Happy New Year

With the new year creeping stealthly up on us, (I had this really scary book as a child in which Old Father Time could have passed as an undead), its time to make some resolutions. Now usually I manage to ignore or break all mine by breakfast on around the 4th of jan. This year however will be different (yes I say that every year too), but it really will, I promise. 

So in the short-term I want to:

1. Hit exalted with the gnomes. I always wanted a mechostrider and with the next patch it seems my dreams will finally come true. All in all I expect this to take a couple of hours as I still have all the start zone/Dun Morogh/Loch Modan quests untouched on my Priest.
2. Hit revered with the Oracles. Must start trying to hatch mini-pets as soon as possible. (3 days of doing all the dailies)
3. Hit exalted with the Tuskars. I need that fishing rod and well a pet penguin wouldn't go amiss either. (5 days of doing all the dailies)
   
4. Finish all the quests in the Storm Peaks. We are apart half way there at the moment, so a good days questing should clear that no problem.
   
5. Finish all the quests in Grizzly Hills.
   
6. Make my epic flying carpet, even though im unlikely to ever ride it anywhere. The surfing motion makes me feel seasick. Can't help wondering what the pillow/cushion thingie is held on with though and why can't i take passengers, there is plenty of room on the rug and its not like tailoring gives anything else worthwhile. A gnome panicking and peering over the edge as it clings on for dear life would be cute.
   

Mid-term aims (mostly for the next patch)

1. Exalted with Sporeggar, but Im going to wait until rep gives the same amount regardless of what level you are. That way repeatedly farming heroic Underbog should also produce enough Cenarion Expedition rep to tip Mariposa over into exalted and a hippogriph.
   
2. Exalted with the Timbermaw

Long-term aims

1. 100 000 hks. I recently hit 50 000 with the death of an annoying arcane mage in EotS so imagine this one will really be a long haul. Its annoying that achievements like this one arent account wide as I definately have killed over 100 000 players, just on different toons. Which brings to the really weird part, the other night I thought I would play around on an alt for a bit whilst Lylia finished some work but I just couldn't get into it. For the first time ever, I don't want to mess around doing stuff on other toons, I just want to make my little priest perfect. I feel distinctly odd.

In general I want to work my way through all the achievements. Planning on waiting for the next patch for doing most of the Outlands heroics though as since I hardly played my priest as anything but a pvp toy in the last expansion I'm missing most of those and most of the reps as well.

Earlier this evening we thought we would end the Old Year with a bang so we went and slaughered something from our past. Poor Onyxia looked so happy to see us, lying lonely in her lair, it seemed almost cruel to kill her, but 200g is a lot of money and she has well epics, even if they are outdated ones. (Will put in some screenshots when I sober up).

So on that note, HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone.

Trees, Christmas and otherwise

I can't help feeling that the Winter Veil decorations committee this year was staffed by a bunch of wizards who just popped down from their Purple Parlour long enough to go "Hmm Winter Veil, that means trees with shiny lights", promptly conjured up 1000 of them, plonked them down randomly and levitated back upstairs for another glass of mulled wine.

In other news, I R MELEE Priest. 400 unarmed skill. Those druidic trees under Dalaran make the perfect weaponskilling pets, a short trip from the city and since there are virtually no quests associated with Crystalsong Forest its lovely and peaceful. Since Lylia was leveling his

weaponskills and someone had to heal him I thought I would take advantage and skill mine up a bit. Finally found a good use for Lightwell, its great for semi afk warriors to click on whilst beating up innocent little trees.

Also since the Gnomeling is now working on a high stamina set we thought we would pay a little visit to Heroic Magister's Terrace, see if we could grab the Commendation of Kael'thas and fingers crossed the mount or phoenix. It turned out far easier than we expected, and Santa was obviously still paying attention as Lylia got his trinket and I got the pet. Not bad for 30 minutes whipping through an instance.

Circle of Healing, or why AoE healing is a bag of worms

I admit to being less than pleased about up the upcoming nerf (6 second cooldown). I personally don't spam it, yet I resent my right to spam it if I so choose being taken away.  

When I first started healing way way back many centuries ago (ok, maybe not that long, but I cant get that Joseph song out of my head), we didn't have smart heals, we didn't have non party specific aoe heals and organising raid healing was a complex job and required lots and lots of priests (yay). On fights like Huhuran in AQ40 we had priests everywhere, one in each of the soak groups to spam prayer of healing and so on. The same with Vael, sure we could do it with less priests, but our raid leader at the time was rather set in his ways and he liked to be surrounded by priests. We usually raided with between 7 and 12 and made up the rest of our healing team with paladins in dresses pretending they were priests. It wasn't always an ideal system, cloth loot was fought over fiercely and when a priest assigned to a certain group got blown up or silenced things could get messy real fast, but we made it work. However I thought with the introduction of heals like CoH we were moving away from the clunkiness of party specific healing.

So the Burning Crusade is launched and I spec for CoH and I love it. Suddenly organising raid healing got so much easier, obviously a few blueberry shamans adding in helped too but for the first time we had options that didn't involve putting a priest in every party if we needed massive amounts of AoE healing. Now I'm not denying that there are plenty of priests who spammed CoH to the point where it made up 95 percent of their healing, usually their aim was just to top metres and they either got kicked or yelled at if people died because of it. I raided with several of them and it was rather amusing to watch, especially on farm stuff, but the fault lies with the spell itself. People always try and top metres, trying to be the best is a aspect of human nature which can be rather ugly and suddenly priests were handed a tool that made that metre topping so easy. CoH as it stands is the only AoE (now smart) spell which instantly delivers health the second you hit the key, no cast time like chain heal or prayer of healing, no waiting for a hot to tick like wild growth, just instant and currently spamable health. Naturally its impossible to compete with that and thats the problem. Healing 6 (glyphed) people instantly combined with the ability to spam it whilst running around like a demented imp makes CoH trivialise encounters, no one can deny that.

Then we hit the Wrath of the Lich King and suddenly nothing is party specific any more. Most abilities, totems, shouts, buffs are all raid wide. Things have really moved on since the dark ages of vanilla wow and our army of holy/disc priests with our cookie cutter builds all looking the same. Our party specific heals are languishing in our box of tricks, no need for prayer of healing any more, the new shiny CoH is now clever. Like a hurt seeking missile it will hunt down the weakest people close to whoever you cast it on and save them. No need to think any more, just find someone on low health and hit the button repeatedly and the AI will do it all for you. Thats the problem, not only does a smart CoH take the fun out of healing, but Blizzard themselves have made spells like Holy Nova, Prayer of Healing, Binding Heal worthless by making CoH so good. So in a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that most priests seem to be using one spell and only one spell they are giving it a 6 second cool down.

