In My Comfy Jeans

Everyone has a pair of comfy jeans.  Mine make me feel like I can do anything.  They make my butt look smaller, go with almost everything in my wardrobe, can be worn with my ugly day off flops or with my nice sandals.  I am usually in my best mood when I'm in them.  If I am not, it's because I put them on a few seconds ago and their magic hasn't taken effect yet.

Anyhow, I have some friends I like to play with, that no matter how little I know about what we're gonna do, help clue me in and make me comfortable and successful.  I smile when I am running instances, raids, or just farming reputation with them, because I don't have to worry how badly I am performing.  They'll tell me, helpfully, what needs to be done, and we all set out to do it.  They're my in game comfy jeans.  I'd rather hang out with them than anyone else.

Delgada got swept into raiding without having finished doing the regular instances, or even the heroics.  She is not in comfy jean territory.  She has something to prove, and that makes my game time with her frustrating when things feel off.  They tell me I am doing fine, but I feel wrong.  There are a couple who have the potential of being part of my comfy crew, giving me helpful hints and advice, but there's still an itchy tag, a seam that is just a little off, and frankly, my butt looks way too big in them.

Carlotta is just 83.  Her friends know she can sorta kite, but fails at crowd control.  She is a beast mastery hunter, running around with several underage pets.  Last night, she took out her devilsaur, who was a sad, neglected level 79.  After running Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides, he caught up with her, and was named BazookaJoe.  See, I can show off my bad pets and quirky shot rotations with my comfy friends, because they just shrug it off, knowing I'll get better.

Back to making my point.  The sad part of comfy jeans is, they wear out.    You can't wear them as much because they have holes, then the holes connect and your jeans are held together by thin threads.  You have to break in a newer pair of jeans to replace the other ones.  Sometimes, you can patch your favorite jeans and make them last longer.  Still, they eventually wear out.  Just like raiding and instance groups, right?  You might be able to patch in some new blood, but the patches wear around the edges and you end up in the same place, trying to wear in a new pair, or patching the same area again.

So, I am breaking in new comfy jeans.  How is everyone else doing out there in this post-Cataclysm world?

Must...Write...Post.

Will we see this paintings outside Gilneas?

Hey everyone!  I know it has been forever.  I really don't have much to say these days that everyone else out there isn't already saying.  Cataclysm, and before that the Shattering of Azeroth, have pretty near blown me away.  All the new content that I am slowly digesting (Delgada is at an anemic level 82) gets to be a little overwhelming sometimes.


I have plans.  I really want to roll one of every race up, except for the Draenei and Blood Elf, to experience the new starter zones.  So far the only ones I have done are the worgen and troll, and last night I started out the goblin area. Like many bloggers out there are saying, I, too, find the beginning questing so involving that the levels just fly by.  The stories are engaging, and immersive.  Yeah, I get that I am not really the chosen one, but does it hurt to believe it for just as long as it takes to get the hell outta Dodge?

The ruins of Quel'Dormir.

As for my eighties, I have hardly touched them.  Delgada is almost done with Vash'jir.  As soon as she could get back to the mainland, she did, because I stupidly threw her onto the boat without training her professions so she could level them. Thankfully, she is not a gatherer, so all the items she needed to level were already in her bag when she did eventually train, and her tailoring and enchanting are now being worked on.  While in the Undercity, Delgada picked up archaeology, and she hasn't gone back to questing.  She found her first rare last night, piecing together bits of Elven relics.  The Highborne Soul Mirror is a neat toy (and if you have been reading at all on this blog, you know how Del loves her toys) that puts out a ghostly duplicate of the user next to them.  The image turns and watches you as you move, but doesn't leave the place it was cast.  I was surprised to get such a neat thing so early in the leveling, as Delgada is only about 165 skill points in.

My horde guild, KNR, has progressed to level 4.  There are about 12 people at 85 already.  Last night one of our guild mates linked their latest piece of gear in chat,and I about died laughing.  The Emberstone Staff, complete with the same old graphics, dropped for him off a boss in Heroic Deadmines!  I know, this is all old news to anyone paying any attention to the kajillion WoW bloggers out there, but I still find it silly (which is really one of the reason I play, for the silly stuff!) that someone would want to go back to an old instance and get the gear they leveled out of by level 25.

If it's far, we give you a car...riage.

I mentioned earlier I had tried out the Worgen starting zones.  I have more than tried them out.  I now have 3 worgen out of there. I don't have any plans to level more, yet, as I think a druid, mage, and rogue are plenty.  The rogue replaced my night elf druid who was the replacement my now level 63 draenei hunter as a bank alt.  Not that I don't plan to level her, just that she is kinda low on the totem pole.  I really want to have a druid at max level, and the last of the three worgen is the one I am leveling.  Her name is Dearbre, and I am leveling her as a restoration druid.  Dearbre is Catalan for of the tree.  Talk about forcing myself to stay a healer!  She is closing in on level 30 pretty quickly. 

My husband, his best friend and I started out together as worgen.  We joined my alliance guild, Illuminati Order, which is also a level 4 guild, and grabbing achievements left and right.  Here is a picture of the three of us, fresh level one characters in our cool starter clothes.

A priest, a mage, and a warlock looking for adventure!

Then, several quests later, in our top hats and wedding dresses...

Yes, this was a candid shot.

Here's my mage, on a horse.  Why, because she looks so good on it!

Black Beauty.

