Ok, so, this post is terribly late as usual but the madness of levelling and new content and whatnot has distracted me even further.

I hit level 80 around 2am last Friday, deliberately making it a discovery-ding (the best kind!)  Looks kind of awesome getting that ding spell effect in the air, too!

I skipped Howling Fjord and Sholazar so I have something new for my alts to go through - I was rather glad I spent my last level and a half in Storm Peaks as it has some awesome quests and some pretty interesting utilisations of the new quest mechanics and vehicle technology which I might otherwise have left until ‘later’ to do (much like I find it hard to be motivated to do Icecrown after the mammoth levelling session I’ve just completed…).

Also, if I hadn’t levelled in Storm Peaks I might not have nabbed this pretty yet:

If you’re thinking that the [Reins of the White Polar Bear] (really, did they have to specify white?) looks a little small you’d be right - here’s a comparison versus the brown armored mount you can buy in Dalaran (thanks to Grav for modelling with his bear!):

Of course, only  a few days after that we’re all given a baby polar bear!  Khi was as delighted as I was and promptly took a rather nice screenie!

I’m a little overloaded at the moment and now that I’m 80 I’m trying not to overdo it too much - we’ve got long road ahead of us and I see no point in running to the end just to wait and get bored - some might see the road as ending at 80 but not me, nosir.  I’ve done my running, I’ve tired myself out and now is the time to go at a slow and steady pace.  Ok, I think I’ve probably worked that metaphor to death now…

Like many others I also started a Death Knight.  Despite plans to start a little dwarfette, I played around on the beta and came to the decision to roll a draenei.  I know, I know, I love my dwarves but sadly the dwarven animations look rather old compared to the shiny new draenei ones and I really, really, can’t stand the female dwarf casting animations.  I deleted my poor, forgotten, level 11 mage and brought her back as an undead killing machine.  They share looks and names so, in my mind, my mage ‘became’ a Death Knight and I’m levelling her with that in mind.  When I say levelling, though, I mean leaving her to build up rest-xp in Hellfire.  *ahem*

Azmoo also rolled a female draenei death knight and I ran over to meet him to see how closely they resembled one another.   Could almost be sisters, it seems, hehe…

My girl is the one in the middle - she shares a look with the progenitor of the name I also gave her - a female toll warrior I have on Sporeggar - Yjin (silent j!).  I’ll be updating the blog with her profile soon and updating my outdated character page.  I might also add something to th sidebar as I feel having Aurik at the top of the page and doing posts about healing has confused people as to what class I play (I’ve seen a few references to myself as a paladin, hehe).

I’m really in the mood to draw one of my chars doing something cool in Northrend but I’m not sure what yet! Any ideas on the back of a comment and posted below, please! *ahem*

Other than that I’ve been trying to motivate myself to finish off some quests for rep, poke about herbing on my hunter, and do every heroic I can.  I’ve respecced to resto (I was just getting to enjoy elemental, dual specs can’t come fast enough, goddamnit!) but I’m actually gathering off-spec enhance gear again - I’d really like to try it out as it now looks a lot more interesting than I felt it was before.

Enough of the rambling from me - back to playing!

3 comments

The Big Bear himself asked people to give stories of jackassedness they encountered whilst levelling.  Quite happily, I thought to myself at the time, I had managed not to encounter this kind of behavior whilst levelling but it seems I was to be dissapointed.

This one merits mentioning only because it was so similar in spirit to B3’s tale. The following is transcribed word for word - italicised words are my own.

CluelessWarrior: why u kill him noobi?
CW: No need to kill them noob!!!! (yes, four exclamation marks!)
Me: Charming…
CW: jesuss
Me: Ever think I might be on a different quest?

After which he stopped replying…

It’s one thing to whisper someone to mention they’re doing it wrong and feeling smugly superior, it’s another to call someone a noob and continue to whine at them when you’re wrong.  Ah well, it amused me for a few minutes - would have liked to have seen his reaction when he got about two steps down the same quest chain and had to kill the same mobs he had whined to me about.  Aherm.

Besides that one example, though, I’ve found the whole server to be a generally nicer place these past few weeks - lots of people doing quests together and instancing groups where people don’t mind you messing up here or there as everyone is doing it.

I hope everyone else is enjoying their levelling or raiding in Wrath so far - normal service at /hug shall resume shortly.

I’m back from my weekend away and trying like a madman to catch up (not just in levels, you buggers have been writing a hell of a lot of posts)!  My last post turned out to be slightly wrong - about 20 minutes after I posted it, said friend texted me my Wrath code and off I went into Northrend (Rosi, when can I grabs you for paying infos? ><).  I had a good few hours to play before I left  (until 7am *ahem*) and made it to level 72 before heading off.

