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.

I have a hunter and I beat Keri in a slap fight.

At which I am craptacular.

Though, it does make me understand the allure of twinking.  Every time I'm at the AH I check for better gear than the gear I have and then like a stupid celebrity or rich person I spend way too much money on something that'll be outgrown within the week.

Brilliance.

Though, it than makes leveling way more difficult.  Why?  Because all I want to do is get to the level where I can use my fancy shamncy bow.  Yeah, I got one.  Also?  Trying to do anything without a mount is awful.

Oh!  Today me and Keri's player had a real life slapfight.  Sadly?  No one videoed it.  So unless someone can prove otherwise?  I won.  For reals.  

I'm out of anything interesting or useful.  But I will say that Sveren or however it's spelt(Cpt. Smash), is the only person who is more flightly than I am while playing WoW.

More when my brain works more, I shall give you more insight.

Wholahay (Draenei Shaman): The Heir Apparent Returns

The Name:
In Cycle 8 of America's Next Top Model, Crazy Tyra demanded that the skinny bitches (and a less skinny but not actually plus size bitch) give themselves "model-y nicknames." One absolutely priceless wannabe model decided to go with Wholahay. Then Tyra rejected that and declared she would be called Brown because "that's what color her skin is." You seriously cannot make this shit up. Wholahay Brown has kind of a nice ring to it, though. Like a blaxploitation heroine who's on a mission to cut some bitches down.

Why I keep playing this alt:
To abandon Wholahay would be sacriligeous. She was the very first character I created! In many ways, she's like the Eve scientists have speculated about through the tracing of mitochondrial DNA - much of what I know and how I play other characters can be traced back to her.

But aside from that, I really like shamans. I had no idea at all what I was getting into when I decided to make one and picked it literally because using elemental powers sounded cool and I could heal myself without being a wussy priests ("ewwww," I thought to myself, "who would want to play a priest? SO LAME!" We all know how that turned out.). The totems were unexpected and I'll admit it took me a long while to figure out how to use them.

She's also the only alt I have that has a mount, which puts her in the best position to be the next character at 70 (and then at 80). I transferred her over from Mok'Nathal as soon as I heard that Blizzard had relaxed the rules, set her up with some netherweave bags, and then promptly started playing her regularly again.

Other semi-relevant shit:
Because she's been my guinea pig, Wholahay's been through a lot of changes. When I started her on Smolderthorn, I was dead set on speccing elemental, but grudgingly respecced enhancement when a certain someone told me to (with little in the way of explanation or rationale, I might add).

Then I got repeatedly ganked, said fuck it, and plunked down the $25 to move her to a PVE realm, where I promptly specced back into elemental. But not for long, because soon after I started running dungeons with friends and ended up discovering that I gravitated and had a sort of raw knack at healing. So I respecced again as an elemental/restoration hybrid.

After moving back to Smolderthorn, I bit the bullet and went enhancement to level faster, fully prepared to hate it. But I don't. Stormstrike + windfury + dual wield is just ridiculously satisfying to play with. I feel godly and have been known to mock and laugh maniacally at the poor creatures Wholahay wails on out loud. I think I'll have the same relationship to enhancement with Wholahay as I do shadow for Sinead: tons of fun while it lasts, but given the chance, I'd still rather be healing.

see? see all the exploding goodness?

Last thing - there's blood on Wholahay's blue hands (cue ominous music). When she returned to her home server, as it were, I deleted the shaman leg of the army o' healbots. I didn't feel compelled to level two shamans and gave her the axe. Who knows? Maybe she insulted Wholahay and found out the hard way that Wholahay Brown is nobody's fool.

Goodbye to training wheels

The biggest shake-up on the alt front recently was Blizzard's move to make PVE-PVP transfers possible. I've talked before about how I started on Dani's PVP realm and promptly transferred off because I was not a big fan of getting ganked and started a sprawling network of alts (with no real main) on Mok'Nathal.

Eventually, I stabilized at four characters: a draenei shaman and draenei hunter and a troll priest and troll hunter. I was perfectly content to level them simultaneously in a slow and steady fashion until I created and promptly became obsessed with Sinead.