Last night I started leveling a goblin. I got in trouble, because hubby wanted to level one with me, but I didn't want to wait anymore.  Here is Bittsee, who is sure to be the next Trade Princess, in her hot rod.

Rolling with my homies.

Bittsee's coming out party...

Smog, palm trees and swimming pools.  Kezan, or So Cal?

That is all I have for now.  I am itching to get Dearbre out of Ashenvale, and into mining something she can level her engineering with.  How is Cataclysm treating you?  I'd love to hear from you (pokes blog with a stick to see if it is still alive).

Crawling Out From Under My Rock.

Those who are still following me have noticed I have been blogging less and less.  Summer is stressful, and even though it  usually makes me bury myself deeper into my escapes, it doesn't produce any useful or entertaining blog fodder.  For example, I logged into Wizard 101 the last several times and ran my pets through the maze game over and over, pausing to level my Fizzle Queen just for the extra pet energy. Nothing is more boring than farming for pet food, which has been Rowan's favorite pass time, or running mazes over and over and over again.

The armor is pretty, too!

I haven't progressed further than the 48 I attained earlier in the summer with my cleric Eromee on Perfect World.  I dusted her off and took her for a spin yesterday, between pet leveling runs, and got half a level under her belt.  I just cannot bring myself to level further when the guild I am in is in end game content and finding a group is daunting.  I haven't healed for a real group yet, so I am afraid to do it for a random group.  I guess this will be my game I turn to on random maintenance days.

Wizard 101 is at a standstill, still waiting for hubby to catch up, and for money so I can buy a one month subscription to enable over 18 chat.  I was only able to unlock Hametsu village with my crowns in Mooshu, so I am a ninja pig farming fool, when I am not busy leveling one of my many alts.  That, right there, is my whole reason for being a crowns player.  When I am not subscribed, I always have something to do. Ninja pig farming has bought me a couple of pet hatchings, and will probably fund my next house.  I love the storm house, and am happy I can work toward it with gold, but I am also leaning toward buying the mansion in Mooshu, because there are dragonflies buzzing around the place, and it is more suited to Rowan's nature.

We love you long time. 1k gold only 5 dolla!

World of Warcraft is about to take over my time again.  The summer is a bad time for me where any gaming that requires more than 50% of my brain is concerned (Perfect World would most certainly fit into that category, if I pursued instancing), but now that the kids are almost back to school, and I am back to work, WoW can command more of my attention.  In celebration of this, I took Delgada out to complete her Loremaster of Kalimdor questing.  I was so lost before I got the WoWhead client.  After uploading my data, and opening up Delgada's progress on their site, it was easy as pie to find the last 15 quests she needed.  I was so sure I was going to have to do the An'Qiraj quest chain to finish it, but it turned out I missed half of the quests in Zoram'gar and a few in Dustwallow, and that was all I needed. Now, any other quests I encounter will be done for the pleasure and the lore, and not the achievement. All that stands between Delgada and the Loremaster meta achievement are several group quests in Icecrown. She only needs 11 more quests, and a good questing buddy or three. Anyone in Smolderthorn want to knock out some old quests in their log? I'm your gal.

Guild progress on Icecrown Citadel has effectively stopped. Unless some players come back, I may pug around as a terribad holy priest. The last "guild" run was last week, in which three members were guild members, and the rest were trade chat hopefuls. Because of this, I was able to get the heroic version of the gunship, and got a pretty new dagger out of it.  Throughout the run, people were complaining to me about one of my guild mates gear scores.  I know, you know, everyone and their mother knows that 4500 gear score is a little low, but when we have Kingslayers in the group, we can afford one lowbie dps, just so he can experience a smidgen of the content before the whole of his guild loses interest.  I stuck it out until after gunship, having stated before the fight that I would be leaving after. Can't get me for ninja looting and quitting!

How was your summer? Did you vacation from WoW at all?  I'd love to hear about it in the comments! 

What I Am Up To : May Edition.

I have a bad case of the WoW blahs after some rather nasty guild drama.  Still, my guild managed to continue its push through ICC, downing Festergut and getting pretty close on Rotface.  This is due in part to our excellent group of raiding members, and in part to the buff that has been pushed to 20%.  Another reason is, since we lost two raiders in this messy dramatic break, we have been having some friends of the guild help out in a couple of places, some of which have already seen all of ICC, if not having already completed it on other characters.  They have been a big help explaining fights that some of us never took the time to study (hides behind her keyboard and whistles innocently). Oh, and did I mention Delgada got shelved? Turns out I know what I'm doing on Carlotta, and we don't need another healer.  Look up there, you'll see our raid group, about 50% Tauren, and made all that much sexier with Carlotta's ethnic color.

Since I have been fairly uninterested in doing anything in WoW, I have been playing a couple other games to pass the time.  The game that has taken the most of my time, up until our last ICC raid, was Perfect World, a free to play game with cash shop.  I am trying to play it without using the shop, but I think it's going to get difficult when I exhaust the quest means to expand my bank.  There are no quests to expand bag space, only a "quest" to turn in a bag expansion stone, which you have to purchase. Your bank,. however, can be added to by completing two gathering quests.  The first I was able to complete by level 20.  The turn in for this quest, however, is at the very top of the game map, far and away from a level 20 anything is questing. By this time, my cleric had maxed out her flying skill, so this was not too difficult to turn in.  But what a gigantic time dump!  I think all I did that day that I turned in that quest was turn it in and log off.  I am not looking forward to the second collection quest.  Let me not forget to mention that I joined a great faction there.  HVND has been around just as long as KNR, and been in many of the same games.  I remember frequenting their town on the Corbantis SWG server, paying my credits for their great doctor and dancer buffing house. The faction in Perfect World is just as friendly, and I'm looking forward to my next few stolen hours of playtime with them.