Now I really don't believe that healing spells should have cool downs, unless of course they heal for huge amounts, set off fireworks or summon dancing girls at the same time. As a healer you should be able to pick the best spell for each situation and cool downs limit that. Also its easy to fall into the trap of using cool down spells whenever they are up just because they can or they feel they should. Not to mention the fact that people staring at cool down monitors often stand in the fire. Ok, its likely that the person who burns to death waiting for something to come off cool down is the type of person who spammed CoH regardless of whether that was the right spell or not, but healers don't grow on trees. Virtually every guild on my server is currently recruiting them in some shape or form at the moment so most guilds will have muppets hiding in their healing ranks somewhere.

My preferred solution would have been something like a debuff system where either CoH got more mana intensive if used excessively in a short period, a little like Arcane Blast or a system where its targeting decreased if spammed, i.e. assuming glyphed the first cast heals 6 people, the second consecutive one heals 5 and so on.  

My biggest problem is that CoH really doesn't do enough with a cool down, healing 5 to 6 people (depending on your glyph choice) for 1700ish each is nothing when most people have over 15k health. It doesn't cut deeply enough into their health pools if the damage is coming thick and fast, say like Illidan phase 2. I suppose I also have an issue with the new Blizzard description of priests as being the Jack of all Trades master of none healers. The problem there lies with human perception, if people are saying well holy paladins are the best tank healers and shamans are now the best raid healers because they are the only class with a spamable raid heal than thats what plenty of guilds will bring, regardless of whether its true or not. Especially if to function properly as a raid healer priests now require to be placed in whichever party they need to heal as that goes against everything else Blizzard have been saying. Obviously we have plenty of single target heals and a hot, but for raid healing, the most efficient way to do that is to use aoe heals, thus its going to be either use CoH every 6 seconds inter spaced with single target heals or use prayer of healing but wild growth, coh from other priests and chain heal all being smart, its unlikely that prayer of healing will receive its max efficiency because someone else will have unintentionally already healed at least one to two people in your group before you finish casting.

How will the cool down effect us?

Healing heroics/normals I really don't expect to see any changes at all. Prayer of healing is a great spell for dealing with AoE damage to your own party. Its radius is big enough to guarantee that regardless of where everyone is standing, unless they are afk at the entrance they will be hit by it. Its a fairly beefy heal and if glyphed (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42409) one cast than a break to do whatever you fancy, regen, heal the tank, move out of the fire will suffice on a lot of stuff. Obviously its cast time is a disadvantage, especially for the priests who have got into the habit of running around whilst aoe healing, but for emergency group healing on the run we have the often maligned Holy Nova, which suffers slightly from its range or lack of and of course if specced for it, CoH will still be on the table.

For raids it will really depend I think on the type of encounters Blizzard produce and of course the changes they intend making to already existing content like Malygos. The cynic in me thinks they will continue producing aoe heavy encounters however, simply because its hard to make difficult fights if only the tank takes damage. I do think healing in Vanilla WoW was a lot more challenging than it is now, but I can't decide as to whether thats because of smart spells or because back then we had 40 idiots trying to stand in stuff as opposed to 25 now. In that sense the change is a good thing, at least from my perspective, more challenging healing makes for more interesting healing. However, it creates a disparity between classes when some don't require too much thought to heal effectively, just keep your eyes on your mana and your surroundings whilst you heal away yet others need to keep one eye on their cooldowns, one eye on their mana, one eye on the floor checking for flames whilst trying to think ahead to make sure you are picking the best spell for the situation at all times. This really becomes an issue if their healing output is at all similar, after all why would anyone want to do 5 times the work for the same or similar result.

So CoH is on cool down, what other options do Priests have for AoE healing?

So Holy priests have 6 AoE spells, technically 7 since if you squint slightly Lightwell does count. After all it can heal multiple people at once, assuming you can get any raid member to click on it at all.

5 baseline ones, Holy Nova, Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Divine Hymn and Binding Heal and then 2 talented ones, Circle of Healing and Lightwell. Now all of these heals have some form of limitation to provide a sense of balance.

Party Specific Heals

Holy Nova: Very small radius, only heals your own party. Also damages any enemy close by but doesn't cause any threat so is essentially dual purpose. Its great for situations in which all your party are standing on top of each other, situations where that little extra dps combined with healing makes that enrage timer or that achievement that little bit easier to reach. Its also cast able on the move which adds to its usefulness in a variety of places. Personally I love it in group PvP, nothing beats balancing around holy novaing large groups of Horde, especially in locations like the passage leading to the King in SW, the dwarf king's room and Balinda's bunker. Its also very pretty and great for dancing around spamming to celebrate raiding victories, and the icing on the holy nova cupcake is the fact that rogues seem to take real offence at being attacked by it.

Glyph: Holy Nova

I'm in two minds about this glyph, the situations where I have been primarily using Holy Nova have been ones where its damage component has been equally useful.

----------

Prayer of Healing: 3 second cast time which can be a very long time. Large radius especially if you have talents in Holy Reach (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=27790). Only heals your own party. Great for any fight in which you have the time to stand around casting, good for most 5/10 mans, less good for 25 mans due to the smart nature of most other aoe heals, faster single target heals coming in from other healers. However, if no one else heals your party, either because they darent or because you spammed holy nova a few times first to get their health up to scare off those smart heals, prayer of healing is a great way to top your party.

Glyph:  Prayer of Healing

Long cool down

Divine Hymn: Our latest toy, the level 80 priest spell. In theory DH has two uses, crowd control and healing. In reality its a bit of a lame duck. In terms of crowd control everything else seems to work better. Every time I've tried to use it in PvE, Its come up with an immune message and in PvP its 1.5 second cast time makes it look unattractive given that it would if kicked, pummelled or counter spelled lock me out of my holy spells. It also shares a cool down with fear, now I can understand on paper why they did that, but its still frustrating So ideally the little priest fears, off runs the blood elf rogue with their trinket on cool down, 7 seconds later priestie casts divine hymn and thats Mr rogue cced again and by the time thats up fear would be almost off cool down again. If only stuff actually worked like that. The 40 percent damage debuff doesn't however seem to apply to manaburn which makes it a more useful spell against casters, especially other healers. That said, the healing component when you consider it heals 10 people is nice, the cool down is perhaps a tad long though.

Lack of control

Prayer of mending: My all time favourite heal. This spell is just plain awesome. Ok, sometimes its choice of target is a little weird, but in the majority of situations it should always be on cool down. I like 2 manning stuff with the Lyloid (otherwise known as my boyfriend) mainly for the challenge and prayer of mending has made all kinds of fights trivial with its uber bounciness. Its well worth downloading a tracker to make the most of it, but its the lack of control that lets it down. Why oh why does the AI think that mage over there at full health is the correct target to move to rather than that rogue at 60 percent health dancing in a fire?

