Why I've been so quiet for two months

Mostly because I'm not 80 yet and there's not much to report on. Although why Dani's not discussing her long-standing 80ship and the raids she's been doing and her move to another guild and spec (see? lots of interesting stuff!) is beyond me. Maybe she hates you, WoW blog. Probably it.

Anyway, I don't hate you, I'm just boring and spinning my wheels at 78. "But, Melissa," I hear you ask, "didn't you level to 70 in, like, two months this summer? What gives?" I did indeed, and really enjoyed most of it, too. I like leveling, I find the constant progress meter comforting and I kine of like playing solo a lot.

And yet, still not 80.

I think there's been a number of factors, which I will present in a numbered list below, because that's the way I roll:

1. When Wrath was released, I was in the middle of finals stuff and had very little time to play, so I got a late start.
2. Over Christmas, I fully intended to catch up, but I got seriously distracted by the epic fantasy novel the boyfriend and I are writing. For real, I wrote like 30 pages in 4 days and another 20 or so pages of world creation-y type stuff. Then I taught myself to draw (which is a new one for me) and started illustrating it while waiting for the boyfriend to catch up. The closer we get to the end of the first book, the less likely it is that I'll be able to stop mulling over it more or less constantly.
3. I may be burned out because I leveled all summer and then didn't actually get to see most of the Burning Crusade raid content. It's like levellevellevellevelraidlevellevellevel. Even people who like leveling can grow to hate that.
4. I....kind of hate Northrend. I find it boring, and miss the psychadelic weirdness of Outlands. I mean, honestly, it's just like looking out te window except that the landscape has dragons in it. So that makes it even harder to motivate myself to level.
5. There's the question of what to do about the guild stuff, about which I am still very much uundecided. I am not good at the social side of the game. Maybe I shouldn't play MMOs?

So, there you have it. I've basically lost my momentum and there's a bunch of things in the way of picking it back up. And the way I tend to work is that I flit from being intensly, singularly focused on something until I start to get stumper or bored and then get distracted (then similarly absorbed) by something else. I'm wondering if this is happening with Warcraft, and if I'm well on my way to being the most casual sort of casual players. Or maybe not. Maybe i'm just sick of playing alliance - I have, over the last couple of days, seriously considered scrapping my 78 priest and leveling a troll instead. But that seems like a waste.

If and when I make any progress on these fronts, I guess it'll count as news and I'll report it here.

What's a Baron's Mount, Mommy?

There has been a bit of an internal debate around here between myself and Keridwen. What is this debate on, you may ask? How important a Baron's Mount really is.

Let me give you a little background... The Baron's mount drops in Stratholme from the last boss. Prior to this last patch where all hell broke lose in so many ways(more on that another day), it had a drop rate that was akin to winning the lottery. Like .002 or 1 out of 5000. However, Blizzard, feeling sorry for the hundreds of thousands of utter nerds who spend their nights running through Strat(seriously, look at the thotbot article... people ran it like 2k+ times) upped the drop rate to 1/100. What does this mean? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry who had dreams of getting the mount, whether or not they had been farming it for years, had a shot.

And so off to Strat they all went.

I spent a night or so in Strat, of course. I thought it would be immensely funny if I could walk out of there with the first mount in my guild. Think about it-- new chick(relatively) gets the Baron's Mount before all the clamoring men who thought they deserved it more. Pure gold. Truly. However, my desire to annoy the members of Predatory Instinct was not high enough to actually cause me to farm the mount on a regular basis.

Cut to Halloween Eve. Keri sneaks out of bed in the middle of the night to sit on Sinead's computer and do what? Farm the Baron Mount. Now, as much as he'll argue that the room was too hot to sleep, he just wasn't tired, etc etc, he didn't once try to fix THOSE problems. Anyway, whining aside, what should happen at 8am? He gets a Baron's Mount!

Now here is where the debate begins. Would you, kind reader, wake up your dearest blog author to tell her about the mount? Bleary eyed, sans glasses, stumbling? Because that's exactly what Keri did. No shit.

But that's not the end of it... He has now taken to linking the mount in guild chat like... three or four times a day. While there is nothing wrong in being proud of your extremely rare drop mount(AWESOME), is it necessary to rub it in the face of all those trying to get it? I will let you decide, dear reader.

However, in all honesty, the mount is pretty damn cool looking. It's an undead skeletal horse. As Keri has said now, "It was like an undead stork brought it just for me!"

So with that, my friends, I wish you a Happy Halloween. Next time by the lazy author, I'm going to write a bit on All Hallows Eve in Azeroth(and Outlands)!

Ps. Keri, the Headless Horseman mount is cooler. <3

Hear that?

It's the grumbling of may tired workers here at WoW Blog City.

Somebody who shall remain nameless COUGHrhymeswithcannyCOUGH better boost morale around here unless she wants another strike on her hands.

Just saying.

Noorunnisa (Blood Elf Rogue): The Alt Equivalent of Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club

The Name:
One could say that naming this character was the only well-researched competent thing I've managed to do on this alt. This one's another historical reference. Yay, edutainment! Anyway, rogues are like spies, what with their being all sneaky and crafty and shit, right? So, I thought I should name her after a famous lady spy. Mata Hari was taken, so I named her after Noor-un-nisa, a British spy, who was (paradoxically enough) also a prominent pacifist.

Why I keep playing this alt:
Honestly? I keep playing this one because I completely suck at it. I am really terrible at playing rogues, apparently. I tend to forget to go into stealth until it's too late (I blame fade), I am so used to avoiding melee combat that I tend to get just close enough to a mob to pull it but not quite close enough that I can actually hit it with things, and I totally panic when my health starts dropping because I don't have the comfort and safety of a healing spell to fall back on.

