Everyone is welcome to join Shawndra at her bountiful table. There will be stuffing, cranberry chutney, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and, of course, turkey! Shawndra is so proud, she even cooked the turkey. Here she is in her very first cooking show.
If you've been reading lately, it is pretty obvious that Shawndra has me wrapped around her little finger. She has been getting the bulk of my attention, needing tanking gear and catching up to her status as a main character. Delgada has come out to do enchanting for Shawndra, and right back away she goes when she is done. Maura has been out to do leg patches and heavy borean armor kits for Shawndra, which has earned her some levels in leatherworking, but back away she goes when she is finished. Shawndra is working on finishing Zul'Drak, then she will be off to Storm Peaks.
Halinka got out a couple of nights ago. She got to run Heroic Trial of the Champion with a few guild mates and a couple pugs. The healer was a pug, and was undergeared, so the instance wasn't finished. Our hunter got a shiny new pair of shoulders, though, so the run was considered a success. Halinka, at the end of the run, had enough tokens to buy a new pair of gloves and a new wand. It was a pretty successful hour of play, all in all.
Real life has been busy. Getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas is always a chore. Add on top of that poor grades and homework contracts for my oldest daughter, checking in on my mom who is getting the holiday blues, and closing up the kitchen for holiday break kept me really hopping. I did have time, however, to hang out with John and Michelle on the Warcraft Outsiders Podcast recently. I had a lot of fun, and I hope you will all give it a listen, and check out their other shows, Video Game Outsiders and Pop Outsiders. Their shows are lively and witty, and a whole lot of fun! They also have a great community site with busy forums and, of course, a fabulous WoW guild on the Shadowsong server.
So, that is what I have been up to this month. I skipped October, but I plan for this to be a monthly article, because it gives me something to write and something to look back on. Now, I am off to hunt wild turkey and shoot some rogues. Wish me luck!
Troggbane.
That is all. I'm late for work. But Shawndra assured me she wants this. Swords just aren't her style...
I am a lunch lady. This being the last week of school before Thanksgiving break, our district has a week of minimum days, so that teachers have time to finish grading and have conferences. In the kitchen, this means my day is squashed a little tighter, and we cut our menu down a bit. I'm not serving any less students, really. I'm just serving the same amount in less time. So, in order to make things easier on everyone, they take off the item that takes the most assembly, and our salad bar is cut down from five items to four easy to grab items.
You would think this would make things easier. Less items means less preparation time and faster serving times, right? Wrong! I have this nifty sheet of plastic covered ice cubes I use to keep the salad bar items cold. So that the children didn't have any ideas of popping the little water bubbles, I covered the empty space in my salad bar with a lid. The second grade were the first through, and by the time they had passed, I was losing my patience telling them to leave the lid alone, that there was nothing under it. So, I put a sign that said "DON'T TOUCH" on the lid. Then the questions began.
"What's under the lid?"
"Is it hot?"
"What's under the lid?"
"What is that?"
"Is it freezing cold?"
"What is that?"
"Why can't we have what's under the lid?"
"Is what's under there for the 6th graders?"
"What's under the lid?!?!"
The last threads of my patience were fraying. The sixth grade was next, and they passed the lid up like it wasn't even there. Today I am thankful that they could care less about eating fruits and vegetables. The first grade started lining up to eat, as they are last on minimum days, and I braced myself for more questions. The only peep I heard was,"That says Don't Touch.". Bless their little too-shy-to-ask hearts. I made it through the first day of minimum day week alive, and mean lunch lady didn't surface. Phew.
From Tuesday through the end of this week, I'll be serving a full salad bar. It's much easier than fielding the "What's under there?" questions. And my ice blanket will live past Thanksgiving!
I have a point to this story. With every new content patch, with every new expansion, there are many, many players who are also asking, "What's under the lid?". Nothing new, we are an inquisitive bunch by nature. Is it always good to know what is under the lid, though? Everyone plays this game differently. There are levelers, raiders, explorers, modders, achievement junkies and there are diggers. I'm sure that those that choose to delve into the test realm game files enjoy this game just as much as I do when I find a quest I've never experienced before. And all you test realm raiders, I'm sure it is just as exciting for you to figure out the strategy to a boss before it even hits the live realms. I know there are those of us that really get excited about reading about the changes before they hit the live realms. But should we open that lid and peek?