Lightwell: Lightwell's biggest flaw is the fact that it needs other people to use it. Your dpsers need to stop mashing their keys, your tanks need to deselect their target for it to be effective which breaks the simple rules of raiding. The whole concept of the holy trinity of raid roles goes out of the window the second anyone plonks down a lightwell and thats a big issue. If you ask the average raiding rogue (yes, I like to pick on rogues, bite me) what their role within the average raid is, the answer will be a simple "I kill stuff", obviously there are other things expected like not standing in the fire, maybe kicking a certain spell, but generally its stay alive and dps like your life depends on it. Now thats the problem, I don't deny good rogues keep an eye on their health, taking healthstones, health pots and perhaps even bandaging depending on the fight but getting them to click on a lightwell, changing their target when they could be spamming damage.... good luck. I can see their point, they get taken to kill stuff, I get brought to keep them alive, they don't expect me to start dotting things, so why am I suddenly expecting them to click on weird shiny stuff. Its not even like it heals them all upfront, by the time its started ticking and they are back dpsing, someone will have woken up and healed them. Then there is the positioning problem, place it at their feet so no one has far to move to click it and its hard to see, place it behind them and you know no one will touch it, why go from second on the damage metre to fifth to pick up a hot when you can just scream on vent for someone to heal you. Within a raid people are meant to trust each other. I know my tank won't lose aggro, I trust our dps to perform to the best of their ability and in return they expect me to keep them alive without them actually having to look at their health bars. All that means Lightwell lacks a place really, it has great potential in the amount it can heal for, its relatively cheap and you can click on it when stunned or silenced, but in pvp it falls over dead faster than I do and in PvE everyone apart from other healers seem to loathe even going close, let alone touching it. I feel sometimes it would make more sense to drop (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34480), because at least I can guarantee someone will use the picnic basket.

Glyph: Lightwell

Extremely situational

Binding Heal: Now I love this in PvP, but even though I've two manned nearly all the 5 mans in Northrend (all those without annoyingly gimmicky bosses), I struggle to find a PvE use for this spell. Even with just the 2 of us, something else is nearly always a better choice. Prayer of mending for example works wonders for 2 manning, in fact it trivialises most normal 5 mans more than CoH trivialises raid content. I suppose my issue here is perhaps with the way I learnt to heal. I got into the habit of bandaging myself whilst trying to get outside the 5 second rule, saving my mana for everyone else unless of course I was likely to fall over dead in the next few seconds.

and finally we have Circle of Healing. Smart heal, targets the people with the lowest health close to the person you cast it on. 6 second cool down, doesn't heal for huge amounts but can be cast whilst moving.

Glyph: Circle of Healing

In conclusion, I think raid healing will still be doable as a holy priest, I'm not sure if good priests will even notice a difference, although it will depend on the future content Blizzard produces. I know my place will only be taken by a shaman if I get around to levelling my mine and wanting to raid with her, but still deep down I know I'm not happy with the change. Even though I can theory craft away happily, figuring out how on AoE heavy fights I can fill my 6 seconds achieving maximum health per second. I just feel that this is a step backwards for healing. I played the beta and to be honest it was obvious CoH was overpowered the second it became smart, but despite all the testing Blizzard changed their mind about giving it a cool down then and its quite insulting now that they are turning around and adding the very cool down they said wasn't necessary or workable 6 months ago. I accept I'm overly protective of my precious priest (understandably because I've invested a scarily large amount of time in her) but I don't believe that having only one class with a spamable raid heal falls in with the ethos that Blizzard have been spouting recently. Bring the player not the class just doesn't work when 2 healing classes have desirable niches and the other 2 can do most things, just not as well as the other 2. Now I'm not saying chain heal is the be all and end all, it isn't, I've raided on a resto shaman and it too has limitations, annoying ones at that. I just hate the fact that rather than make content more interesting and dynamic, the answer seems to be "lets make it harder by limiting how much AoE healing the average raid can produce, whilst having lots and lots of AoE damage". That only makes fights fun for tanks and dps, struggling to do stuff makes healers burn out even more than they already do and healer burn out seems to be a real issue at the moment. Partly due to the feeling of being permanently ganked, on the one hand there is the devs with the nerfbat chasing us around and other the other an army of mutilate rogues ready and eager to show you what being squishy really means.

Part of my issue is the fact that I don't feel my class has really changed over the years I've been playing. All the spells I had at launch are still with me relatively unchanged, prayer of healing for example, still limited by party, still has a 3 second cast time and my talented toys like Lightwell and now Circle of Healing either are being nerfed or still don't have a real purpose. Of course you could argue that the priest class is the pinnacle of class design, so good it can't be improved, but that wouldn't be exactly true. Ah, well, heres to a New Year in which people will use Lightwell.

Happy Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone

Can't help noticing art mirrors life, my toons close their eyes in pictures just like me.

Upon a white horse

I've always loved horses so I finally bit the bullet and spent the morning grinding Mariposa the last 7k of Stormwind rep she needed. It turned out to be a lot easier than I expected as I had skipped most of elywnn whilst leveling. Thankfully the price of runecloth has dropped tremendously on my server as well, so instead of the 7 to 10g for 20 it was selling for when the achievement system was introduced, its now down to 2 to 5g so I picked up the last 600 rep that way.

Next goal is Gnomeregon rep, since A) its now the closest rep to being complete and B) the removal of race restrictions on the mechanostriders makes it just too tempting.

To WoW or not to WoW

I havent been enjoying WoW that much recently, hence the lack of posts. In fact I havent logged at all for the last two weeks. Its weird, I can't quite put my finger on whats causing my lack of enthusiasm, its just a vague feeling of gloom and doom everytime I log on. 

Part of the issue is the my lack of purpose. I don't want to raid hardcore, but Im also not that interested in revisiting Naxx even casually. I dislike arenas, a dislike made worse by issues such as class balance (nerf mutilate rogues), pillar hugging and resilience and Im not sure I have the kind of personality that is happy with logging and doing the odd quest, daily or battleground with no real purpose.

On the other hand, its the only game I can play with my boyfriend and the only game Ive discovered so far that doesnt give me motion sickness within minutes of starting to play.

On a slightly less whiney note:

What kind of idiot puts all their gold next to the front door?

The countdown continues

With less than a week to go to E Day, my excitement is starting to get the better of me. 

Why you may ask?

1. Penguin mini pets
   
2. The culling of Stratholme instance: Strat has always been one of my favourite instances, I love the colours, the burning buildings, the sadness of the zone. All the little details hidden away, the burning orphanage, the plague rats swarm when you hit the gates and of course all the mini bosses, so Im really looking forward to being able to see the place before it was put to the torch.
   