Ok, that sounds awful, right? Like, who would really stick with a class that is so clearly wrong for them? I would. Noor provides a really nice break from the healbots - she's novel and there are no consequences for sucking. With my other alts, I'm playing classes i'm somewhat familiar with, in ways that fit my style well (like ranged combat or mana-based spells), which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I like it and I'm good at it. On the other hand, this means I get really frustrated whenever I can't figure something out, since I should be able to fairly easily, and I also always feel like I'm on call to heal things. And sometimes I just want to bash the living daylights out of giant spiders or pig dudes or what have you. It's also nice to just totally suck at something and have that be completely fine. It's restorative. Try it, you'll see.

Other semi-relevant shit:
About the Breakfast Club reference: Ally Sheedy in that movie is totally the weird/possibly 'special' one. I already covered the retarded aspects of this alt, and I think it's clear that she belongs in special ed classes whenever possible.

Now for the bizarre part. I don't know if you've picked this up, but Noor is a blood elf rogue. Which means she is not one of my preferred races and she can't heal a damn thing. She is very much the odd one out.

PS - Dani, the workers are starting to grumble again...

OMGBARBERSHOPS

Yeah, so, the thing I was most looking forward to in the truly massive Echoes of Doom patch? Barbershops. Hand down. Check this out: I have yet to spend any talent points on my priest, but I have already given some makeovers. So not even kidding about that.

Sinead before:


Sinead after:

Wholahay before:


Wholahay after:

I think Melisende and Matesha are staying as is for the moment, as they have undeniably awesome 'dos already. Or maybe I just don't play them as much and thus aren't yet bored.

Matesha (Night Elf Druid): Resident Pimp, Yo

The Name:
'Matesha' is Arabic for tomato. Tomatoes are awesome! Plus it sounds cool. That's really it.

Why I keep playing this alt:
The biggest reason (and I'm totally becoming a broken record here) is the healing. And this one's shaping up to be a pretty good healbot, I must say. Druids seem to get a wider sampling of healing spells a bit earlier than shaman or paladins do, which is nice, and they're of the instant cast HoT variety to boot. While I'm playing him with a feral build, I think I've been doing more healing on him than on Wholahay or Melisende (although Wholahay did heal the shit out of some Gnomer and Ulda runs back on Mok).

The other thing that keeps me coming back to his tomato-ness? Druid forms - gotta catch 'em all! Yeah, just got cat form, woot. But the whole "hey! at this level I get to shapeshift into something else!" thing is pretty addictive. Can't way to respec for tree.

One night only! Private bear form dance party in the Wetlands, featuring your very own blogmistresses.

Other semi-relevant shit:
So you may have noticed that Matesha's a dude. I hear around the interwebs that a chick playing a dude, and not the other way around, is a bit odd. Here's the deal: I can't stand playing night elf chicks. Their little girl run, terrible selection of haircuts (which is only marginally better with the possibility of barbershops), and usually clashing skin and hair colors drive me crazy. But you can't make a draenei druid, right?

I have to say though, it wasn't hard settling for a night elf dude. The facial hair is awesome, all waxed mustache style, and the ear bouncing is a nice touch. Besides, he's more fun to pimp out in a ridiculous purple leather outfit than a chick would've have been. Now I only need to get him that purple pimp hat from Dustwallow to complete his outfit and he can whip these Smolderthorn bitches in line.

Matesha and his almost-twin Sveren dance in celebration upon acquiring the complete Embrace of the Viper set

Melisende (Draenei Paladin): Rank and File Healbot in Training

The Name:
This name is historical, referencing the queen of Jerusalem during the Crusades. Clever, right? I felt it fitting, what with her being a paladin, off fighting for the Light and what have you. Her story is actually pretty interesting - she was joint ruler, but denied power, beloved by the church, and embroiled in an adulterous affair.

Why I keep playing this alt:
I'm not going to lie, I play this one basically for a full stable of alliance healers. So far, I'm not finding paladins to be all that compelling in terms of gameplay - but as you'll hear later, I'm not the quickest when it comes to melee combat, either.

I think I'll be playing her more often in the coming weeks. First, I'm finally getting cool spells like Consecration and now have more than one healing spell (not counting Gift of the Naaru). So that's exciting. I also forced Jon (the boyfriend, player of Sveren) to run me all over the damn place to get all the pieces to Verigan's fist. Consecrating with that thing swinging around will be even more fun.

Woot! Go giant mace, go!

Second, there are big changes in the works for paladins. So, since the playstyles is not terribly intuitive for me anyway, I've been backing off playing this character since I heard things were being shaken up in the Wrath beta. Better to start fresh than get comfortable with things right as they were about to change, I thought. As soon as the looming Wrath patch drops, I'll be all over this paladin, because learning is exciting to dorks.

Other semi-relevant shit:
Ok, first, I think she bears a striking resemblance to Clara Bow. Think Clara Bow sporting Sally Bowles' haircut. For some reason I think this is awesome.

The other thing I should mention is that I really should've have done more research on paladins before I rolled on. Not really the mechanics, just the leveling process. I didn't realize you had to do a quest at 12 to get the rez spell. Now that wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't decided to forsake Bloodmyst for Westfall to level through the teens.

There I was, running around at 18, bemoaning the fact that I still couldn't rez people as I went to the human trainer in Stormwind. And saw he had a grayed-out exclamation point over his head. So I checked wowwiki, and lo and behold, paladins have a quest for it at 12 that can only be picked up from a trainer of the same race. So, yeah. Got that kind of stupidly late.