Shadowmourne is very slick looking. Shawndra, a connoisseur of axes, had to have a little help snapping her jaw back shut (without biting her lip, those tusks are painful!) when I described it to her. Then she heard about the process by which Arthas claimed Frostmourne, and figured the axe was just too much for her to handle. You see, she likes coming by her gear as easily as possible, and any idea of her weapon even trying to own her means it must be too much work. Had she not been next to me when I opened the lid and had one day come across Shadow's Edge, she may have gone ahead with the story line, forging the ultimate weapon. Now, Shawndra will be happy peering over my shoulder as I pore over weapons and armor, making her checklist of acceptable looking items that aren't out of her realm of ability, and also keeping a checklist of impossible to attain awards in the back of her head. They weren't impossible when they were just a code in the latest test realm patch, but after they were leaked and discovered in boss loot tables, I made the decision on what she was capable of. Should I have?
I remember our guilds first foray into Zul'Gurub. We didn't go in there expecting anything. We had no lists of loot we wanted. We didn't even have a dkp system sorted out yet. We went in there and wiped on the first two mobs. Did we cry at our lost chances at loot? No! We laughed, some until tears came, and walked in there and wiped again. Then we went in there, wiped the tears, rebuffed, and let the rogue pull, because that is what he was good at (he's good at a million other things, too, but I won't go there. ^.- ), and we got a little further. I don't remember what we got to that night. I know we had no idea what we were doing, and it was fun.
I would love the wonder of finding an untouched (for me) dungeon and going in with my buddies and giggling while we do everything wrong for the first two or ten tries. But, I know that we feel obligated now to look up boss strategies. So it won't be so strange to go in there, with someone else having blazed that trail for me. I might even know what the boss drops. No, I'm leaving the lid down on that one. You can't make me look!
The decision to open the lid is a personal one. I, for one, plan on not opening any lids and showing my fellows in queue anything that isn't in the game already. I'll wait until me and my buddies hit the first instance before I crack open the strategies, unless they don't mind blazing the trail with me. I sure hope they don't mind. Sometimes it's good to escape to somewhere noone has told you about...
This is a shared topic from Blog Azeroth. Inspiration for this post comes from Lath at Hots and Dots. As of the start of this post, Autumnn of Grumble and Autumnn had also put in her two copper. Here are my two copper. Spend them, toss them in a wishing well, give them away, the choice is yours. If the topic makes you want to comment, but are afraid you'll say too much, blog about it!
I cannot give you a specific change that is the best the game ever had. Why? It’s not because I wasn’t paying attention. It’s because I love every change that happens, good or bad. Change is what keeps this game from stagnating. I know, some of you will argue that some class changes were not good, but follow my thoughts for a moment. Maybe the “bad” change decreased your damage output, or increased your mana consumption. What came from that change? Did it cause you to come up with an alternative? Are you using a spell you didn’t use before? Have you had to rethink your rotation to compensate? Maybe you had to re-gem and re-enchant your gear with a new stat to make the difference up. Then there was good from it! Doing the same thing all the time is boring. Using the same old spell all the time would really have me rolling every class in the book looking for something different (wait, I already do!). Different, to me, is good. So, change is good.
They are right now examining the effects of haste on shadow priest spells in the PTR. Now, before this ever happened, a fellow shadow priest reminded me how our talented Shadow Word: Pain worked. When we refresh it with Mind Flay, it keeps whatever buffs it had on it when it refreshes. He reminded me that when I cast it, I should always make sure to use my trinkets, potions, you name it to buff the spell before I cast it. That way, unless it falls off, I don’t have to worry about it again. What was happening in the PTR is that shadow priests, already knowing the mechanics behind the spell, were stacking haste, then doing the same thing they had always done, trading out trinkets and potions to come up with the exact right buffs to make that Shadow Word: Pain the nastiest it could be. Because Mind Flay was refreshing the buffs, it became a monster of a spell. Blizzard found that this made the spell too powerful, and took it from the Shadow Form buff they were planning that would allow haste to work with damage over time spells. I know a lot of shadow priests out there feel as if they were given the world and then told to go live under a bridge in a cardboard box, but I’m happy. I get to rethink Delgada’s gear choices and enhancements, rethink her talent point distribution, rethink her spell rotation (I know, it’s a priority, not a rotation!), rethink the food and potions she consumes, even maybe the color of her hair and what day she gets to come out and play. Am I upset that Shadow Word: Pain got left out of this party? Not really, though I would have liked to cackle maniacally at a test dummy before they took it off in the PTR while I watched it tick. This, for me, is change, and change is welcome. It keeps me interested in the game long after I have completed every “kill ten boars” quest.
Keep the changes coming, Blizzard! I look forward to every nerf, buff, and new item with all the enthusiasm of a blossoming pyromaniac lighting his very first match.
Alright, to be quite honest, I am sure loving the being able to fly right when I hit Northrend change. But don't tell anyone that is my favorite. You all know how flaky I am about who my favorite character is. I am that flaky about my favorite change, too. Forget I said anything. Really. I'm going to go try out the newest change to the game now. I heard something about a mohawk bomb...