3. New quests: Having leveled 4 alliance toons to 70 and mulitple low level alts up the high 50s, im really looking forward to some new quests and killing some new mobs.
   
4. Flying carpet mounts. If Im being honest its the only reason Im keeping tailoring on my priests.
   
5. Multi person mounts. My sense of direction sucks. I regularly get lost and have been ganked afk flying into mountains more than once, so the thought of a multi person mount that I can leap on and go afk makes my heartbeat happily. Its also making the Gnomeling positively gleeful, no more waiting around for me whilst I get lost or fall of follow when I get stuck on something.

6.  A new class. I have already deleted a bank alt so I can make my shiney new deathknight. Based on the changes to the racials, 2 percent avoidance and shadowmeld being usable in combat in particular, my deathknight is going to definately going to be an nelf. I already have a dark whelping mini pet for her and a bit of a back story (RP is beginning to interest me more and more). Also it turns out that Nelf deathknights can have that wonderful dark shade of pink hair that Morogrim has... to be honest, I was sold even before the racial changes.

Whilst I dont want to spoil anything for anyone, I would definately say even if you dont ever intend playing any other toon than your current main, take the couple of hours to run through the deathknight starter quests. Its well worth the time and the effort.

Mushrooms are NOT the devil

Or are they? !!!! 

Zangarmarsh is by far my favourite Outlands zone. I love the atmosphere, the fact that its mostly water and plays home to some of the more unique looking creatures such as the bog walkers. Wtb Marticar  as a tameable hunter's pet please. It speaks to my inner child with all its giant mushrooms (as a little girl I had a smurf play set complete with cute little mushroom cottages so when I saw the alliance base at Telredor, it was love at first sight) and its swampyness. Everytime I fly over the area, I think of Sylvia Plath and one of my favourite poems, "Mushrooms", 

"We are shelves, we are

Tables, we are meek,

We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers

In spite of ourselves.

Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning

Inherit the earth.

Our foot's in the door."

    Sylvia Plath

Maybe we are looking in the wrong direction for threats to our world order. Its not Arthas who threatens our existence but those sneaky mushrooms mutilplying in the darkness of Zangarmarsh's swamps. 

Weaken the Ramparts

Feeling over confident due to our success 2 manning normal instances we hit Heroic Ramparts last night. I know its not much, but the Lyloid has 6 days played full stop and isnt exactly well geared so we really werent sure if we would manage even the first trash pack. All in all it went far better than we expected with our very first 2 manned heroic badge under our belts. Yes, thats right we nailed the first boss all by ourselves. His anti healing debuff almost did for us thought since my greater heal was doing 700 before I noticed how big the stack was, but thanks to shadowmeld we managed to muddle through. Basically the Lyloid shadowmelded, the boss came onto me and i ran around a bit shielding myself. As soon as the debuff ran out, Lylia bandaged up and got aggro back and we killed him. Im so glad I resisted all those people who tried to make me reroll dwarf priest back in 2005/2006. In fact i cant express how much i love the new shadowmeld.

Murmuring is bad for you

Our 2 man target today was Shadow Lab. I was a tad nervous going in, after all I have bad memories of the 2nd boss.

"Time for fun", cue Mariposa spamming holy nova and burning through all my mana in 2 seconds flat. In fact, I cant help but question if thats why Blizzard gave us Holy Nova as baseline, to give them giggles when we oom ourselves fast on all bosses with mindcontrol abilities.

Note the awesome cower animations in the screenshot

However it turned out just fine, luckily a prot warrior and a holy priest cant kill each other fast at all. We did the first boss with Lylia as arms, but he secretly has this thing for being prot and hearthstoned to respec before the next room.

The 3rd boss proved slightly more challenging. I couldnt sustain enough mana to kill all the spawns and heal. So we had to go for the kite and nuke like mad strategy, which on try number 2 worked fine. Much to my surprise he dropped the hallowed shoulders (surprise because when doing him on my priest I normally get the plate chest my paladin desparately wanted). 

Murmur was afk easy by comparison.

Swarm

Ive become increasingly frustated by the overaggressive nature being shown by 90 percent of the server. Its like just because season 4 is over and pve is nerfed to the point of pointlessness, every sad little loser is out looking for people to grief. Now Ive no problem with world pvp or 70 versus 70, but Ive never been able to understand the mentality of people who hang around killing lowbies and then run for the hills like cowards the second some decent competition shows up.

I took my hunter to STV this afternoon to pick up a gorilla and within seconds of arriving, a lv 37 hunter was taking potshots at Lylia (lv 70 prot warrior). After collecting my new pet, I was heading back to the rebel camp when we were ambushed by 2 70s and a pack of low levels. Of course we didnt stand a chance (since my hunter is only lv 33), so whilst Lylia created a diversion I made my escape and fetched my priest. Now obviously this warlock and hunter wanted world pvp, why else would they be hanging around in STV? Oh wait. So we kill them a couple of times and off they run, in separate directions naturally because its rare that gankers ever stick together when things get tough.

Then there is Booty Bay, we have bank alts (both lv 33) parked there for easy access to the neutral auction house and the number of times that people randomly attack.... The guards need to be lv 80 already.

Its like the new talents and lack of focus have created this rage mentality in everyone. Must prove how great I am by ganking people on low health, afk, with multiple mobs on them or just chasing low levels around. Whilst leveling Lylia, only one ret paladin on the opposing side didnt attack, everyone else has been throwing themselves at him. I realise its happening on both sides, but its driving me mad. Im very objective focused, I log with a plan whether that plan is to level an alt, do an instance, some pvp or whatever and it drives me mad when I have to deviate from that plan to corpse camping some scrub who thinks griefing lowbies is a good way to spend the evening.

Its the fact that these people dont want pvp, they dont want to fight people of the same level, gear or quantity. If they did they would be happy for 2 v 2 or they would be in a battleground. They are just trying to upset and annoy people, obviously its working because Im angry right now, but its been every day for 3 weeks now. 

Take the guy who killed us when I was tanking the ring of blood for Lylia's weapon. It was late at night so we were 2 manning it on the last boss when this ret paladin attacks. We got him low even though we had the elite on us, but he had bubble so with help from the hardhitting mob he killed us. But then he came back questing as if nothing had happened, right next to us. Naturally we killed him 2 or 3 times and then he doesnt res for ages. We wait, kill him again and this time when he resses he bubbles and hearthstones. Its like these people dont understand actions have consequences, that killing people with mobs on them or people doing escort quests is going to make them dislike you. That you cant just waste their time, get them a repair bill and then expect to do whatever you want right next to them. As you might have guessed Im really looking forward to leveling to 80.

The end of an era

The expansion comes ever closer and I admit to a certain degree of apprehension intermingled with the excitement. I actually thought I had lost all my all old screenshots as ive deleted and reinstalled Wow a few too many times, but lurking deep within a random folder I discovered a mix of stuff from 2006. 

