Wizard 101 Giveaway!

Getting rid of my ugly helm.

Mrs. Greyrose liked my last post so much she gave me two codes good for one extra castle space and a Red Barn Farm house.  If you love gardening or just really like life on the farm, this house is for you!  What I mean to say is, I'm not keeping the codes for myself, but giving them away.  Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your schoolmates, tell your coworkers, tell your garbage man, tell your plumber, tell everyone about this giveaway!  I'll be giving the codes away, one to a commenter on this post, and one to a follower of my Twitter feed (@shawndrakai) who sends a tweet my way.  Tell me, why do you want the house?  Or, how will you decorate it?  Even better yet, what plants will you plant on your farm?  I will post the winners to both Twitter and my blog on Saturday, May 25th.

Writing the housing post made me stick my nose back into Wizard 101, and there were some new things there!  I didn't show even half of them in this video, so I may make another with my husband's character so we can see what the boys have available, and to see what new pets and mounts can be had.  I am excited to finally finish Celestia with Rowan and see the other worlds that have been released.  I have many new pets and wizards to level, houses to buy and decorate, and gardens to tend. So much to do!  See you in The Spiral!

Housing My Way.

Lately, World of Warcraft has been adding creature comforts more frequently.  Being able to dress Delgada they way I want to and still give her the stats she needs is awesome.  Having a little shack next to the first thing and second thing I do when I log in is wonderful.  Being able to join the queue for random dungeons, scenarios, raids, even battlegrounds while I pull weeds and spin silk instead of travelling is such a time saver. Portals in the current hub that take me almost anywhere I have to go, and only a few seconds flight from my hovel on the farm is terrific.

But I want more!  I want to be able to stash extra crafting materials in a trunk in my shack.  I want to be able to display tchotchkes on every table and shelf, and add more shelves to load down with more gewgaws.  A closet with spaces for wardrobe sets would be handy. I want to be able to expand my cottage into a family sized home or a mansion, or be able to live in an apartment in the city, or have both.  I want to have a stool to sit on, a bed to lay in, maybe even a tub to bathe in (eek!).  I want to be able to change the wallpaper and flooring. I want to be able to decorate my humble (or fabulous) abode with pictures and trophies and fountains and whatever ridiculous thing I find when adventuring.  These are not horribly difficult requests to fill, are they?

Outside Rowan's castle.

Rowan's living room in her castle.

Wizard 101 has houses and mansions with bank access, that you can decorate, some so fabulous that they have dueling circles in the courtyard and access to a mini games through arcade game style furniture pieces.  Outside, you can garden for spell cards, resources, pets, pet food, money, experience, and for silliness.  Have you ever seen Elvis Parsley?  Evil snow peas are cool (ha!), too.  Some houses have secret areas.  I know the palace I got for Christmas has a dungeon under a waterfall that I use as a crafting shed, and a special island like the ones in the sky of Nagrand that I set up as a graveyard.  Inside and out, you can decorate with items you find in the world, buy with gold on the auction house or from a vendor, or even buy items with crowns.  There is a new item you can craft that allows you to display a complete outfit.  You can even leave unused pets and mounts out, giving the house a more lived in feel. Another thing Wizard 101 does is allow people who are on your friends list to visit you if you are in your house (or mansion, or amphitheater  pyramid, or dorm).  The players of this game regularly hold parties in their houses, hosting hundreds at a time. Yes, I am enamored of Wizard 101's housing.  I have played it casually, dropping for months at a time to pick it up and level furiously for a week or two then drop it again.  Without a guild mechanic and the amount of kids playing, it stays fun for only a while before I have to stop for a while.  I work with kids, and I am a mom of many, so spending my gaming time with pre-adolescent inventively foul mouthed brats wears on me.

Eromee, digging for materials with her house (the teeny one on the left) in the distance. 

Small Naboo House: Style 1 with some of the random items Jenmo has looted recently.