Another game that has taken some of my gaming time is Wizard 101.  Rowan Trollstalker is level 30, and I decided I would spend some time farming bosses for pets, since part of the new expansion for the game has been pushed live, with the introduction of pet leveling, breeding, and min games. Tonight, I spend a good part of my evening killing General Akilles in Cyclops Lane over and over again.  No pet yet ( I hear he drops a blue ghost), but I managed to snag a cyclops statue, a tonne of armor, a shelf, and a one day flying broom! After, Mister Winston and I fiddled around in the Pet Pavilion, playing in the maze game, the cannon game, and the dance game (we don't like the falling food game, no we don't!) Below is a picture of a practice derby Winston tried out yesterday.  As I play with crowns, I didn't run a rated match, but if this is any indication of how well he'll do, I may shell out a few crowns for some rated matches when he gets to ancient status. Right now, he and my dragon Madame Hannah are adults, and I could mate them to hatch another pet, but the price is outrageous!  Since we were lucky farming for pets (accidentally, mind you, what I really wanted was a flame cat statue!) the day before, I think we will stick with that for now.  If you want to try this out, level a character to 7 and talk to the Headmaster.  He'll send you on a delivery mission that will end in you getting a piggle of your very own to grow and love!

I would be a bad, bad game blogger if I didn't mention my other game addiction, We Rule. It's free to download and play, though if you wanted I suppose you could support them by buying mojo to speed up your farming and building, but you don't need to. Oh, and it would help if you had an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad to download it to, as I think that is the only platform they support.  Recent expansions have moved the level cap from 20 to 25, then to 30, and added such neat things to add to your kingdoms as stocks, jails, orange and ruby groves, and golden roads.You can farm, visit your friends villages and purchase their wares, and rearrange your town to your hearts content. Below, in no particular order, are hubby's homes and gardens, Michelle's(of VGO and WCO) kingdom, a picture of what the neighbors menu looks like, and a view of the loading screen and my kingdom.  These are all a little dated, because I had planned to post them earlier.

Other than those titles, the only thing that has been keeping me busy are the end of school rush for extra credit (or just regular credit), getting ready to close my work kitchen, and teenage drama.  I hope you are all in a better state than I am. 

That is all I have for now.  Stay tuned as summer hits, and my gaming adventures become less mundane.  I promise a summer vacation of free to play mmo's and free  iPod apps that will leave you feeling like you took a grand vacation!

But Public Domain Sounds Boring!

I haven't had anything nice to say about my time in World of Warcraft this past couple of weeks.  Pardon me for being absent.  I tried posting, really I did, but all the posts ended up sounding like a whine fest,and not the kind that goes well with cheese, so they will sit, partially written my in folders, unused.  Guild drama is entertaining sometimes, but mostly, it's just sad, and so, that is all I will be saying about that .

I have been enjoying some really well read books on iTunes lately.  Well, one, I'm slow, but I am looking forward to enjoying at least 3 others I have loaded on my iPod Touch.  The one I am listening to now is A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  It's about a middle aged guy who was part of the confederate army, who struck out to prospect gold with a partner after the war.  They found a nice chunk, and the partner was sent to get better equipment.  He didn't make it, and after saving his body from Indians,  our hero holes up in a cave and his adventures begin.

The book I downloaded was in podcast form, with about every other chapter voiced by a different reader. Does anyone know how to make your iPod play things in reverse order? This is the part that is slowing me the most, as I have to quickly bring up the interface and click on the next chapter before it reads one I have already listened to.  Imagine trying to do that in the middle of assembling 96 turkey subs.  My poor screen was pretty gross looking, even after taking off the gloves, a mix of perspiration and glove powder smeared across the screen.

Librivox is the service that made this available through iTunes.  They, with the help of volunteers, record works in the public domain and make them available to the public for their consumption.  I just love it because, well, I love to read, but I don't have the time to sit down with a book all the time.  Their books read in podcast version are read by a variety of readers.  This doesn't bother me, it just adds more color to the reading.  One chapter I get English with a middle eastern accent, the next I get a lovely southern drawl. Aside from that,the only other distraction during the recording is the required "This is a Librivox Recording" at the start of every chapter, introducing the book, chapter, author, and reader.  I believe this a small price to pay for their product.

In comparison, I recently joined Audible.com for their promise of keeping Stormrage for just trying them out.  Well, like most free trials, I always end up paying for another month, so I have credit there to spend.  Their book was good, but the reader annoyed me with their pronunciation of things like Sylvanas and Teldrassil.  You'd think they would ask how to pronounce something before committing it to a sound file and charging for it.

Aside from World of Warcraft books and free science fiction novels, I have been enjoying the series on the ship captain Honor Harrington by David Weber.  I spent my 1 credit from Audible this month on The Honor of the Queen.  I expect it to be a good listen, as I enjoy reading about Honor's adventures in her universe, and that should be enough.