Above is my little priestie exploring the Troll Village between Darkshore and Moonglade. It took me a while and a fair bit of wallclimbing before I managed to get there, but from the first time I saw it, it fascinated me and I had to get there somehow so it was well worth the effort. Note the interesting mismatched gear, we never ever got tier 2 drops.

Below is a screenshot of my old guild just before our first Cthun kill on the 20th of July 2006, we practised like crazy before portaling SW, handing in Nef and Onyxia's heads and then heading Stranglethorn for Hakkar's head, then hearthstoned back. Naturally we wiped on the first try losing all the buffs, but killed him later in the evening and then nailed Ouro the same night.

The gnomeling is the hunter on the left hand side (no idea what he's wearing or why he's wearing it since hunter tier 2 dropped all the time and he definately has the full set in the bank) and im the glittery priest in the centre. That was the only guild Ive ever been in where 90 percent of the priests were all nelfs. If we needed fearward for anything we tended to have turn to the alts.

To the left is a rare shot of my little druid. Note the twiggy shoulders, that was taken in Aszhara just after her first MC run. For the first time I managed to sneak my alt into a guild speed run and picked up 5 pieces of tier 1. 

Clova

The majority of my characters have flower themed names and Clova my baby hunter is no exception. Her name represents both the flower, Clover and Glen Clova, one of the Scottish Glens. 

She loves the great outdoors, happiest when wandering alone through the forests, particularly when its raining. Her companion, Lyloid is a plainstrider who Clova found wandering injured in Darkshire pursued by an Orc. Slaughtering the orc, Clova nursed the plainstrider back to health and the two have been firm friends ever since. 

Whilst she prefers the wilder zones, her current goal is to make friends with those strange human types, so that she can buy one of their black stallions so she is doing some farmwork in Westfall.

Gnomeling no more

The gnomeling (who techinically is no longer a gnomeling) hit 70 on his warrior a few days ago. We are trying to grab him a few pieces of gear and as much gold as possible before the expansion rolls around. The first items on the list were the undead slaying set, easily 2 mannable and if running around winterspring first thing in the morning pretty much uncontested. 

From there we headed off to the Scarlet Monstary to see how easy the Headless Horseman was for 2 undergeared overconfident idiots. As it turns out, prayer of mending owns and the Headless Horseman is basically a loot pinata. I hardly needed to do any healing at all in the first 2 phases, phase 1 I mainly wanded, phase 2 I just stood close enough to Lylia to make sure the prayer of mending would jump everytime i got conflagated, phase 3 was slightly harder but we were looting before we realised it. From our runs, Lylia got both the horseman's blade (I wish priest's could use swords) and the melee ring. 

Inspired by our success here we moved on to the Shattered Halls, an instance I loathe with a passion, mainly because everytime I run it normally its with aoehappy mages and warlocks who start nuking stuff before the tank has even sneezed on it. This time however it was relaxing and frightening easy, yet again prayer of mending turned out greater than Warchief Kargath Bladefist. Also just goes to show how much they have nerfed everything, obviously the new talents helped but it was a completely different instance to the one we ran almost 2 years ago for the first time.

Our next port of call was Magister's Terrace, where we managed the first 2 bosses with ease. Selin Fireheart we just let him drain mana from the crystals and then used prayer of mending to keep us up (anyone seen a pattern here? :p) and used a similar tactic for Vexallus. Obviously all the instances were on normal, have to start somewhere after all and given our level of gear, easy stuff is good.

Ghosties, Ghoulies and Long-Legged Beasties

"From Ghosties and Ghoulies and Long-Legged Beasties and Things that Go Bump in the Night, the Good Lord deliver Us"

So how did you spend Hallow's End?

Briarrose, being a brave little kitten spent the night in search of ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night. She started with the grave of Arthas's horse, or more accurately the hole he in was buried in until recently. Nothing, just a hole. But on a slightly different note, how bad can Arthas be, if he reanimated his old horsie? Surely that shows a caring and sensitive, animal loving side. 

From there, she moved on the Wickerman festival. Surely those dodgy forsaken must be up to something interesting. Unfortunately not, they werent even handing out free booze.

Mariposa and Lylia took a more practical approach and went trick or treating at Stratholme. That mean Baron refused to give us his horsie even though we did all kinds of really cool tricks.

My little baby gnome rogue is still hiding under her bed, afraid that some evil zombie will come back and eat her. 

Happy Halloween

The winds of change

So its been two whole weeks since THE PATCH, the world didnt end and we all survived. Things have calmed down a little (unless you play a ret paladin) but I admit to being a little undecided about some of the changes.

Great things:

The cower animations: particularly the female nelf and druid treeform ones. I fully intend spending all my time afk cowering at something, this seems particularly appropriate given the impending rise of the Lich King.

Shadowmeld: when I first saw the proposed changes to my precious shadowmeld, I admit to panicking. How was I going to cope without my shadowmeld & drink macro, obviously the whole world was going to explode and I suddenly wasnt going to be able to drink in pvp (ignoring the fact that both my draenei paladin and shaman manage just fine without shadowmeld). Then I took a deep breath and calmed down to consider the possibilities. Having tested it in some pvp since the patch.. the new shadowmeld rocks and is bound to get nerfed.

Some warlock or hunter sends their pesky pet at you, shadowmeld = no more pet. Same is true of Doomkin's little forest, elementals or trinket spawns

Pull too many mobs whilst grinding, shadowmeld = feign death, albeit one that never seems to resists

In PvP it drops you from combat straight away, allowing you to los and then drink

Its wonderful and makes up for losing starshards completely.

Crews on Boats: I like the world to feel lived in. Having people wander around doing their thing makes it all feel so much more alive. Some improvements could be made however, maybe a ship's cat minipet or some form of unique to the highseas beverages/food buff.

The expansion Pre-event: Ive collected my undead slaying set, my personal pet paladin (can't help feeling that this sums up Blizzard's feeling towards the class though...) and my tabard of the Argent Dawn which I never got around to doing last time the Scourge were in town partly due to my dislike of tabards (which raises the question why did I get this time? Couple of reasons really

 

1. It suits the sombre serious look Mariposa is currently sporting
2. I was over flowing with necrotic shards and I like spending things)

I love the way the story is evolving. The Argent Dawn showing up again in all the major cities, the fact that the Lich King is already starting to make his presence known with his servants whispering into our minds, telling us our fears, threatening our loved ones. I want my characters to have a reason to head off to Northrend and it seems that we will indeed get that.

