Good fortune and may the elements embrace you. I hope you will not mind a small amount of reminiscing on my part… But as the wind likes to carry with it tales from other places so do I and I hope, somewhere, someone is listening as I do to that sweet susurrus. My journey is new but, I hope, not short.

These posts will happen from time to time – I love my alts and each and every one has presented new aspects of the game to me which I want to record and share for all.My usual answer to most “wtb healer for heroic x” in guild is “Would love too but Ava’s healing is still too weak”. That is, not just his gear but my experience too. Most of the guild had reccomended getting 1.4-1.5k +healing before hitting a heroic and I only had 1.3k-ish and 167 mana regen with water shield up and some rather dubious ‘healing‘ gear. I’ve only healed five or six instances and all but one of those was a guild run.

My little resto-shammie Avarix is, in my mind, still a ‘baby’ character who needs geared up before doing such scary things. I have this problem with all of my characters – the ‘fear’ of underperforming really eats at me to the point where I don’t like to join groups for things I’d really like to do due to feeling under-geared or skilled.

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So another festival is ‘roon the corner and this time I want tae make sure I’m in on the action frae the beginning!

I decided to drop by the PTR due to a few posts on the fact that some pets (vanity and otherwise) as well as some other mobs, npcs etc. had changed size. My favourite pet is my faerie dragon and I wanted to see if the tiny thing grew any. I wasn’t disappointed!

My little dragon is huge – shame it won’t stay that way!Anyway, fire festival! Anyone who has read anything on this blog might have noticed that I like my festivals. I enjoy taking part in these out-of-the-routine events and getting the small, if inventory space wasting, items. I decided, thus, to do a quick rundown on all of the quests I could do by myself on the PTR. Read more

Ah, well, y’see mah name has a long a proud history, handed doon by ma faithers, faither’s great uncles cousin!

This is a question which comes up a lot online. People want to know why you chose that particular name, what it means to you, what you hoped to convey by choosing it and measure it up against their own perceptions of it.Now, I bet you’re thinking “I know where your name comes from, Aurik! That’s easy! It’s just a basatardisation of a certain villian’s name, amirite?! Of course not (you knew that was coming hehe). I… never liked Bond films, I’d never seen Goldfinger and it wasn’t until someone asked me if that’s why I chose the name that I realised there was even a connection. Nope. However, I chose it for, likely, the same reason. It sounds like gold! For those of you not familiar with chemistry the symbol for gold is Au (from the latin, aurum according to wikipedia). I had a dwarf, his hair was golden-yellow. It had to be a name which was ‘gold-ish’! My other half, whilst creating a female dwarf hunter at the same time, suggested Aurik and it stuck. Personally I pronounce it “Aww-rick” but most of my guildies from other parts in Europe pronounce it (probably more correctly) as “A-oo-rick”. Read more

Well, them Skyguard have been tellin’ me for a while that mah riding ability is gettin’ pretty good so ah decided tae try one of the flat, ugly buggers they ride. Since we’re aw pals they even gave me a discount!

Epic flying mount! Finally! The biggest ’setback’ I felt when I changed back to my rogue wasn’t the ten levels and gearing up I had to do but the lack of an epic flying mount. I know a lot of people see it as a waste of time to get an epic flyer, not to mention a waste of gold, but I feel it’s well worth it.At the most basic level it opens up some new soloable daily quests – until now I had about 7 or 8 I could reliably do daily by myself – Two at the Skyguard Outpost in Terrokkar, two in the Blade’s Edge Mountain base, two at Ogri’la, the cooking daily and, sometimes, the pvp daily. Read more

Ach my mind is away wi’ the faeries half the time and ah cannae remember tae pit’ poisons on withoot keepin’ a wee note or five.

Another topic suggested by the Blog Azeroth community!

What addons can you not live without?

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So, as thon lassie pointed oot – the Lunar Festival ain’t all aboot dancin’ and getting yersel’ drunk. It’s aboot makin’ sure yer ancestors ken ye still remember them!

Or, in other words, rep grind!

The minute I knew there was a big cat mount in WoW I wanted it. Call me a boring sheep, whatever, I like big cats and I was for having one. I looked up how to get Darnassus rep at the time and decided the PvP route wasn’t likely (this was before the honour system changes) since I didnt pvp very much and sucked at it besides. I set out to do all of the quests I could that gave Darnassus rep but I’d gotten past the level where diminishing returns meant no rep for low level quests (again, this has since changed). I left WoW for a bit without, sadly, having ever reached that particular goal.

When I came back I had gained a bit more of an interest in PvP and quickly got myself one of the kitties-for-honour (welfare kitty?) – however I don’t like those nearly as much as the Darnassus ones (and, hey, it’s a matter of principle for me to finish now that I’ve started!). With the new diminishing returns meaning I could still get honour for the really low level quests I went back and did all of the starting ones; I put all of the runecloth I got from levelling through Hellfire / Zangarmarsh into Darnassus rep too and any morrowgrain I could make.