Another series I would love to get into is the Dr. Who book series.  One I got my hands on was read by David Tennant, so it was almost like listening to the show while out of the room. I see that Audible has these available as well, though I am not sure who reads them.  So, I suppose I could recommend Audible if you have an extra 15 bucks a month.  It translates to one book a month, and if you don't use it, you can roll over up to 6 credits.  If you wanted to buy another in a month, you get up to 30% off. Not a bad deal, just not the best for me, when 15 means I feed my family for the day.

Check out Librivox or Audible.  Pick up some food for your imagination.

Face Rolling: Left To Right Or Right To Left?

This is just of one of about 20 or so posts that should be showing up in your feed readers today about a new guild some of us blog writers and readers have been hanging out in, Single Abstract Noun. It is part of the reason I haven't posted recently, the other part being I got a new computer, and Firefox has not been playing nice with it. I couldn't get it to post images to posts, like this one of human Delgada, shunning heirloom gear for the more fashionable mix of dungeon and world drops, tailored items, and quest rewards. I'm using Google's Chrome right now, but something is going to have to give, as it is not letting me cut the image and paste it, and Blogger is famous for putting every image I choose at the very top lately.

There..I will make you bend to my ways, Chrome (or am I bending to it's ways?)! I had to cut the html and paste it below my last paragraph. I think I am in being coerced into learning new things.

Back to my distraction of the week. Above you see pictured a mob of Death Knights (gaggle? spawn? herd? coven?). That is about half of the mess of us that rolled up and ran through the starter area last night. Once everyone was ready, we had a nice chat with Varian Wrynn.

Then, we took out a few Horde who were loitering at the gates of Stormwind, nabbing us our first honorable kills and, for those with their eyes on achievements, the Make Love, Not Warcraft achievement (yes, I did it, too. I couldn't help myself!) Once the threat to our homeland was purged, we were summoned to do our duty in Arathi Basin.

It was really late when we parted ways. It's been a while since I have seen KNR's Ventrilo server so stuffed. The company was great, and I am excited to see where this guild is headed. If you are interested in joining, we take all kinds! Stop into the Argent Dawn (US-A) and find any member for an invite.

Pets!

Yesterday, Leafy got Stinker. Today, Nibuca got her fawn. Then, later today, Delgada got her fawn! It was totally unexpected, as Delgada has been neglected in favor of my alliance characters. My husband, right as he sometimes is, reminded me that Delgada was a guild leader of a guild that deperately needs to have one on, so I made a blood elf paladin (named her Anselma after my current flavor of the moment), and got her out of the starter island and into KNR. I then realized that a) she needed bags, and 2) I didn't want to buy them. So, I logged in Delgada to make netherweave bags from the stacks of cloth in the guild bank. Bags made, she walked over to the mailbox and, what, mail? It was cute little Chilly. I opened the note, and had Delgada learn the spell. My screen went crazy with all sorts of fun lights and sounds came into my headphones...and the achievement popped up. WOW! I had forgotten how close Delgada was to the achievement. She pulled out her little fawn from the mailbox, and danced around to the enchanter shop to get her new abyssal shatter recipe, then let the new Anselma log back in.

I shrieked when it happened, and I was on Ventrilo with the hubby and a friend. Of course, the husband and our friend and guildmate Baz will never understand the joy of getting one more pet. Baz seemed a little surprised at the number of pets I had collected, but it didn't last long, as I heard them join another battlefield in Battlefield Heroes, and they started plotting their next target's murder.

I hear you can make girl characters in that game now. Maybe I should go kill them a few times. Just for kicks...

While I am remembering, KNR (Smolderthorn-Horde) is recruiting! Level, class, race are no roadblock to getting in, but you must be at least old enough to drink. We're just looking for some fun people to hang out with! If you are interested, feel free to drop a line at knrguild.com, or contact any member in game.

September Edition: What I've Been Doing.

I can't seem to get a post to the point where I want to post it. Is it still considered a post if it isn't posted?

Last week, my focus was on gearing up my mage, renamed Dinnaeh and moved to my friend's server. I would log in, check to see who in the guild was online and where they were, and ask if anyone wanted to run anything. Being a new 80 and new to the guild, I was hoping to find a few people who would be willing to take me along on some heroics. After all, everyone's running them! I wasn't asking for a free ride. I had taken some time and gold to assemble some nice epic crafted items and a few good bind-on-equip blues, and was still trying to get into regular instances for some of the items I might need. As I was working on my arcane spec, one of the guild mates offered up his mage as a model and taught me what my cast sequence should be. I'm not lazy. I had already been looking on WoWPopular for a good arcane build and the glyphs to go with it. I had also another tab open looking for cast sequence. But I took the information, and headed to Darnassus to play with the dummies, right after I took my hubbies start out nuke macro from him (It's a doozy. If you want it, I'll share it!). I found she was putting out a decent bit of damage (around 1700 is not bad for a starter mage, right?) So, I joined the LFG channel, as noone in guild was biting, and got into a regular Trial of the Champion. The first group was horrible. The heals needed help, then the tank had to go, then we wiped several times on the nightmare encounter. The group fizzled. I rejoined lfg, started doing the dailies in the Tournament, since I was out there. She got into another group, this time whizzing through the instance twice. She got a trinket, but passed on the ring that dropped when I saw that the healer needed it. The healer and one other promptly degrouped, and I silently flogged myself for not having needed the ring. From there on, it was a mess of people dropping and trying to find replacements. I had signed up with this group to do four runs, and I had every intention to stick it out. An hour went by, we struggled through oiur third run, but wiped on the nightmare encounter. We lost another group member. I decided it was time to hang up my hat for the night. I apologized, wished them luck, and logged off.