New Talents: Recently specced Disc again to experiment with the new talents and im loving it. Shame penance isnt selfcastable, but I love the fact that its instant, can do damage and has a great graphic. Also enjoying Divine Aegis, especially now prayer of mending can crit. The fact that its a perfect bouncy bubble just adds to its perfection really. Haven't done a huge amount of pvp since the patch, but I managed to survive a rogue on me whilst helping a lv 67 2 man Tuskar, we killed the rogue, then Tuskar with no real issues. I certainly do not feel like a free kill unless Im being zerged by 4 or 5 people and then lets face it, everyone is a free kill under those circumstances.

Achievements: Whilst Im not falling over myself to complete these, their addition to the game has netted me over 5000g since the patch came out in sales of runecloth to my own faction (all after the Ambassador title) and in sales of mini pets and cooking recipes to the opposing faction. I admit to ticking off certain achievements, but I refuse to play my game differently just so I can "achieve" something. If for example, I am already in a zone doing something and I notice that I havent uncovered all the map, I might take 5 minutes to do so, but Im not flying somewhere just for achievements. I do however like the fact that people hungry for warbears have started organising lots and lots of city raids.

Decreased Level time to 70: We really werent sure that the Gnomeling would succeed in getting a warrior to 70 before the expansion hit but as it turned out we had weeks to spare.

Mounts and Booty Bay: Its always annoyed me that you couldnt ride in Booty Bay and finally they have fixed it, must have strengthened the dock or something. You can also ride though the Inn in Moonglade and all those other spots that looked mountable but werent.

**Ill cover my negatives in another post since this one turned out to be somewhat larger than I was expecting**

Delightful Dalaran part 2

The two faction specifc zones are very different. The Horde one (The Sunreaver's Sanctuary) seems smaller and a lot more spit and sawdust. The Innkeeper is another scary female Orc in the tradition of Sergra Darkthorn and she guards the door with two big hungry wolves. It seems more suited to a Barrens outpost than a civilised and charming city like Dalaran. Sure, I can imagine sleeping off a hangover in front of the fire, or collapsing on one of the hammocks after a bit too much bitter cactus apple cidar, but compared to the Alliance quarter it lacks something. That said, the huge platters of food, the barrels of apples and cheeses in the cellar and the dancing troll barmaids make the place feel a lot more lively than most of the current drinking spots. Also how can you not want to drink in a watering hole called the "The Filthy Animal"?

The contrast between the Inn and the Horde badge vendor is huge, we are back to Silvermoon cityesque architecture, lots of cushions and spinning bookcases. The battlemasters (well portals) are split between two rooms, one of which has a huge hole in the floor.. yes its an accident waiting to happen. Ok you only fall on top of a fountion and can just run back up the stairs but its not the best design for a room which is likely to be used to so much.

On the other side of the city we come to the Alliance version. Instead of "The Filthy Animal", we find "A Hero's Welcome" (Are the developers trying to tell us something?). This time its a charming inn. Mariposa can easily imagine sipping honeymint tea at corner table here after a hard nights raiding, or a relaxing with a warming glass of snowplum brandy in the beer garden. Yep, you read that correctly, the alliance inn has its own personal beer garden complete with dwarfen beer maids. Upstairs if you are a little too drunk to make it home, there is a very inviting looking fourposter bed just waiting to be sunk into. Perhaps if the night is mild you could even grab a few drunken hours sleep on the benches in the beergarden. Unlike the Horde version, the Alliance quarter is linked by a series of balconies complete with windowboxes and there is even a tower, ok its currently a pointless tower, but its alliance only. The portals leading to all the alliance cities are housed in the courtyard leading to the battlemasters, with plenty of seats and a mailbox. Again the theme seems to be that of spaciousness, light and fresh air.

It might just be perception, but the Silver Enclave definately seems a lot more spacious and better laid out than the Horde area. No tricky holes to fall into, no cramped rooms which when full of taurens really will be a squish.

Alliance and Horde zones aside, there is plenty more to see in Dalaran. The Purple Parlour, the highest point of the city is obviously the hang out of choice for the literary elite. Arcanist Ginsberg and Alchemist Burroughs can be found deep in conversion, and Scribe Whitman is outside on the balcony bemoaning the fact that he left his light feathers at home... seems he needs to glyph for slowfall. 

Underneath the City, something lurks. Candles light the way down into the darkness of the sewers, torches casting flicking shadows on the dank and slimy walls and best not dwell on the liquid streaming around your feet. Divided into 3 main areas, the Underbelly (I love that word) is the dark side of Dalaran. The Black Market is just what is says, home to a few "dodgy" vendors, selling the likes of poisons and a ghostly skull minipet. Just dont fall in the water, that could be a little fatal.

Then there is the Circle of Will, a dueling zone with arenamasters, arena vendors and a grim warning to those who contemplate win trading.

Finally we reach the last Inn in town, "Cantrips and Crows", a waterfront dive. There are some familiar faces, still fighting, food and drink (if you are brave enough -  where exactly does sweetened goats milk come from in WoW, should my spacegoatsquidthing be scared?). Naturally this is a much more basic house (probably of ill repute), but down in the dark it has a certain atmosphere and I can see my little Orcling Honeysuckle feeling at home here... the Orclings are always spoiling for a fight.

The Underbelly also offers some of the best fishing in town. Its easy to imagine sitting down there with a cold beer, pickled eggs and radish kimchi plus something to throw at the rats to keep them off you, your lunch and anything you catch.

All in all, Dalaran has something for everyone, for the first time with a WoW city I can imagine all my characters finding their very own little space in the same town. My druids are sussing out sunspots for sleeping amid the windowboxes or searching out roaring fires to catnap besides. Mariposa is planning on working her way through all the bookcases in town and Dorn, well she rather fancies finding a nice relaxing bench to watch the world going by. 

The food has a very farmer's market combined with upmarket restaurent feel for the most part. Who could resist buying Apples straight from the tree, although Im a little dubious as to where he gets the juice from. Probably best not to dwell on that. The cupcake stall is just gorgeous although I have a reallife thing for cupcakes so yes, im biased. Like all cities, Dalaran has a number of spots to eat. You can stick to your own faction specific spot and eat in your respective Inn. The Horde serve up plates of mead basted caribou and savoury snowplums accompanied by crusty flatbreads, all washed down with mulgore firewater. Across town in "A hero's Welcome", the alliance are serving slabs of sweet potato bread covered with sour goats cheese and poached emperor's salmon, accompanied with honeymead.

If hanging out with only your faction isnt your thing, there is Legerdemain Lounge which seems on the beta at least to be the most popular joint in town. An Art Deco establishment, the lounge with its glass tables, book cases, candelabras and potted plants offers a relaxing place for a drink or food with friends. Upstairs there are rooms for those too tired or too drunk to make it home and a balcony overlooking the street, perfect for a drink in the evening.