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I have to admit, I had never come across the term ‘altitis’ until I discovered the wow blogosphere but I’ve adopted it completely as it so well described my own habit concerning alts. I have far too many and it’s hard to stop making more like some sort of weird complusive disorder. My other half, on finding out some of my cousins also played WoW commented “Oh he probably has an alt on your server, he has one on every server!” Now, as I pointed out at the time, this was a bit of an exaggeration – I have alts spread across a few servers, yes, but mostly level 1 characters made to speak to friends whom I met after rolling my mains. I wondered to myself why I kept rolling new characters and here are the things I came up with: Read more

Well, if it isnae a spiffy new tabard for me! Looks right guid wi’ aw mah other green and purple gear, dont’cha think?

I’m not a huge tabard junkie but one I loved dearly from the day I got it on Mharai was the Purple Trophy Tabard of the Illidari. Whilst running through Shadowmoon Valley someone asked me if I wanted to join to do some group quests and I jumped right on the chance as I had quite a few left to complete. We cleared our way through them, doing the one where you have to disguise yourself as a blood elf whilst kiling the large rock giants. I mentioned to the group at the time that I wished I could get one of the tabards the blood elves wore as they looked so awesome and thought nothing more of it. Of course, when I went to hand in the reward from the other quest which goes alongside it – Battle of the Crimson Watch – I was ecstatic to find I had gotten one as a bonus reward.

Fast-forward to yesterday. Grinding Scryer rep I notice the tabards again and decided I missed having one. I hadn’t managed to get a group to do that quest on Aurik as most people on the server are well past needing it. A few tentative prods in guild later, though, I struck lucky and got a few people who’d not done it or still needed it on an alt!

They’ve seriously nerfed that battle! I remember it taking us three attempts and even when we did manage it finally we had scraped through by the skin of our teeth, having used a battle res and pots etc. Yesterday we did it with four and, although the mage died, I reckon we could have easily done it with less. Reports say people have done it with two! Ah well, I walked away with a completed quest so I guess I’m happy. Lucky sod that I am, I managed to get the green one this time. Hooray!

Would be nice if Blizz added more of these kind of tabards. Although every faction has one at exalted in Outlands (at least I think so…) not all of them look very good. I quite like the Sporeggar tabard but the Skyguard and Ogri’la tabards are a bit too oddly coloured for me.

One other tabard I picked up yesterday was the Scryers one. Finally exalted. Whoohoo!

Any excuse fer a party’s got tae be guid, right? But when ye add fancy new clothes, festival buns and a big monster tae kill that just makes it even more brilliant! Lunar festival’s a great time tae have fun wi’ yer friends but aw mine seem tae be a bit less in the partyin’ mood this year…

My first lunar festival happened to coincide with rolling Mharai. I’d missed it on Aurik due to playing during summer (when I didn’t have Uni work to complete) and I wanted in on it wholesale whilst I had the chance. Being on an RP realm meant that the outfit probably wouldn’t just lie gathering dust in the bank all year, too! Despite being level 15 I hauled my Tauren rear around the world (with help from a rather kind Paladin) and got myself some coins, bought a dress and a suit and paraded around quite happily in them whilst eating festival buns, having great fun as I did.

This year, though, I have Aurik, Avarix and Dryn. None of them need the professions items (rocket launchers, fireworks and festival suits / dress) and, being on a PvE server, they aren’t likely to see much use of any festival gear I get them. It kinda takes the fun out of the festival if you’ve ‘done it all before’ when there’s nothing much new to get.

Now you might say “Wheesht you, you’re getting something for nothing!” but I point here to the fact that Blizzard has updated most of the other yearly events so far.

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Well, I seen a lot of blether by a bunch of paladins, hunters, and priests all talkin’ aboot how their class was smashin’ so ah figured I’d have to dae my own wee piece.

So. What’s fun about beein’ a rogue?

Everything! Well, nearly. It’s a really fun class to be especially if you like to try finding novel ways to do things by yourself. I remember one of my first ‘great achievements’ – soloing the group quest in Searing Gorge where you have to get some plans from behind 3 elites which were, at the time, a level above me. That was one of my first “heart-in-mouth, can I really do this?, OMG hurry up and finish gathering!” moments with my rogue – where getting a sap, cheap shot and blind off in quick succession was the difference between life and ‘death’, between an easy finish to an otherwise painful quest or a long, miserable corpse run with a tricky res position. I was a nublet at the time and I don’t find that sort of stuff very hard these days but I still look back with pride at that moment when I learned, truly, what it was to be a rogue.

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