The frustrating part of all that was not so much that I couldn't keep a good pug group going, but that my guild, of the at least twenty that were on, only one answered when I was looking for a healer, and noone answered when I was asking for people to run things with. I looked. There were a couple in instances, but for the most part, they were hanging out in major cities. I'm wondering if I had been a healer, or a tank, if they would have been more inclined to run things with me.

This week, done with the frustration of looking for groups with a dps character, I logged in to say hi to my guild mates on Shadowsong. Guild chat here is always hopping, people are in ventrilo chatting at peak times, and it's just a friendly place to be. The second I logged in my bank character, I got a tell from one of them saying hi. After finishing the banking, I logged in with Halinka. I set myself up to heal a regular Trial of the Champion. I failed miserably. We did fine on the first part, killing all the horde combatants. I could not keep everyone up during the nightmare phase of the Paletress encounter. The group broke up, and I set to doing the dailies over there. Somehow, I got into a regular run again, this time as dps, to help gear someone's mage alt. It went from that to running a 25 man Vault of Archavon, then a 10 man Vault of Archavon, then a race through Gundrak on heroic with two teams, to end in a 25 man Obsidian Sanctum. Halinka got a nice pair of pvp pants and a robe to go with it, and she got a nice pair of pve pants, too. She spent a few badges and bought herself a nice belt. Then, she went and gemmed and enchanted the whole lot.

What is great about this last few days is that, this guild does things together, and not just on raid night. If someone needs a hand, all you have to do is ask, and if they can't it's usually because they are truly busy. The difference between this character and the other? Not much , really. Sure, Halinka could heal, if she had the gear. They are both dps at heart. Halinka, thanks to an active and very social guild, is getting crazy upgrades (i-level 245 pants to replace i-level 200!) Dinnaeh needs to get to know her new guild a little better, I guess. Or switch to her bank alt paladin and level a healer. Because noone seems to want another dps on that server. Things may take a turn for the better when the cross server lfg system goes into place.

Tonight is raid night for my Shadowsong guild. I might pop over and say hi to the other guild. After this daily...

Who? What? Where? Why? How?

Who - I found out a girlfriend from my high school days plays WoW, and went to Blizzcon.

What - Of course, if you have real live friends to play with, you want to play on the same server.

Where - Bladefist server, Alliance side.

Why - Because I really wanted to hang out with my one of my first online and offline friends. We used to chat on those old Bulletin Board Systems. Play text games. Anyone who ever logged into a MajorBBS system will probably remember dropping gems in a certain pattern in a stump, or saying a certain phrase at a hidden shrine. I miss the pizza parties. Somehow chat in WoW is never like what it was there.

How - I transferred Esoterique, changing her name to Dinnaeh. I've been leveling like a madwoman. The guild is looking for more. Try and reach Bloofie or Alii , or pretty much any Titans member. What do they need more of? I hear healers are in short supply. Not sure on anything else, so if you are interested, and you are geared for mid-late Ulduar, send a tell!

So that is what I have been up to the last week or so, in a nutshell. Prior to Eso's transfer, I had made a paladin and got her to about 15, and parked her in Exodar. You have to have a bank helper, right? Servers are back up, and it's time to put Dinnaeh's nose to the stone. Tell me what you have been up to below! Yes, I know you're out there, lurking. So come out for a minute and say hi. I'm pretty sure I don't bite.

So, You Want My Business...

I probably haven't mentioned it before. I am my guild's webmistress. Now, this is just a fancy title to cover up the fact that I find a guild hosting site, monkey around with what little coding I know how to change to make the site red and black and have a nice banner graphic. Then, I sit back and authorize members. Well, hubby had made a nice splash page that I was only partly responsible for, and one of my guildmates had noticed the coding for the enter button was wonky. After granting him access so he could fix it , he noticed many problems with the coding in other places on the site. This was not due to my monkeying, so he contacted DKPSystems. They said they had no plans to fix it to make it compliant. No Plans. I pay for this service. The discussion began on what to do when the site went up for renewal. I offered up stay here, move back to GuildPortal, self host, or better idea. The guild was split in three, with the comments basically stating that they would go wherever the site administrators wanted. Well, our site was ready to expire, and I only had 9 out of a potential of over 50 or more active members responding, so I went to renew, just for a bit, so a decision could be made. I can't just post the new site up on the info tab in World of Warcraft. Our membership spans several games, because we try everything that comes out. We have members in the military who visit the site when they can when on duty. We have members who have left gaming and joined the real world (shocking!). We have some members that refuse to enter another mmo unless it is Star Wars. So, we have to annouce changes on our web presence, however craptastic it may be. I didn't want to renew with the package someone had prodded me into getting mid way through Burning Crusade (it included dkp tracking and other neat things raid leaders like to have), because we're at a raiding standstill, and have grown beyond needing points to buy things. We roll on everything, passing when we know someone can benefit from an item more than we can. We're just cool that way. So, I let the site expire. I had a note to support asking how to downgrade the site, since we didn't need all the services we were paying for. NO RESPONSE. Well, if I had even been considering staying there just to save me some work, that notion had gone the way of the dodo. I was done. I used my card, paid for three months, and posted the stay tuned for moving instructions post on the front page.