When I made Sinead, my friend Tamar who also had characters on Mok'Nathal asked me if I was going to stop playing over there and forsake those characters. At the time, I thought this was ridiculous. I mean, I had put a lot of time and effort into those characters! I made my wallpaper of them imitating the cover of Let It Be (shut up, stop laughing)!



But she ended up being right. Part of it was that I was suddenly part of this whole network that wasn't just me and two or three of my friends, and for some reason I felt weirdly obligated to stick around even when I didn't feel like playing my priest. Part of it was that as Sinead got closer and closer to 70, she was better able to support my alt habit.

When it comes down to it, though, I think that on Smolderthorn I felt like I finally got the game, and didn't need to idly fiddle around as much. Mok'Nathal had served as a sort of sandbox for me to safely explore WoW in, in terms of learning the game, discovering the world, and figuring which classes (and specs) I liked and which I didn't.

By the time they opened up PVE --> PVP transfers, I had only played the shaman a handful of times and basically hadn't touched any of the other characters. So I sent the shaman over to Smolderthorn and said a private, silent goodbye to the other characters fairly certain that I wouldn't be playing them again in the forseeable future.

Wholahay and Sveren (who also transferred over) enjoy a quiet moment in Uldaman before the big move

You won't be hearing much about Madgebobbins, Squiddles, or Tammyfae around here - not that you heard much before either - but the stability and easy, comfortable entry into the game they provided was appreciated while it lasted. In the meantime, I'm totally not changing my wallpaper.

Brewfest Kodo!

Woot.

Project Level Alts: A Primer

As mentioned before, I love me some alts. Perhaps a little too much. A big part of why Dani leveled her rogue to 70 several months before I did was because I was too busy spreading myself between a bunch of characters. This is pretty typical of me in real life too - my advisers pick on me a lot for having too many interests.

While I was leveling Sinead, there was some withdrawal that happened, for sure. There were some dark times where I was half-convinced that by the time I got her to 70 I'd be so sick of playing a damn priest that I'd never actually raid with her. It was about that time that I started the army o' healbots.

But I'm getting distracted again (imagine that). What I really wanted to talk about was the goals of the project:

1. I want a choice of raiding healers. Part of the reason that I'm so addicted to warcraft is because the theorycrafting side of it taps into the same part of me as research and stats. Uncovering the logic behind class mechanics is thrilling for me the way getting badass gear is for other people. So, I've been reading up on it and I'm really intrigued with the differences between healing classes and want to fiddle around with them. But really, there's only so much insight you can get by running around a level 12 druid in Westfall. To really get it, I have to level these puppies up.
2. I want a max level horde character, which will probably also be a healer. I'll tell you this, it's the great tragedy of my WoW life that everyone I play with likes Alliance more than Horde, because I am such a hordie. Horde is awesome! And so much less bland and retread-ish than Alliance (though of course personal opinions vary). I mean, really, none of the Alliance races except for Draenei are nearly as cool looking as most of the Horde races. And, even though it shouldn't, that totally matters to me.

So that's the motivation and grand design behind Project Level Alts. In the next couple weeks or so, I'll post profiles of my alts and explain where they fit into my brilliant scheme. And then I'll use them to TAKE OVER THE WORLD! BWAHAHAHAHA!

Fix Sinead's Shit Campaign a rousing success!

Last night, with the help of Keridwen (I guess that's what we're calling you here) who totally figured out a better way to level enchanting and ferried me over to farm it AND then did most of the killing for it AND totally hooked me up with some much needed shards, I maxed out enchanting. Thank you for that, buddy, because I was totally not ever going to get around to it on my own.

Then, we went to normal shadow labyrinths and killed a single mob, giving me the rep I needed to pick up my last heroic key. Sinead's shit is finally totally in order (with the exception of aldor rep)! Woot!

Also, Dani helped too. Cause she's a team player. And I need many handouts.

Keridwen is awesome.

Just how awesome?  

He has the same amount of 70s as Sarah Palin does children.  

He still has blind powder.  

He has full Dragonstalker, all 8 of 7 pieces.  

His rogue will mutilate your ass.  Yes, I said mutilate.  Yes, I meant it.

Yes, he heals better than you.  Yes, he's discipline.

All his toons are chicks.  What?  You like staring at men's asses?  Tsk.

If you need more proof, then feel free to contact me.

I have bad timing.