I didn’t get to make an obligatory first day out post, sadly, and I didn’t keep up with NaBloPoMo.  I’m rather glad about the latter as I’ve really been enjoying my game time and I admit that the only reason this post is winging its way to you now is because EU realms have down time.  Damned maintenance!

So, the following are some random ramblings about the cool things I’ve seen in Wrath so far!  Go away with yer negative stuff, do not want!

Scenery

The first thing which impresses itself upon you about Wrath is the gorgeous scenery.  Now, anyone who’s been around me long enough knows I absoloutely love my screnshots and, well, lets just say I have Sunday Screenies set for the next year… *ahem* In reality, though, I’m probably going to make a few wallpapers and utilise the rest for the making of shiny posts!

Although I was on beta there’s a lot I didn’t see - I alt-tabbed out of WoW when flying on flightpaths on my pre-made chars so that I didn’t spoil myself and I’m so glad I did!  Some zones I never even saw on beta and I’m running around them drooling and taking tonnes of pictures (Zul’Drak, for example).

New Instances

When I played Vanilla and Burning Crusade WoW I didn’t instance much whilst I levelled and even when I hit 70 I wasn’t one for instancing that much.  Now, though, I’m levelling with the curve, I have awesome guildies who want to go along and everything is so new noone is tired of it yet.  I am loving it!

The new instances come with new boss mechanics and some old, though I don’t begrudge them those as they’re presented differently.  Every single one, so far, has been utterly gorgeous - either directly looks-wise or just in the wonderful ‘flow’ to the instance - Azjol-Nerub, for instance, is pretty but not as gorgeous as other instances.  The ‘flow’ of the intance, though, and the way it uses spider-web for flooring and a drop-down pathway sorta floored me.

I’m actually looking forward to tanking most of these when I level my druid - even though tanking new instances was one of my biggest in game ‘fears’.  At the moment I’m mostly dpsing on my shammy as we have a lot of healers and only one spot per group.  I have had the chance to heal Violet Hold and Gundrak, amongst others, though and I’m looking forward to seeing more challenging heroic versions as a healer.

New Quest Types

The variation and design of the quests has been staggering.  Though a few are bugged, those that do work have just blown me out of the water - even the ‘kill 40 basilisks and bring me their non-existant brains‘ type of quests have actually been enjoyable as they’ve been sprinkled between other quests and many of them have a twist of some sort.

Every time I’ve come across a new ‘quest type’ I’ve squealed delightedly but tried not to actually say more than “omg cool” so as not to spoil the surprise for others.  I also have to admit being delighted watching people who don’t bother to read quest text doing things so horribly wrong, like the mage BBB mentions.

Reading through quest texts i something I’ve not found to be a significant drain on my time (indeed it can reduce the time you spend looking for the wrong place…) and, despite only having played for three and a half days since the expansion came out, I’m only a little off level 77.

Levelling

Now, I know a lot of people say ‘why rush’ but… I’m really not rushing that much, for me.  I’ve always been a fast leveller and I often read quest descriptions for other quests whilst I run to do the first one.  I kill everything I see and I’ve been joining many, many instance groups so the XP stacks up quickly!

I also know that, if I do miss anything first time around, I’ll see it when I level on my druid, rogue or hunter…

PewPew!

I’d occassionally specced elemental before and completed levelling to 70 as a hybrid elemental-resto spec but this time I wanted full elemental.  Thunderstorm is so incredibly fun and I really like to be able to blast throug hthings nearly as fast as my enhancement brethren (most still out-pewpew me unless I have a nice crit-proc string).

Gear

No, besides the +3 gloves of pwnage being awesome, it’s the +50 boots of oh-dear-lord-I-look-sexy!  Seriously! As Yashima and Leafy point out, the clown effect doesn’t happen quite so markedly in Wrath and the gear is way more spiffily textured.  In fact, despite loving how my Skyshatter gear looks, I’m almost ashamed at its colourful hues when the darker, subtler, sexier Wrath gear peers woefully at me.  In fact, I’ve actually gotten more color-coordinated and matching as I levelled, rather than less!

Anyways, gonna catch some rest now, enjoy levelling or chilling at 80 for those who’re already there!

I hope you’re all out there having fun enough for me, too!

/whining aside, I’ve had some very nice luck this week - a good friend and former flatmate of mine (who has incidentally started a blog so you should go there and bug her to get a move on!) offered to sell a spare copy of the Collector’s Edition for cost when she got an extra.

So, I has CE incoming.  The catch is I probably wont be able to play until Monday! Oh well, me an’ Frosty will miss all the weekend crowd and be ready to start zooming to 80 just as others are starting to wane a little /pose!