Star Wars Galaxies had a very intricate and fun housing decoration system where you could pretty much position an item wherever in the house you wanted, and put your house wherever you want, except in game created cities.  People used looted, crafted, and rewarded items to create the most fantastic things. This home was featured in a monthly showcase of homes. Some people at max level would devote all their in game time to finding the rarest items to decorate their houses with.  This site has albums of all sorts of different houses.  Curtains made of skirts, aquariums made with paintings and plants and weapons, pool tables made with goodness knows what!  The only limit was the item count limit for the house, which, if I remember right, could be augmented once by an item given to veteran players.  There were so many different house styles and sizes, that you could choose the one that held the most, like a guild hall or a cantina, and decorate for days!  I wish I still had pictures of my old place.  Not that I could compete with the likes of some of the sites I linked, but I had a neat fireplace and some of the rare crafted rugs.  It was never just a house there, it was a home.  

Inside my house.  Not as fabulous as most.

Outside my humble cot.  Piggies!

Glitch had a clever way of housing, where you could buy furnishings from players or from the store, and there was wallpaper and flooring. A player could build on to their house, making it longer or taller.  Players would make theme rooms with all raven items and red and black, rooms decorated like a zone they liked, rooms that were filled with piggies and baby chicks. Houses were built on a home street where players could have gardens and trees and piggies and chickens and butterflies, dirt piles and ore nodes, firefly hives and barnacles and peat bogs, etc. You could even build a tower on your home street where people could buy things or just look at the awesomeness you had put together.  

Maybe I have been spoiled by all the different types of player housing I have encountered.  Housing gives each player a place to make their own in a game where everyone is doing exactly the same thing.  In all three of the games I have used the housing feature in, no two houses I visited were exactly alike.  No two aquariums were identical.  No two starter houses were decorated the same.  Even houses used as storage sheds showed the personality of the person behind the character. 

So, I guess I want housing for more than just functional reasons.  I want housing so that I can put my own unique mark on the game world I love.  Thoughts?  Do you agree, disagree, or have things to add? Let's start a conversation!  Add a comment to this post.  I look forward to hearing from all of you. Until then, I'm off to go murder innocent Meatlump Buffoons in hopes of getting rug thread and sculpture pieces.  After that, some farming in Halfhill followed by grouping with other players Looking For Raid.  See you in Azeroth, or on Naboo, or where ever our vacations happen to coincide.

Reasons To Play WoW

Beautiful Scenery.  Trolls.

                      

Friends. Dungeons.

                       

Grummles. Shadow Priests. Draenei.

The Forsaken. Pretty Robes. Darkmoon Faire. Pet Battles.

Dragons. Flight. Imagination.

Haste Haste Baby!

Exalted with the Shado Pan

Mr Robot is a cruel master.  Last week he was just fine with what I had on.  Then, I run a couple of raids, kill a few world bosses, and he wants me to change all my armor buffs again.  AGAIN!  Last time I did this it cost me well over 4000 gold to fix everything.  This laundry list he has given me should probably cost just as much.  All for a total of 3 upgraded pieces.

What does he want me to change?  First, he wants me to switch out all my rubies for onyx.  Then, he wants me to switch out all my onyx that were already in place for some radiant gem I've never even considered.  Apparently, the gems I had were too smart but not so quick.  Humph! All my sparkly enchants are fine.  The stats the armor pieces already have are in question again.  If it can be changed to haste, he wants it changed, except for my necklace, which he wants changed to critical strike chance. Oh, and he wants me to fill that sha-touched weapon gem socket.  I can't get all the sigils I need to turn in to the Black Prince.  You'd think being exalted he'd give me a break, since we're the best of friends.  Jerk.

Hopefully, my guild that is currently called Void Where Prohibited but could be named just about anything else in the next week, will be able to help me out with the gems.  The guild master keeps yelling at me for not using guild resources.  Is it bad that I like to be able to keep my own gear up?  I feel like I help the guild by freeing up resources for others that way.  I'll be a good girl and ask tonight.  Maybe the gems were sitting in the bank not feeling wanted.  Can't have that happening. Disappointed, depressed gems don't work as well.

Marea in Thousand Needles ?!

In other news, my capped at 80 rogue went shopping for her transmog set.  She wanted a leveling set, silly girl, but I think it looks quite fetching and roguish.  By went shopping, I mean that she had to run all the silly quests in Thousand Needles and one in Dustwallow Marsh to get the full set.

Looks better on a Blood Elf.

Now that she has covered her mismatched Lich King raiding gear, she can start leveling again, because the guild leader put the kibosh on trying for the feats.  I've always wanted a max level rogue, but not before Shawndra, er, I mean Shâwndra, gets her chance.  