Story of my life, really, so it's not a big shock that it should apply to Warcraft, too. Just like everybody else, I'm stuck in this weird purgatory waiting for the expansion to come out. Some people go to other games, some people stop gaming altogether for awhile, and I....am treading water.

Mostly, I'm kicking myself. I spent my entire summer leveling a character to 70 on a PVP realm I had left once before, lured by the promise of superfancy raiding. And I got to do it! And it was so unbelievably awesome (except the trash waves in Hyjal that are too much for my computer to handle. You know, the ones where I turn the camera up to the sky and just hear cool shit happening. Fun.)! I got thrown into it headlong and made cheat sheet and spreadsheets and tried to learn how to heal on the fly. All very exciting and heady stuff.

And then, one day, it all just kind of dried up. Overnight. Like a particularly vicious drought had hit and I hadn't read the forecast. Pretty much from the start of it, I was rather resigned about the whole thing. Truth be told, the End of Raiding As We Know It couldn't have happened at a better time - the semester was starting up and I had a lot of researchy and teachy type shit to pull together.

And as much as I love raiding (and I really, really do) I kind of needed the break to get Sinead's shit together, too. She was an idiot savant, frankly - enchanting only half leveled up and rep so messed up that she could only do a handful of heroic dungeons. Yeah. Not pretty.

So I had to let the dream of getting to Sunwell go. I had plenty on my plate, and while my guild was in a turbulent and unstable state, the interwebs suggested that most guilds were getting hit pretty hard. No real point in trying to find a new guild (which as Dani pointed out (woot! return to blogging!) take some time and effort) when I'd probably only be able to raid for a month or so before having to level to 80.

I've been biding my time trying to fix Sinead so she's able to shatter voids and get into whatever heroics people are running and leveling alts. The Fix Sinead's Shit campaign has been chugging along with some success - only the Lower City key remains to be gotten, I think, and she's 4 points away from max enchanting. The Level Alts campaign has actually been full of twists and turns. So, stay tuned for that.

But yeah. Kicking myself and asking two questions: why didn't I level to 70 sooner? Or just wait till after the expansion?

Dani's return is a gift to us all!

I, somewhat unsurprisingly, was overjoyed to find out that Dani had caved in to my demands and began posting again. KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON, DANI! YOU HAVE SO MUCH TO SHARE WITH US ALL!!

A side benefit of this is that I can start posting again, too. And I have ideas, you better believe it! Expect informative, witty, entertaining posts ¹ in the near future. If you're bored, try checking out Jarthen in the meantime. He's full of gay subtext and overly convoluted narration.
__________________________________________________________________
¹Well, witty and entertaining and informative to me. These results may not be typical.

The Guild

Two posts so close together?  Well, I know it's such a shock, but I had something to say that I just thought of.

A treatise on the Guild.

Now this may be a little funny, it may not be funny at all, but in all honesty, I think it is necessary.  

What is the guild?  I have to admit that I wasn't really sure about this until recently.  I thought it was just a place where people organized raiding and 10 mans, where people got together to help level alts and just have somewhere to bullshit while they were messing around on WoW.  

I was really wrong.

I found myself a bit bored at night.  I had finally gotten down the mechanics of raiding and now my guild wasn't raiding anymore.  That mixed with a few other things, like the fact I never apped at my guild, but was invited in because I knew people there, made me think it was time to have my first guild hunting experience.  I went to ranking websites, and researched what guilds were doing what raids.  I looked around to see who was as geared as I was, and who was much more geared.  I looked to see what enchants people had and which I needed.  I started farming mats for things, and farming rep so I could get my best shoulder and helm enchants.  I read applications that were accepted and those that were denied before I even thought of applying for a guild.

What did I learn?

1) Applying for a guild is like applying for a job.  Sure, the research I needed to do took me a couple of hours on the internet, and a job hunt takes months and months, but the basics are the same.  I really had to know my stuff to make sure I was going to get in.

2) Getting into a guild is an exciting and new experience.  People want to know who you are, they are all suspicious of your skill and pleasantly surprised when you suck less than they expect.  Most want to help because you could be a new friend, also they like that you are showing up to raids while the person you are most likely replacing isn't around.  And if you're a girl, you're almost always a pleasent surprise on ventrillo, the talking program.