With this in mind, though, I’ve decided that I’ll likely not put up posts for the next few days whilst I’m off on holiday - there’s nothing ‘relevant’ in my mind at the moment and, even if it means failing on NaBloPoMo this month, I don’t want to rush a few posts which are totally irrelevant to what people are doing in-game at the moment.

So, enjoy Northrend and give a Tuskarr a hug from me and I’ll see you all next week!

/hug

Back in my livejournal days, at new year, I used to always write up a little post detailing the cooler things that happened in that year - as many people did.  I thought that, at the end of the Burning Crusade era, I’d also like to do a little post detailing the cool things I enjoyed throughout the game these past few years and what memories have stuck with me.

Unfortunately I have a terrible memory and I only started to record my wow experiences around 8 months ago or so and thus my memories will be biased towards those I have easy access to, as it were.  There are some things, though, which have stuck with me from way back then…

To the Sporeggar(EU) community, I thank you.  You showed me that an RP server could be lots of fun and not just all of the bad stuff you hear about Goldshire…  It was the first server I hit 70 on and where discovered my love for druids!  Particularly, I fondly remember Maun, Zaédin and Wicoth whom I spent a lot of time with and whom I did my very first forays into the raiding world.  Maun for teaching me ‘how 2 durid’, Zaédin for being fun to RP with and Wicoth for helping me get my epic flight form first time ’round as well as running instances with me at 3am in the morning!  I know they’ll never read this but if you are from that server and bump into any of them say hi from Mharai.

Whilst I’m thanking people I can only give my deepest thanks to Lightwalkers for taking me in, letting the nublet come along with them, teaching me how to not be a complete nublet and inviting me to become an admin.  I love Lightwalkers, the people in it and the atmosphere.  If you /dkplist me one more time, though, -50 dkp! /hug

I will always remember dying at least four times after a boss has been downed to DoT damage - the first time being in Auchenai Crypts after already being combat rezzed by another druid and being the last one standing.  I ran around in joy and then hit the floor.

Other memorable deaths include our first kill, I think, on Kaz’rogal.  He resisted another rogue’s distract, that rogue vanished but put me into combat and I was swiftly splattered and had to watch the whole fight from the other side of the camp.

I will never forget another first kill, my first ‘first kill’ in fact - A’lar on the first night I’d ever seen him.  I was terribly under-geared and under-skilled and didn’t dare run after the other rogues onto the platform as I didn’t think I could react in enough time to jump off (I didn’t 100%  understand exactly how his abilities worked back then).  I think I managed to cheekily sit right in the centre-middle of that screenshot. *grin*

I remember my first run in Slave Pens - it was Heroic back in the days when heroics were still a challenge for non-hardcore raiders (no easy pvp gear, no badge gear etc.).  I absolutely hated the place and that one run shaped how I felt towards Slave Pens for a looong time.  Even now I’m not a huge fan of it!  I hope to avoid the kind of terrible introduction to an instance which puts me off it for the future.  I think being more adventurous about instances will probably help in this regard - my first Burning Crusade instance was when I hit level 70.

I remember rolling a teensy, tiny shaman and a similarly pint-sized druid and only a few months later taking both through their first raids - motivation to level them coming from all sorts of places.

The Burning Crusade brought changes which meant I could get one thing which I’d hankered after for quite some time - a ’saber mount!

[The Helm of the Claw] or ‘that bloody hat!’ has been a headpiece which has plagued me throughout TBC - from my druid, to my rogue, to my second druid.  I will never, it seems, be completely rid of that hat until Northrend!

Shamans were a much-scrutinised and visible part of this expansion and I have some awesome memories concerning shamans doing insances in multiples and even one where we had a shaman tank!

When Quel’Danas was launched, myself and a few other guildies logged onto vent together and spent most of the afternoon running the instance over, wiping repeatedly on Delrissa and having a blast.

Some ‘quickfire’ memories.

• Tanking a whole bunch of things for the first time - something I never thought I’d get to do!
• Flight Form.  Instant Cast.  ‘Nuff Said.
• Kodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodo! *grin*
• Seeing Illidan for the first time…

I remember starting a blog and having this awesome commenter who was asking my opinion about her blog.  I loved that feeling of community and friendship which I got outside of the game but within the community.

/hug

The pre-wrath events continue…

For a slightly shinier version download from here.

Stormwind Harbor Invasion

Thrall duelling Garrosh Hellscream

The Orgrimmar Invasion

Are you excited yet?

I am… *grin*

I had another post started for today but I decided to change it because yesterday an event happened which I wanted to write about - both in form and in concept.  We had a guild meeting.  Now, Lightwalkers has had guild meetings in the past as have many guilds but I’ve ever been part of one, never gotten to see what such an event would be like and I walked away today with the feeling that I had learned a very profound lesson.

