Elder Mariposa

Mariposa finally got around to collecting all the coins of ancestry this morning and whilst I don't feel that Elder Mariposa has much of a ring to it, it got me thinking. Where would Elder Mariposa want to spend the Lunar Festival, afterall everyone knows location is key.

Definately somewhere quiet with water and flowers nearby. My first thought was one of the oasises in the Barrens. Beautiful, peaceful and relaxing, either that or at the top of the Twin Pillars in Feralas. Visiting the ancestors should require a bit of effort on the part of the visitee, mountain climbing or wading into lakes at the very least. A physical journey as well as a spiritual one if you will.

Elder Lylia on the other hand wants the opposite of peace and quiet. His perfect location would be in the original incarnation of Alterac Valley, riding Korrak's shoulders into battle. In order to collect his coin you would have sacrifice yourself on the field to prove yourself worthy. If you afked before the battle was done his vengeful spirit would follow you for the remainder of your time playing WoW jinxing your RNG and destroying your epics.

The addition of some angry ancestors would certainly liven up the festival, perhaps Omen should be untethered from the Moonglade as well. A few ghosts running around smiting everyone from their beams of moonlight plus a giant demon dog running around eating people would add a whole new side to the proceedings. It would also make leveling alts at this time of year as much fun as doing it during the zombiefest... but all in all, a small price to pay in my opinion.

So where in the world would your Elder park themselves and their portable mailbox?

Happy Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone

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

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 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.

Beer Goggles

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

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.

Harvest Festival

Even though its day two of the festival it seems that honouring the ancestors has gone out of fashion, at least for the Alliance. When I made the journey to Uther's tomb, only one other candle burnt against the gloom.

A quick ride to Ashenvale on my undead priest proved that the Horde suffer from the same malise. Either that or Grom is arising every night to collect his spirits before returning to his grave.

Going for Gold

Once upon a time in my miss spent youth I had a computer game called "Going for Gold" in which you could compete in various running events with the ultimate aim of reaching the Olympics. It was a very frustating game, so when I discovered that Blizzard had added an Olympic tribute ingame, I was a little nervous. Luckily all Blizzard wanted us to do is pvp, I mean thats easy right. I do that all the time. So fueled with all the stories of people who got their pet after their first game, I queued up all excited. Several hours later I was both frustated (alliance in Nightfall are dubious at the best of times and even when we did win, no medal in the mail) and grumpy. I even dragged the gnome out of bed so I had someone capable of killing stuff to heal.

Then just when I was going to give up for the night, it was late and I had run out of nets (thats another story), there it was, glistening in my mail box.

Here I am in my Competitor's tabard with my brand new shiny pet. He even claps his hands together to show his approval.

Midsummer Madness

I know everyone is writing about the fire festival so i was going to resist temptation and not post on the topic. However having run multiple toons all over Azeroth and Outlands in search of blossoms, in the end the little flames whispering to me from the fires won out and i decided, lets just jump on the bandwagon.

The Fire Festival is one of the saddest festivals in my opinion. I know its the height of summer and the sun is shining but revisiting Azeroth and seeing all these zones so empty and forlown seemed more suited to some kind of midwinter or autumnal event. That sense of loss and trying to relive what went before was everywhere. Riding through Blackrock mountion and seeing the ghosts of all those raiders fighting pvpers for the right to raid BWL and MC. Still hearing the voices of raidleaders long since rerolled or quit yelling at the last man to arrive, now being ganked by a 20 man raid of rank farmers.

Riding through Feralas and finding Lethon let out to pasture, no longer hunted or fought over like some exotic prize.

Im writing this alttabbed from the game, my paladin was sitting afk at the Southshore flightpoint and when I tabbed back.. still alive. The Burning Crusade shrunk the world in a sense, apart from the odd leveler in my travels from fire to fire, Ive hardly seen a soul, yet Shattrah/outlands is crawling with life.

Sure change is everywhere and should be embraced. My problem is not that the game has moved on, but that there is so much beautiful and pretty much unused content just sat there. Most people leveling now are rerollers or alts, so they just power through it heading to Outlands as fast as possible and so it just sits there, untouched with just a whisper of what it used to be. Remember the patch notes which included "The Barrens now feels more alive", well, we need more of that.

So thats the reflective and emo part done, on to the positives of this years festival for me.

Farmed gold simply by traveling. Best idea in a long time Blizzard <3 Revisited lots of places I havent been to been to in a long time, especially Winterspring, Felwood (my old haunts on my priest, dreamfoil/plaguebloom and icecap farming) and Crossroads (scene of my first pvp experiences pre-battlegrounds on my warlock). Im also a collecter/hoarder so any ingame event which allows you to collect "junk" is great in my eyes. The only real disappointment for me has been the lack of pvp opportunities whilst flag collecting. Only one person tried to kill me, a warlock in orgrimmar who also failed to notice the gnome rogue riding ahead of me. Everyone else has been all festivally and party spirited, more into cross faction dancing and lots of hugging than violence. Im one of those hippy types who hates attacking first, so i need people to give me an excuse and this summer no one seems to. Oh and the dancing draenei flame thingie needs to be larger. Other than that, its been one of the best festivals so far but nothing can beat Hallows End, im a orange candy and pumpkin girl at heart.