What else did I learn?

Leaving my guild was more like leaving a family than it was getting a new job.  Not only did i miss the people I left, I missed the sense of belonging I had.  Raiding was fun, but these were other people, not my people.  I didn't have anyone to share my excitement with, or my disappointment.  There was no one to complain to if I had to, and no one to commiserate if I lost a roll or died early in a fight.  The new fights were fun, but it was like leaving for college times a million.

I guess what I really learned was that my guild was like my family.  I really loved the people there, and their banter, and how well we all knew each other.  It wasn't just that they helped me to make me be an asset to the raid, but they helped me because they liked me.  And I found that I didn't just like them, I relied on their being there.

Not having guild chat was a sad shock.  not having vent was also less fun.  Even without raiding, being in my old guild was more rewarding and enjoyable than this new exciting guild full of wonderful people that just weren't my people.

And while I may have hurt feelings, and will always be a little suspect to the people in my guild, I came back.  It was as much like the prodigal son as I could think anything.  There were people there that held my hand and led me to the place I was out, and honestly, I would still be squeeling at boars if not for them.

I think I miss it more than I wanted to leave.  The more people that leave to raid, the more I miss the togetherness of it.  And I think that's what distinguishes WoW from any other game.  You're in it with someone else.  A lot of someone else's.  You have to look out for them the way they look out for you.  And sometimes you're good at that, and sometimes you're not.

Of course there is bickering, there is always bickering, but people seem to come together at the end.  And I will always belong to that group of people, even if they scatter to the wind.  Change is a hard thing to grasp, and some of you may be saying that by going back to what was comfortable, what I loved, I fought a change that could have helped me throughout the expansion and forever.  But when I really think about why I play the game, it isn't to be the best at it.  I never will be.  It's to be with people I like and work together and have fun.

I hope I am still doing that.  I think I am.

So thank you, Predatory Instinct, for being there, and taking me back.  And thank you(you know who you are), people who carried me through 70 levels and a whole lot more.  I'm sorry that this is more serious than the rest of our posts, and I promise to go back to my usual silly self.

Tomorrow.

The Strike is Over, and it's a Birthday!

So, I don't have much fun and exciting news to report as now that we're coming up on the expansion slowly but surely the servers are thinning out. There is an idea that anything you do now will be obsolete in a few months, and so the population is scarce. However! This is the ideal time to... level alts!

Now I am not an altaholic like our lovely birthday girl(more on that later), but I do have a small army of very low level alts as I try to find the fit for my soul. I think I found something that can at least be a close second in my heart to my happy rogue. I'm playing a hunter. It's easy, which is a good incentive. Also, I don't die. Now that is rare for me, so oo and aah. And? I get a nifty pet. A fun and nifty pet. I am pleased.

So, as I restart my slow unhappy grind to 70, just so I can grind back to 80, I get to rediscover all the joys of leveling I forgot the first time. Hurrah. Really, it's exactly like the first time. With a few differences, like I know how little I know.

One thing I meant to blog about before and did not was my experiences playing WoW at the hospital. I was in for a simple gallbladder booboo and had internet. It was long and boring days, 6 o them to be exact, so I thought I would play me some WoW. At first I just did it when I was sure no one would notice, but by day 3, the nurses saw that I was playing a video game.

It was amazing.

THere were multiple nurses that played! And one in particular was talking to me all about how she played a rogue too, and what server she was on and the gear she was going for. Of course, I was secretly very pleased that she had not yet been in a clear Kara, and I had been to Hyjal, but I didn't express this secret joy. I was really only happy because for once in my life i could talk about a video game with another girl and we weren't just talkng about how cute Kirby was. Well, other than Sinead's lovely player. But she never ceases to surprise me. Or be smarter than me. In everything.

Speaking of her, did you hear it was her birthday? It is. Today is the day she becomes as ancient as I. And for a few months we can share our woe at the same age. Then I get older. So there is much happiness and love to be said to her. I hope she has a good one!

That's all for now, but there's a better post coming.

Breaking News!

Last night during a fishing session in Stormwind (which took way longer than it should have, by the way), Dani made a promise to post "very soon." This bodes well. Stay tuned.

Still on strike

I have things to tell you, but I will wait until Dani gets her ass in gear and posts.