwiches with a side of Doritos then for dessert had a bowl of ice cream with the rest of the belgian chocolates kind of like a topping. All of this was washed down with red wine. I attribute it to my concern for Will Smith because I knew what was coming next in the movie, so I really wasn’t paying attention to what I was eating, that’s my story anyway.

So on the dog walk, universal law number 1176 kicked in. Said law states, “If you are going to feel sick, you will be at the maximum walking distance from your home.” It is somewhat comforting to know our lives are governed by laws you can count on however inconvenient they may be.

At maximum distance I felt a near uncontrollable urge to ralph the previous evening’s eating marathon results. We were at this point, in front of a lovely, well-maintained mail box in a manicured lawn. Not good. Luckily the way back is downhill and my dog thought it was great fun to run at breakneck speeds down the hill to the woods part of our walk, otherwise known as pooping station two. With glee he helped me clear a path through the bushes where I could ralph to my heart’s content out of the view of curious passers-by.

Yes, a cautionary tale isn’t it. Learn from my mistakes, there is no food amnesty on holidays. Repeat it, know it, learn it. Right … will do. Next year will be totally different. Ah, I feel so much better.Well enough to don a Gaudy Winter Veil Sweater and go impress the horde with my incredible singing prowess which is what I love about Azeroth. In Azeroth I have incredible singing prowess, IRL … um … not so much.