The decision? We will be a self hosted site. I hate leaving behind all the forum posts. History takes a dive. When DKPSystems sites expire, they are blocked. When GuildPortal sites stop paying, they revert to free. And your forums are still there. So, I can go back and read all that history from Star Wars Galaxies, our stumbling into different other games. I will never be able to go back to the more than a year of history in our DKPSystem forums. This saddens me. Do I want to do a straight copy and paste of all the forum threads? No. Ugh. I think I will find the juicy bits, and scrap the rest. I haven't found a way to export that from them, though they have a tool to import forums.

If you have any pointers, I welcome them. Hubby already has a site where he has an active forum community, so I am sure that we will not have a problem with setting up shop. I guess what I want is an easy WYSIWYG editor for a blog style news page, with side bars that can hold such info as who is on Ventrilo, a shout box (they love that stuff!), a calendar everyone can use to make raid signups (should we ever get back into it), and links to what we like to visit.

Sorry about the page long grumpfest. I stil haven't heard from DKPSystem about downgrading, and I asked three days ago. I let my guild down by letting the site expire for a full day. I'm mad, and hormonal. This is not a good combination. Anyone have a chocolate bar?

Hey Ma! I'm On The Radio!

I thought the 2 or 3 people who read this blog might be interested, so here I am, along with a few fellow guildmates, rambling on about anything and everything we do in World of Warcraft, and some stuff outside of game. The podcast is The Illuminati of Warcraft, a guild podcast for the guild Illuminati Order on Shadowsong-US. I know the last 4 episodes are on iTunes, but I can't see this one. So. Here is the link. Keep in mind this is the fifth episode, and 3 of the 5 of us have never been in a podcast before. It was a lot of fun, and I wanted to share it with all of you!

Sum-Sum-Summertime Blues

Sorry. I know I should be writing about the wonderful time I am having in game right now, enjoying the members of the Illuminati Order while I level Halinka. Or I should be writing about how the reputation grinds are going as I level, sneaking away to Skettis and soon Shadowmoon Valley to grind Skyguard and Netherwing reputations. Or I should probably touch on how the kindness of strangers and friends have me leveling my bank hunter, who is so close to 30.

I'm sorry I haven't. I hope you don't mind. I have been playing an awful lot. A lot on Shadowsong, and hardly any on Smolderthorn. Hubby brought it up the other day, and I admit, I feel a little bad for not visiting. Every time I've logged in, it has been to one or two people. It is summer vacation, and I remember this happening last year. KNR will always be my first guild, and I will keep in touch with them. I got into computers when I was a kid because they were fun, and when I got into dialing out to BBS systems, I kept doing it for the company. When I moved back to California, I found my husband while I was looking for people to talk to. Hubby introduced me to MMO gaming, and I enjoy it for the community. I can't play the game without someone to chat with and run things with.

One of my guild mates on Shadowsong also plays on Smolderthorn. He mentioned that he plays on Shadowsong in this guild for the community. I was in tells while leveling the other day with a fellow blogger, and he was contemplating changing servers because of the lack of community involvement in his guild. Here I am on Shadowsong, avoiding the problem of no people in my horde guild. It's a common theme. What do you do when your friends don't log in? Some of my horde guild mates are entertaining themselves playing Command and Conquer. Some of them are playing Battlefield Heroes. I'm sure a couple in our guild are playing the other side of the fence, still playing WoW, but on other servers. Some are waiting for us to go back to play with them, grinding out achievements while they wait.

I'll just keep telling myself, "It's summer vacation. People will start coming back when school is back in session." Maybe I'll be right, again. I sure hope so.

Where's The Cake?

Been busy the last few days, and today is just one in that same run. Yesterday our family drove out to spend time with some guild mates and their family who live close by. Who would have thought, on an East Coast realm, you would find West Coast friends? We had a barbecue, the kids played with the Wii and the several computers in the house, and we chatted about everything, with a little WoW splashed in. I got drowsy around 5, so we left, grudgingly. When we got home, we loaded up WoW and headed out to kill Archavon, then tried out Ulduar for giggles.

Today, I am rushing out a post to say I have posts waiting on the back burner, but it's my birthday, and we are going out for dinner, then maybe dessert! Sorry to the pug Nexus run Halinka ducked out of prematurely. She explained first! After all, I didn't know I was going out until I told them. I hope you were able to find another healer.

I'll be back tomorrow with something fun. Working title? "I'm Not That Kind Of Hunter!"

Hormones and Healing Naxx

I got a phone call from our illustrious guild master last night. Seems they were going to try Ulduar and needed me and my hubby, and the raid leader had lost my number. This was right about dinner time, and I had already proclaimed it free for all night, so I logged in and was promptly invited. I then logged into Ventrilo, slipped on my happy new headphones (thanks hubby for my early birthday present, they're awesome!), and started getting together the flasks and money I needed to raid. I don't raid often, so I don't usually have everything together. Sometimes I have the flasks, sometimes I have the food, sometimes my bags are full of rotting animal parts and discarded low quality weapons. Provisioned, I fly to Storm Peaks and manage to locate the stairway to Ulduar and enter the instance. Figuring I am the first one there, I afk to grab a snack, completely forgetting that, on my husbands urging, I had installed a new raid unit frames mod and I hadn't set it up yet. I get back to my desk, and hubby is in the instance with me, and everyone is saying we're missing. What? I told them I was waiting in Ulduar, and they said they decided we weren't geared enough, so we were doing Naxxramas. Snarf Snarf Snarf, I hike up Delgada's robes and run her out of the instance portal, only to get beaten into the ground by some Alliance that were waiting for someone easy and squishy to kill. My Spirit of Redemption pops up, and I growl, try to right click it away, and growl more as it doesn't work. The buff runs out, and I make the corpse run, growling, and click accept as I run past my body, back into Ulduar, where I accept a summon to Naxxramas.

