End of February already

This is going to be a hodge-podge since it's been awhile...

I keep telling myself I'll post here more often, but then a month passes (albeit a short one) and I realize that I've failed again. I'm not sure why it's so hard to keep things up: I guess part of it is I feel like I don't have anything authoritative to say on WoW, since I've been playing for only about a year. So despite the fact that I've treated WoW like my other hobbies, meaning they become obsessions that I must learn EVERYTHING about, the game is so big that I still feel like I've just barely scratched the surface of things. So, I feel like it's probably best to leave the advice-giving and pontificating and guide-making to the since-Vanilla players, and keep my comments on my personal impressions of the game. However, I have formed what I feel are some informed opinions on upcoming changes with Mists of Pandaria, and I plan to post on that in the next couple of days.

Back to in-game, I got Wapsipinicon through the Cata content and dinged 85 a couple of weeks ago. Since then, she's been justice point farming for gear, as part of her long-term dream to do LFR. Cata normal dungeons have been a blast so far, but heroics have been a bit of a pain. My computer is old and has an integrated video card, so the game graphics are turned down, and combined with my slow reflexes, it's hard to dance around a moving boss and stay out of the bad. I do my best to stay alive and beat the hell out of everything, but it has been a challenge at times (please don't mention Zul-Gurub...)

Aside from that, Wapsi has been doing Molten Front and Tol Barad dailies and a little bit of PVP here and there, the latter mainly for mounts. Right now I'm kind of excited about mounts:

Honor points raptor

Armored bear from Mei Francis

Winged Guardian from Blizzard Store, I know, I know. It's purty though!!

I'm going for the Albino Drake from the "Leading the Cavalry" 50 mount achievement and I want to get as many "easy" mounts as possible in order to avoid camping for rares and rep grinds as much as possible.

Back to PVP, I'm not the biggest fan, but I figure I can't lose doing the random battleground each day for honor and conquest points, which I can turn in for mounts and cool looking gear for transmogging. However, I'm starting to feel a little guilty about abandoning my poor goblin rogue Goetia, and having seen how rogues can pwn in PVP, I'm thinking I might make her all about the battlegrounds and get her geared up that way. She's also the farthest along in potential Explorer and Loremaster achievements, so I could work on those in addition to archaeology while queueing for battlegrounds.

But Wapsi is still my main, and in addition to her battlegrounds and dungeons and dailies she is working more or less on the Chef achievement, the exalted Cenarion Expedition mount, and making money through mining so she can buy all of the guild heirlooms for alts.

All of these activities, however, have been solo (except for PUGs, which are a bit like one-nighters), and I have been craving more social interaction in game. Wapsi and Goetia both belong to guilds, but were recruited at random in Org so I don't know anything about my guildmates. Since none of my RL friends play WoW, I have decided to roll a toon on an RP server in hopes of meeting like-minded people in-game. So meet Milyra, of Wyrmrest Accord:

I decided to go Alliance with this toon since I had been kind of craving playing a night elf. Milyra is a hunter (pet not shown) who has fled Starbreeze Village in Teldrassil after it was decimated by Furbolgs. Her family and friends are gone, including her druid best friend who gifted her a Cenarion Hatchling right before her death. She's just entered Darnassus and is very much a country girl in the big city for the first time...wait until she gets to Stormwind City! For now, she's thrown her lot in with her night elf kin as they fight the corruption that has invaded their homeland.

I think that's it for now! More soon, I promise!

Been busy

Both at work and in WoW, that is. Wapsipinicon is meandering her way through the Cataclysm zones. I hadn't done Vashj'ir before so Wapsi spent some time there as well as in Hyjal. What a beautiful zone, as an invertebrate biologist IRL I really enjoyed all of the colorful sea life. After doing about half of each of these entry zones, Wapsi did a tiny bit in Deepholm and several random dungeons and now she is level 84! They grow up so fast!

I've also been spending time on fishing and cooking dailies as I have dreams of achieving both the fishing and cooking metas on Wapsi. She's cleared Org and Thunder Bluff (and made exalted with both in the process), and is now working on Undercity and Dalaran. Speaking of achievements, she got the Lunar Festival "Elder" title and festival lantern and decided to show them off after drinking some mysterious potion she found in the sewers of Dalaran...

Finally, Wapsi has been searching the auction house for cheap greens for transmogging. After putting together this outfit, she succumbed to a fit of vanity and paraded around Orgrimmar Saturday night with all of the other l33ts...

On the RL front, I'm wrapping up a short paper on CNS miniaturization that I will be VERY happy to have off my back, as I can finally start my tsetse fly study once it's done!

Wapsi hits level 50

Wow, that was fast. Two heirlooms for 15% xp increase plus a smattering of dungeons and Wapsi is only 10 levels away from her flying mount (thankfully!). Sunday night LFD put Wapsi in Dire Maul and Scholomance once again, unfortunately didn't get too many good drops but she's picking up a few nice things leveling in Winterspring. And of course, she bought herself a Winterspring Cub too!

Finished up the night fishing for sagefish in the Stonetalon mountains and spotted yellowtail in Tanaris, for leveling up cooking and fishing at the same time.