Or you could pop into "One more Glass", where Fialla Sweetberry serves glasses of aged dalaran red and tundra berries on the street. Inside yet another member of the Trias family is selling cheese and no doubt spying on someone or something at the same time. If you are brave enough you could join the pvp crowd down at the Cantrips and Crows, but thats literally taking your life into your hands. Or for a more romantic picnic, there are plenty of places to sneak off to, where you can lose yourself and forget that you are in the busiest city in Northrend.

The biggest plus of all: No more lethal Aldor Rises, although obviously falling off the city itself would be fairly lethal, but thats impossible to "accidently" do. 

The squashlings are spreading

You can now get Sinister Squashlings from the treat bags, as well as a drop from the Headless Horseman, so even my lv 8 rogue has managed to lay her mitts on one. Whilst im glad they made them easier to obtain, I do think 2 squashlings and 2 hallowed helms in 2 hours seems a bit too easy.

So over all, Im now at 3 squashlings, 2 from treat bags and 1 from the Horseman.

Outland bound

The gnomeling hit the Outlands this morning, in record time for us. Looks like he will make the deadline of being 70 before the expansion hits, something we really werent sure of when we started. Here he can be seen in his true colours, a lepergnome with a pumpkin head. On a side note, the achievement for popping a pumpkin on the head of every race almost killed me this morning, Horde throwing things at you is scary. 

In other news, Mariposa finally got an epic flying mount. Thanks in part to all the people willing to pay crazy amounts of gold for runecloth. 9 gold for 20 makes it a very expensive way to rep farm.

The Headless Horseman Rides Again

The festival of Hallows End has begun. My favourite festival of all, I love the pumpkins that suddenly appeared glowing all over the cities. The paper skeletons hanging on cupboard doors, the fact that we are actively encouraged to eat candy and that we get to save the world from the Headless Horseman (an evil doer that gave me nightmares as a child - yes I have an over active imagination, Scooby Doo versus the Headless Horseman gave me wakeless nights for weeks. Although I saw it again recently and couldnt quite figure out what spooked me all those years ago. Sleepy Hollow remains a movie that chills me though, I still cant properly watch the scene with the little boy under the floor boards).

So far Ive turned into a ghost, eaten a lot of sweeties and done some trick or treating. Happy Hallows End.

One question keeps bugging me, I can only think of two spots in Azeroth where pumpkins grow. The Brackwell Pumpkin Patch in Ellwyn Forest and that field in the Tirisfal Glades. So how did these two fields, produce so many giant pumpkins? There is obviously something dodgy going on somewhere.

Winter wonderland

With the expansion coming soon and all that, Ive changed my header. The troll village is so 2006 really, so its been replaced with the frozen North.

As the Dust settles

So its day 2:

1. Ret Paladins have already been nerfed
2. We are still sharing battlegroup space with a Spanish Battlegroup
3. Around 95 percent of the post patch threads on the PvP forums are complaining about either shared battlegrounds with no common language or ret paladins. The other 5 percent are keyloggers
4. I managed to rescue my priest, no thanks to Blizzard. My ticket was answered with an email telling me to delete my WTF folder
5. The gnomeling is now lv 38, almost 39 (but he bailed on me to watch the Grand Prix practise)
6. I specced my paladin prot and had fun tanking the Sunken Temple (have to start somewhere)
7. Did some battlegrounds on my resto shaman. They went much better than I expected. Wasnt two shot by anyone and managed to keep the gnome alive against an arms warrior. Got some of the pvp achievements, including the one for 300,000 damage or healing in a single game.
8. Did MH on the shaman, again it went much better than I was expecting. Loved the flowerpower feel of raiding with shamans and druids. Wild Growth has a wonderful animation, which when combined with the flowers from my weapon enchant gave the raid a real garden feel. Didnt feel particularly stressed in the mana department, saw lots of big numbers flying around the screen.

Heading into the expansion feeling fairly happy and confident at the moment. 

Edit: On the subject of Dust, we were questing in Dustwallow earlier and I couldnt help wondering, what kind of Mage would "choose" to live here.

Although the sunrises seem to be beautiful, I think I would rather be living in Dalaran.

Patch Day Disasters

Eek, what a fun day its been. The EU servers have been up and down like yoyos. Then the battle groups got all muddled up, a Spanish server cluster added into nightfall, the Russian one mixed in with vindication and so on. The language issues added a whole new set of challenges to PvP.

On top of that, Mariposa got stuck somewhere off the coast of Southshore falling indefinitely anddcing every few minutes. Hearth stoning on Patch Day is dangerous business it seems.

On the Plus side I'm loving

1. The ability to track low level quests. I cant believe how many I haven't done on Mariposa (haven't had time to check the others yet).
2. Stormwind Harbour. No I don't know where I got my harbour fetish from either.
3. The Dreanei hit aura is now both visible, and works for both melee and spell hit.
4. Glyphs. Currently shadow and using the power word shield and the dispel magic one. Combined they add some nice extra healing without having to drop shadow form.
5. I have bag space, lots of it. Pets, mounts, pvp tokens and badges of justice all neatly filed away.
6. Achievements. Although its a little frustrating that I seem to have explored the whole known world, just not on any one toon. However its given me plenty to do between now and the expansion actually hitting.

The downside

1. Obviously being stuck is a little frustrating, as is the fact that the server stability seemsnonexistent.
   
2. Burst damage is depressing, especially on the part of the melee classes
3. Addons not working. Although Ive taken the opportunity to downsize. 

All in all, I'm happy with most of the changes. Ok, I'm not hugely excited with the new priest "racials" that arent racials anymore, hymn of hope seems particularly lacklustre especially whilst soloing. However most of it turned out better than expected (although my precious priest is still stuck in neverneverland).

In between all the chaos, I managed to find the time to get a haircut. Mariposa decided to chop off  her unpractical long hair in preparation for the upcoming journey to Northrend. Its going to be tough and dangerous, thus low maintenance hair makes perfect sense.

I also got Lylia (the gnomeling's warrior) to lv 34 and her whirlwind axe. Should have been higher than 34, but the server's are down again, nerfing paladins if the rumours and the tears are to be believed. 

R.I.P Starshards

Well its a few more hours til the EU servers go down for the night, but once they do..... no more starshards.

When I first rolled a nelf priest, I didnt even realise there were priest racials. I wanted a priest because of two shadowpriests I had played against on my warlock. Shadowform looked cool and I really hadnt given the matter much consideration beyond the coolness factor. We were changing server and the gnomeling announced his intention to go druid again, our faction choice was limited by a friend who refused to go Horde so nelf druid it was. Out of laziness I made a nelf priest as well so we could all start together.

As soon as I got starshards, even its original channeled form it was love at first sight. Nothing beats big arcane arrows shooting down on someone's head pointing out to the whole world.... "Here I am, come gank me!!!" 