Now, notice my mood has quickly soured. I forgot to mention that it started dipping below excited once I saw three priests and, when I asked who was healing, they said me. I have dual specializations, shadow as my main and holy as an off specialty. Specialty is really not the right word for it. I can keep people up, sometimes. I overheal, a lot. My gear is ok, not spectacular, just good enough for the odd heroic that I want to run where I have to heal, and in 5 man instances, I don't mind, because it usually is pretty easy, but in raids, I'd rather dps. I'm a fairly good shadow priestess. I am a teh suck holy priestess. Yeah, my guild tells me I am fine, but really, if you don't like it, you won't do your best at it.

Back to the raid. We entered, buffed, and started on the Construct quarter. We flew through the trash on the way to Patchwerk, and Patchwerk died shortly after I managed to kill off both the tanks. Yeah, I killed them. If any of the rest of the guild tell you differently, they are wrong. I was cranky already, and I killed them. Just leave it. It gets better. Frogger boss, failed. I was directly between the slimes. I always am. But for some reason I always die. Whatever. I am resurrected, and we head over to the trash before Grobbulous. Trash is cleared quickly, fight is explained, and we get started. It was a messy fight, farts dropped in bad places, but most everyone lived through it, and loot is distributed and we head for Gluth. The first attempt is bad, and the people in charge of kiting the chow let a lot through, Gluth heals to full, and I manage to be one of the last 3 standing after he enraged. I also manage to be the last into the instance, due to not being able to click off my debuff. Frogger boss, I wipe out on the first row, get resurrected, and wipe out on the last row. My resurrection timer is now at 45 seconds, so I go to the bedroom to change for my date with the hubby that is closing in fast. I get back to Gluth, we try again, and though there is better control on the chow, we lose our chow herders and then I lose it and kill the tank, again. Another wipe, and I fly back up to the instance, run into a couple more slimes on Frogger, and go to my room to finish changing.

As I return, I see a friend log in, a holy priest. YES! This is my chance to replace my cranky, useless self and get out of the raid. I whisper him my plight, he asks how long, I say now, and I tell the raid leader to invite him, as I am hormonal and apologize as I log out. Hubby followed shortly after, and we finished getting ready and left the children in the care of the oldest so we could go eat a late dinner.

Sizzler was delicious. Sorry I was so horrible. Please don't invite me to another raid as holy for the next 4 days. You won't live, and you'll have to listen to my growling in ventrilo. Now, pass teh Crunch n Munch and a can of Mountain Dew. I'm going to level Lulubelle some more.

Flavor Of The Moment - Lulubelle.

I have been wrapped up in leveling a shaman to heal with. Delgada is best throwing shadow about, and I just felt that, even though she has the duel spec option, I'd rather play her as shadow. I have had a shaman kicking around Thrallmar, leveling inscription and twiddling her hooves, so I decided to level her. Here she is, my currently elemental shaman, Lulubelle.


Alright, so it may not be the best pose of her. She was in a 10 man Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (the only one gaining any experience points, at 10 per kill). with a few guildmates. What a pretty room, said Lulu, so I snapped a picture, and pulled the boss. I thought at 65 I would have a smaller aggro radius. Apparently this was not the case.

She got to see a lot of things in Ahn'Qiraj. The floor has many different textures. So does the ceiling. Here is a picture of what one guildie referred to as Uvula Land, the best land in Disney World.


Here's another pretty room. I should have taken the screenshot while there were still mobs inside, for those that would like to see what they look like, but I was more interested in staying alive this time, so that is why the empty room.


Lulu has been other places. But let's dig into her past. She started out a he on my husband's account, a rough around the edges resto shaman named Stroganhoof. Here he is with his leveling buddy, Synna.


They were really quite the pair. Stroganhoof was leveled on my account, and transferred to the hubby's account. He sat there, gathering dust, until he was about to kill him off. I said I'd take him, if he didn't mind me changing a few things. I took Stro to the surgeons, and Lulu arrived on the scene, back on my account.


There she is, a couple days ago, level 65 and wearing her very first epic. Isn't she lovely? She thinks that gown is so great, she's still wearing it in her new home in the Howling Fjord. Here's to a new grind to 80!

From Out Of The Mothballs.

My first end game character was Shawndra, a troll warrior, which makes it fitting that I chose that as my blogging moniker. She was arms for part of the 60 end game, fury for the part just before the Burning Crusade expansion and for the grind to 70. At 70, Shawndra went protection, to help her guild experience Karazhan. She ran Karazhan enough to get her to exalted with the Violet Eye twice before she was put aside to gear up Carlotta, the hunter, and Delgada, my current main character. When Wrath of the Lich King was introduced, Delgada picked up and moved to Northrend, as did Carlotta, Maura, and Shawndra. Delgada made her way to 80, giving some time to Carlotta when it suited her. Shawndra and Maura have been, except for rare occasions, mothballed.