In other news, I decided to faction transfer my worgen DK to horde, converted her to a tauren and respecced her as frost. I wanted to start playing her again as I've invested some time in her to get her flying mount, and I am anxious to start doing some BC dungeons. So, meet the new and improved Nachtmystium:

The helm is cool but I'm considering hiding it since Nacht has cool blue hair and pale skin which I think are particularly awesome for the frost spec. I'm also looking into dual wield for her since that seems to be the best weapons combo for DK DPS right now.

Weekend in Azeroth

Had a nice lazy Saturday hanging out with the bf and playing a little WoW. Wapsi worked on her professions (trying to get jewelcrafting to a point where she can make some money!), did a couple of battlegrounds, did a couple of dungeons. The dungeon finder put her in Uldaman and Scholomance, and both went very well (despite the remainder of the Scholomance group being what I imagine were teenagers who liked to say c@nt and make rape jokes). Wapsi's rotation is finally clicking with me: drop totems, hit Stormstrike and Lavalash and Earthshock for bosses; drop totems, hit Fireshock, Fire Nova and Lava burst for groups of mobs; use Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning when everything else is on cooldown; and finally, squeeze in a heal spell if necessary (as it was a couple of times in Scholomance). Battlegrounds on the other hand were kind of meh. Rogues suck (but it makes me want to go back to my lvl 85 rogue Goetia and start doing some BGs with her!).

Aside from that, Wapsi spent some quality time fishing around home (Mulgore) and in Dustwallow Marsh (where she was sent by the Warchief's Command Board but didn't actually do any quests). Finally it was time to head back to Thunder Bluff to visit the shaman trainer and get some shuteye.

Friday the 13th

Working on a paper at work this week, so I've just been WoW-ing a little bit here and there. Wapsi ran Gnomeregan twice back to back in Dungeon Finder and did pretty well the second time- I'm remembering to set her totems down for every mob, which I don't have to do while questing. Last night I was able to do some questing in Southern Barrens, and I was struck by how beautiful the Overgrowth was, all swampy and green and overgrown with tropical flowers. Wapsi hit level 35 at the end of the Ruins of Tarajo quests, which I'm glad she got to do as a tauren. Pretty depressing, but ambushing and killing General Hawthorne in revenge kind of felt good.

An Introduction

I play a lot of World of Warcraft. I began playing in the summer of 2008, with a Burning Crusade box set purchased on the advice of a coworker. I began my first toon, an Undead warrior named Carbuncle, and began questing my way around Tirisfal Glades. For some reason though, the game didn't capture my attention. I cancelled my membership and put Wow aside for the time being.

I picked the game up again in spring of 2011, when I found myself with a surplus of spare time after a breakup. I downloaded vanilla Wow and began playing Beryllium the night elf arcane mage on the Drak'Tharon server. At around level 30 and half a million ganks (Drak'Tharon is PvP), I deleted that toon too, and rolled a troll beast mastery hunter on the PvE server Drak'Thul. This time, the game clicked with me, in large part because I started treating it like my other obsessions and began reading everything I could get my hands on about the hunter class. I loved playing a hunter, too; still traumatized by the squishiness of my mage, I liked that I could send my pet into battle and blast the hell out of an enemy from a safe distance.

After buying the rest of the expansions and leveling my hunter up to about level 70, I finally got a bit burned out on playing that toon. She went though a couple of faction changes (to dranei, and then back to Horde as a goblin), was respecced as marksman, and now sits at level 72 in Dragonblight. Meet Galeena:

I do plan to finish leveling her eventually, just to say I did it.

Next up was a blood elf demonology warlock, who appealed to me for some of the same reasons as the hunter: a pet to tank plus ranged dps. I leveled the hell out of the warlock, reaching level 54 in about a week, until I got burned out on the slowness of battles: it seemed to take forever to kill even a single mob. So now my warlock sits in Orgrimmar awaiting her next command. Meet Fossegrimme:

At this point I was ready for a melee toon who could rush right up into an enemy's grill and beat the hell out of it. So I rolled a goblin combat rogue and took her all the way to level 85 in a few months. During this time I also began to read obsessively about everything Wow, working on professions and exploration and achievements in addition to questing. I was still a bit afraid of doing any group play with her, so to this day she has never been in a battleground and has only soloed dungeons. These days she's kind of a worker for hire, doing Firelands and Tol Barad dailies for gold and Argent Tournament for heirlooms. Meet Goetia:

Dig that transmogged gear!

Finally, I decided to take the plunge and start playing the actual MMO part of the game. I rolled a tauren enhancement shaman so I could level her up primarily in battlegrounds and dungeons, choosing enhancement because after playing the rogue I was in love with dual-wield melee fighting. Just this past weekend I did my first battlegrounds (Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin) and first dungeons (Ragefire Chasm, Deadmines and Wailing Caverns). Despite a couple of stumbles in the dungeons (shamans can rez other characters? That's what that button is for!), I had a great time and am looking for to the rest of the journey to 85 on this toon (currently level 27). Meet Wapsipinicon:

I love that Stinging Viper mace, acquired by beating down Lord Pythas in Wailing Caverns!

The semester just began (I work in academia teaching upper-level Biology courses) so my Wow time will be much less than it has been over the break, but I hope to run Wapsi through a dungeon or battleground each day, with a little bit of questing on the weekends. I'm also doing some literature research prior to beginning a study of nervous system development in tsetse flies, how cool is that?

Until next time,

Goetia (aka Sarah)