We had decided to have the guild meeting to outline our plans for Wrath and to talk through how we, as a guild lead, wanted to steer the guild over the course of the next expansion.   We have some changes happening to dkp, signups and guild philosophy to discuss as well as to put into action the new ranks system we’d started.

I must admit - I did not expect such a large turn out.  The number of people at this event apparently trumped the number at the last.  We met up in Winterspring and had to change venues from the Hot Spring near Donova Snowden to one ‘across the road’ as there wasn’t enough space. I think we ended up with around 47 or 48 people - an old-school raid with a few to spare!

Putting it at the hot springs was a good idea too - whilst people waited they got naked (or as naked as WoW allows) and had fun splashing around, or fished, or generally joked around.

When the meeting ’started’ officially we all sat around Stalwart who was leading the proceedings.  There’s something so different about sitting ‘physically’ in front of someone which focuses people and really brings a sense of community.

The other big bonus is that we could sit and talk about issues which were bugging people in a less contentious situation.  We were all chilled and relaxed and the admin team could explain our reasoning a lot better over voice-chat than if we had just made forum posts and we could also answer individual worries and queries.

All-in-all I think the whole thing was a rather positive experience and I’d reccomend it to any guild who is perhaps having trouble getting people together or just feel that they want some activity to bring the guild together.

<3

Sephrenia’s post is something everyone should understand by now.  Really.  Nothing irks me more than an “omg heal me!” being shouted over teamspeak or party-chat by dps and especially when they’re not only asking for their own healing, but for someone else.

Shouting “heal the tank!!!!” when the healers are, most probably, doing the damndest to keep said tank alive is not only annoying, it can be counter productive, too.  For example, if a number of healers is assigned to each tank and someone shouts to ‘heal x!’ some healers, we shall say the ones less ’sure’ of themselves, will switch their healing target - causing another tank to die.  This can also when a dps character calls out for healing and too many healers actually listen to them.

Now, I know a lot of people would say ‘but just ignore them, do what your assignment is’ and I’d agree to some extent but also point out the fact that quite often, in Burning Crusade, there are fights which require you to redirect your efforts mid-encounter.  People are used to being reactive to damage and, especially raid healers, are equipped to switch targets quickly or cover said targets with ’splash healing’.  When someone calls out for healing not only may the tanks lose healing but those reactive healers may change their primary focus and end up wasting healing time as four large heals land at the same time on one dps char who stood in the fire too long.

When is it ok?

Some would say that its never ok to call for additional healing but I think there are circumstances where it is valid.  Some of our tanks have macros which call out when they have used their defensive capabilities - saying them in teamspeak is a little quicker “coming off shield wall in 5…4…” etc.  Not directly calling for healing, perhaps, but close enough in directing it.

However, in general, asking directly for healing is not really going to get your healers to heal you more.  Like Sephrenia says - it’s very tempting for a healer to let said players die on trash or somesuch so they stop messing around.  Not the most mature way of handling things, perhaps, but effective in calming your temper.

I don’t need reminding that you need healing - it’s something that I am acutely aware of. It’s all I watch on my screen - those little grid boxes of dwindling health. I never see much else.

I reiterate her point here - your job is to dps or tank, keep an eye on your own rotations, your own dps and your own threat.  Stop telling the healers to heal, it’s what we do and it’s all we’re concentrating on besides not stepping in the fire.  If you’re telling us to do our job I doubt you’re doing your own effectively…

Totems

The same thing goes for telling shamans which totems to put down.  You can mention to us why an encounter might favour another totem in a way we might not have considered as the spec we are but unless you are the raid leader - and sometime even if you are! - you should think about the fact that totems are part of the shaman class and, as such, we also usually understand how and when certain ones should be used.

No Sunday Screenies today (I’m sure you’re all crying at the loss) - I’ve not gotten any particularly good new screenies except ones I’ve taken for tommorrow’s post!

As prompted by BRK, if late as usual, I went digging around in my screenshots directory.  I managed to drag out the few screenshots of myself and Khierra when we first started playing together on Eonar (EU).

Running around Darkshore in June 2006 bemoaning the long runs and, of course, the ever-present murlocs!

Fim has challenged us and I shall take up that challenge! /pose

If you see a post like Fim’s and immediately think “thank goodness, another freebie post for nablopomo!” you just might be a WoW Blogger…

*cough* Cheap for today’s post but I consider my work to have been getting Khi to post.  He’s a good writer and I’d love it if he wrote a little bit more on the blog, so hop to the post before this and give him your feedback!

I’m working on a small series of roleplay-style posts for the few days where I’m going to be away.  I was writing one for Dryn just before I went to sleep last night and actually ended up dreaming about it so…

If you end up dreaming about the characters rp plots you’re concocting you just might be a WoW Blogger!

/hug