Yesterday Shawndra stepped out of the closet and pulled out her talent tree. She spent her points heavily in fury, all the way to Titan's Grip, and allowed Rowena to log in and send her some money and a new two handed sword, then stepped back into Dalaran, equipped her sword, repaired her gear, and hearthed to the Borean Tundra for some questing. Morgond, a good friend and guild mate, exclaimed,"I thought you killed Shawndra!" To which she replied, " Not dead, just stored away. " It is now time to bring her back.

Our guild has seasons. Seasons of raiding, seasons of arenas and battlegrounds, and seasons of trying out other games. It would seem that the guild is taking a PvP turn right now, and so, as a PvE girl, I have to have a project. Sure, if I get an invite to go run Strand of the Ancients or any other battleground, I'll hang out with the guild for a while. But I'm not great at split second decision making when I game. I sit there as someone pounds on me with a "duh" sort of expression, trying to figure out what I can do. I usually come up with the least creative solution, and get pounded into the dirt. That is why I PvE. Game controlled mobs don't run over to me unless I invade their space, so I have time to calculate, to set up a strategy. If I do accidentally invade their space, their attacks aren't generally creative, and so give me time to gather my wits and start attacking sensibly.

So, the project I needed was sitting there in mothballs, just waiting for me to bring her back out. Shawndra is now level 73, with a good start on 74. It is kind of fun to not be hitting ranged targets again, to get down and dirty and clobber things with my big old axe and sword. I'm not sure if I will eventually move her talents to protection when she is old enough, as tanking can be stressful, for me, and it seems to be all about multi target tanking these days. For now, we will be content to kill things faster, taking short breaks to clean our weapons and mend our wounds before we push on.

This could be fun!

Be Good At ONE Thing.

Today, while chatting with some of my new guild mates in the Illuminati Order on Shadowsong, one of them asked for help. "How can I make 60 gold fast?" One of the more seasoned crew spoke up, offering up the dailies on Quel'danas, or really questing in general. Then the question was asked,"Do you have any professions?". Go ahead, friends, guess the answer.

You guessed he said no? You were right. The necessity of having at least one highly skilled profession at 80 was extolled upon. Quests don't last forever, daily quests get monotonous, you don't have the attention span for the intricacies of certain dailies, whatever the reason, you need something to fall back on. Pick flowers, reel in fish, skin the dead animals left behind by someone. You have to do something. I thought about this for some time as I mindlessly cast spells at mountain lions, directed children in needed chores, slathered on calamine lotion, and cried during the end bits of "Beauty and the Beast". You don't necessarily have to be good at any profession that is tracked on your character sheet. You could make some seed money questing, send it to a bank alt of your choice, and make your money buying low and selling high on the auction house, stashing away good deals for opportune moments (small eggs at Christmas, snowballs for year round pet and costum use). You could become the expert wheedler, able to get money out of anyone and make them feel you were doing them the favor. You could charge for your healing or tanking skills (sorry DPS, you are expendable, a dime a dozen, and worth about that to any group) . You could charge lowbies for instance runs. You could run dungeons alone and grab twink level bind on equip gear to sell. You could even run a travel service, complete with in flight meals (yes, mages, that was a poke in your direction). Whatever the case, in order to get into any decent end game, you have to be good at SOMETHING!

So, what are you good at?

Long Distance Relationships Stink.

My story isn't new. It's so old, it will drive you from my blog looking for fresher posts. I just have to write about it. Why? Because it's bothering me, and this is my outlet, my place to work things out, my escape. So here goes.

I live on the west coast. 95% of my guild lives in the middle of the country and on the east coast. So, it makes sense that raid times and events are centered around them and not me. Raids fall right when I am frantically plating up dinner for the kids and hubby. If I decide to raid with them, I have to serve dinner by 4:45, so that I have 5 minutes to repair and send myself consumables and purge my bags of the garbage I've collected the day before. This doesn't work, and I have demonstrated how well this doesn't work on a few occasions to my guild, by showing up late, with a fish as an offhand and a fishing hat on, and not changing either out for the entire raid. So, because it isn't fair for them to expect me to be on time and prepared when I clearly can't, I don't sign up for raids. Now, it's also not fair to my family to get a half fast attempt at dinner out of me, just to watch me drag my plate to my desk so I can grab bites between boss fights. So, I have also started logging in later at night, closer to my eight in the evening then theirs. This has me logging in when they are well into their raid, sometimes after they have even finished. There are sometimes other people online for me to chit chat with, but more often, it's the raid group, me, and a few off in their own PvP world. When guild chat is quiet, I often type a "shhh" to try and get some response, but even that has lately been ignored. It's not their fault. It's not my fault either. We just live in different time zones. But I have been feeling less and less a part of my guild that I have been in since before hubby and I were married and playing Star Wars Galaxies. I even thought, for about a nanosecond, about finding another server with people that lived closer to me. Then I shook myself, slapped myself for thinking such horrible thoughts, and went on with whatever inanity I was doing in game that day.

So, it's almost April Fools Day, and my joke is set to be sprung on my somewhat oblivious audience. I know it will be seen. I look forward to the mayhem it should cause. For a while I will feel useful and like I'm a part of things. Then, April 3rd will show itself, and the site will go back to somewhat normality, and I will slowly get back into my funk. I just wish I had some idea of what to do about it.

There's a chocolate muffin calling to me from the kitchen. It's telling me I need to take it and a glass of milk and log in Rowena and check my auctions. I may just do some of that. Rowena will be disappointed. I think I'll just grab a book instead. Any good ones out there on long distance relationships?