Then we come to its current incarnation, instant cast and manafree still with those wonderful graphics. What is there not to love? In arenas, I used it whenever it was off cooldown, in pve whenever I could spare the globalcooldown. 

Starshards, you will be missed, its the end of an era. 

Destination: Delightful Dalaran (part 1)

Ive been delibrately avoiding writing about the beta, but I just cant help myself in this case. This post has been writing its self in my head over tbe last couple of days. I love Dalaran. When I was a little girl I used to love hanging out in the Lighting Department of our local Department Store, I thought it was fairyland, all that brightly coloured glass and the balls of light. My first thought when I saw Dalaran took me straight back back to being 5 years old again, staring up at the light in wonder.

Unlike Shattrah, it feels like a proper city. Cobbled streets, wizards wandering the streets chatting to each other, or standing on the street quarters gossiping. The majority of NPCs all have names which helps create the atmosphere, Bitty Frostflinger the cute little gnome mage chatting away animatedly or Goldlily Gleamingfell, the artic blonde bloodelf watching passers by reservedly.

Ok, its a cross between Disneyland and the Arabian Nights mixed with a healthy dose of Harry Potter, Kitsch only just begins to cover it, but its fun. The shops have a European boutique feel, you name it, someone in Dalaran will sell it to you. From fetish bandage outfits and nurse uniforms, cupcakes and fetch balls for our pets, its all there just waiting to be bought. Yep, ive bought it all. Each store is decorated in a manner benefiting its contents, making each one a beautiful jewel on its own. You can spend hours just wandering around looking at things, drinking in the view. Spend sometime in the greenhouse watching the flowers grow at your feet, a testament to the power of the herbalists, or maybe pop into the Sisters Sorcerous and watch as Badluck (the family cat) slinks around, one moment hes perched on the counter watching for shoplifters, the next hes curled up in the corner fast asleep and snoring.

This year's Winterveil shopping will be a pleasure with all these tempting presents at our finger tips. There is something for everyone in Dalaran.

1. Cupcakes to cheer up the emo boomkin
   
2. Paperplanes to throw at the slacking dps when the raidleader isnt looking
   
3. Cake or more likely strong alcohol to buy said raidleader to creep back into their goodbooks when they spot the plane throwing shenanigans
   
4. A toyshop selling toys for the rogues in your life (of course im not implying anything negative about the average age of a rogue)
   

I admit to not liking Shattrah when I first saw it, i didnt like sharing space with the Horde, after all I play on a pvp server and hearthstoning to the same Inn as the guy you just made take res sickness can be a tad embarressing. That said, almost 2 years later, Ive got used to having massive taurens sat on my battlemasters and turning a blind eye to the male bloodelf paladin dancing on the mailbox. Thus I was a bit surprised when I discovered that in Dalaran there are separate Alliance and Horde zones. Ok there are two other Inns, that arent faction specific, but the principle itself in a neutral sanctary town just seems a bit odd to me. Its not as if we can start fighting after too much tequila, no alliance hero is going to start throwing punches in the centre town if he thinks that orc looked at his girl funny, it just isnt possible. So why the divide?

Its raining, its pouring

Pretty much the whole of this week we have had heavy rain, so its nice to see art mirror life.

Everywhere we quested this afternoon had heavy rainful too. 

On a slightly related note, one thing i love about WoW is its hugeness, even though ive been playing since feb 2005 im still discovering new things. Until tonight I had absolutely no idea that ghouls spawned in the Moonbrook Graveyard instead of birds whilst it is dark. Even though ive farmed countless light feathers in said graveyard, so it seems i must have avoided spending time in a graveyard during the twilight hours. Yes, i spook easily.

I am a warrior

Well actually im not. But the gnomeling is, we are busy leveling yet another warrior for him. An alliance one this time.

We are repeatedly running the stockades at the moment, turning out to be good experience per hour. Ive finally found a use for my paladin, clearing the stockades in 3 pulls 5 times an hour.

I can understand why the prisoners rebelled though, its a pretty depressing place each cell complete with its instruments of torture, huge cobwebs decorating the hallways and no beds at all.

Beer Goggles

The best thing about Brewfest is the romantic goggles, if they had stats i would never take them off.

Overachievers and me

Spent this afternoon leveling fishing and cooking on Mariposa. Im now at 242 cooking and 225 fishing (need to complete the quest). I also managed to pick up 11 honourable kills, it turns out that STV is not a relaxing spot for doing a spot of fishing. 

So why am I, at this stage of the game leveling fishing and cooking on a character ive been playing for 3 years? Achievements, a system that Blizzard are implementing with this upcoming expansion. Basically you get points for a variety of things, collecting minipets, tabards, having professions maxed out and so on. 

But the main reason for the sudden interest in fishing is the simple fact that the expansion will bring the number of mini pets only obtainable through dipping a rod into the water to 6, 4 baby crocs, 1 crawdad and 1 gnome sized rat. I need a gnome sized rat, it will make my priest complete. Thus i need to be able to fish in Dalaran, so im working away on making sure ill be ready as soon as i can access the city.

Hocus Pocus

My first ever character on my own account was a little human warlock on a pve server. I played her for a few months and then we moved along with some friends to a pvp server, so she got abandoned. Abandoned until now in fact. The ability to move from pve to pvp became too tempting, so im now leveling her to 70 taking advantage of the fact that soloing is fun when no one can ganking you, with the intention of transfering once she hits the level cap.

The Pluses of this are

1. Shes a human, diplomacy is good, especially when like me you hate rep farming
2. lv 60 already
3. Has PvP rank, ok Knight Captain is nothing wonderful, but considering I only played her for a few weeks with the ranked pvp system
4. She is a herbalist and alchemist, which will allow me to drop alchemy on her and take up inscriptions

The negatives

1. Human and a particularly bovine one at that. Not sure what i was thinking when i made her. At least i can change her luridly golden hair to something less neon when the next patch comes out.
   
2. I leveled a gnome to lv 31, so im guessing the little gnomeling will become my new bank alt
3. Having to pay to transfer her, I resent giving Blizzard any more than i need to.
4. She doesnt have the epic riding skill

Beer of the Month Club

Mariposa has obviously been away from her homelands far too long. In rare moment of drunkeness, she allowed some gnome (at least she thinks it was a gnome, might have been a small devil though) to talk her into joining the Beer of the Month Club.

This is a newly implemented for Brewfest 2008 and the first sample makes you talk in Gnomish Binary... brings my inner computergeek to the fore.

Raise a glass

Its brewfest time again.

Whilst this is far from my favourite festival, I love the ram racing and am trying to improve on my personal best of 11 runs in one go at the moment. I think 13 at least is possible, particularly on the alliance side which seems much easier than the horde one, due I think to the placement of the apple barrels.

Shiver my timbers

Its talk like a Pirate Day.