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.