Aspiring Zen Master Gnomish Engineer.

She dropped skinning for mining and enchanting for engineering.  This of course was after she handed the reigns of KNR over to a guild mate who planned to stay on Smolderthorn and moved to Zul'jin.  Then, she shipped out to Pandaria, did a few quests to land her in the village with the portal to Orgrimmar, and returned to level her new professions.  As of this post, she sits at the edge of finishing WOTLK engineering and her mining is well into the Pandarian ore family.  I plan to keep her in Orgrimmar with short mining trips to keep costs down until her engineering is ready for Pandaria.  

She needed something pretty to wear, too.

Sorry I haven't been around lately.  Life is busy IRL, and the time I have been on has been busy or an illusion, as I tend to nap at my desk these days. I imagine Delgada and Shawndra have been tapping their feet in between snores, looking at me through the screen, unable to do anything without me.  Hopefully I get a hold of the medical professional responsible for delaying my needed machinery so that I can return to a more normal posting schedule.  Until next time, /love a few critters, especially the icky ones, and I'll see you in Azeroth!

What I've Been Doing: March Edition.

Look, he's smiling!

Delgada has been a busy bee these past few weeks.  You'd think that me having a spring break of two long weeks would mean I would write something on this musty old blog. I meant to, but I just couldn't find the time, what with DMV appointments and swim meets.  I wanted more play time, and I threw this old book aside to do it.  Sorry about that.  I'll try not to let it happen again.

So, back to Del.  She achieved many things recently!  This morning she gave the Klaxxi their last shipment of pumpkins, got the Wakener title and is exalted with those icky bugs.  The only reason she has to go back there is that achievement you get for running 5 quests with every buff (she still needs 4). She reached exalted with the August Celestials yesterday.  She has been running and running, and flying, and throwing shadow spells all over the place.  She has been working on about every faction she should be working on.  Since she has knocked two of them off her list, that leaves Dominance Offensive, the Sunreaver Onslaught, Shado Pan and Shado Pan Assault.  Since vacation is over, Del is lucky to get The mainland Pandaren factions done, farm, and make a bit of silk before I'm done for the night.  During vacation, she ran them all, and the ones that she wasn't exalted with yet, and joined LFR, and did some scenarios, and did some pet battling...phew! Near wore me out, that undead girl did.

Fireworks and Dancing and Drinking, Whee!

Delgada got some really nice gear upgrades, including a Sha-Touched mace.  She promptly had me look up what Mr Robot thought about her gear, and about 4,000 gold worth of gem changes and reforges and enchants later, she was almost ready for current content.  Then my friend made her a red fan to replace her umbrella, and everything needs to be changed again.  Since she is saving up for two faction mounts, she decided she was fine as is and that I could wait to fix her problems, since they will probably need changing again after this weekend is through.

Del and her Sha-touched mana fiend.

A bi-product of having run all these daily quests for everyone and their plumber is that Delgada has piled up enough cloth to do her daily silk spinning for many days to come.  She has enough enchanting materials for about any enchant she needs to place (save for the weapon enchant, that bugger is pricey!) on new gear.  She was even kind enough to place veggies and meats and fishes she found in her bags in the bank to make huge feasts for guild runs.  She has piled up about about a quarter of the currency needed to get the rodent crate for another pet (yay for pets!).  Sadly, enchanting her weapon cost her all the silk she was saving up for when she learned this pattern, and now she has to wait a while to be able to make it without spending her pile of harmony.

Still, though Delgada has been a busy little gal lately, there is much yet to be done.  My guild is looking toward running our first almost current content raid tomorrow night!  As excited as I am, real life has busted in, and I am sure I won't be able to join them, because I have family all over the place this weekend (silly me, it's Easter weekend, what should a girl expect anyhow?)  Thankfully, my sporadic raid attendance won't lose me a spot in the guild, so thanks guys, and hope you all have fun without me! Next week will be better, I promise (crossing fingers). If I have time, I promise to go do that fishing in Northrend I said I'd do to make up for not being around.  Deal?

That's all I have for now. It is about two hours past my normal bed time, and I still have things left undone that cannot wait until tomorrow.  Have the time of your life on Azeroth and Earth, and Del will join you in searching for eggs next week!