The dragon’s dead.
Onyxia's Head
Because I’m posting this from work, I can’t comment on Children’s Week yet, so I’m rewinding about a month or so. Dropped Stitches made a much overdue Onyxia run. Everyone over level 60 was invited, and as it turned out, I was the lowest level at 73. It was easy dragon-spanking fun.
Some people are born noble; others buy their nobility with chocolate.
Glynys the Noble
Now I will never click on another egg again. My husband suggested omelettes for dinner last night, and I swear I felt faint. I’m so very sick of eggs that I’m not even going to get Leilee her polymorph: rabbit.
I enjoyed saving the reindeer; I enjoyed shooting off fireworks; I enjoyed perfuming and card-collecting. I have not enjoyed Noblegarden very much. There has been no challenge other than clicking faster than the other egg-campers (and not going cross-eyed waiting for egg respawns). I missed Children’s Week last year and I am still looking forward to it.
I have a friend who dislikes popular things. Often that is his only reason for disliking something. Sometimes, he’ll like something until it becomes popular, and then he’ll turn on it. I can understand this view up to a point. After all, everyone wants to be an individual even while evolution urges us to go with the herd–don’t be different, don’t stand out–that attracts predators. Of course the only predators in this story want to give you bunny ears.
Females of the orcish and dwarvish descent must be feeling hunted as of late. I know I camped the Dalaran flight point for over an hour yesterday before I found in orc female to Shake My Bunny Maker all over. Guild chat was full of spotting calls. “Dwarf female in Hellfire Peninsula!” Trolls were a bit scarce as well. But no one seemed to have trouble finding Blood Elves. Did no one play horde gals before TBC?
I find myself wanting to start a new hordie. I have a Tauren shaman. (For the record, I’m a girl and I play girl toons.) But I hate totems. I hate having to drop them. I hate sucking if I forget to drop them. So she’s going to get the big DELETE. In her place, I want to create either a paladin, warrior, or priest. I’m an attention whore–I like being needed for instances or raids. If I choose a pally then I’m obviously limited to a belf. A warrior means no belf. So how much should race factor into character choice?
In theory, I’m going to be staring at this character for hundreds of hours. And that is why I am reluctant to ever choose an undead. The bony elbows and knees really bother me. (The male undead with no jaw and the tongue hanging down makes me ill.) I will admit that I am a bit vain. Even in a pixel world, I don’t want to be ugly. And the belfs are the only toons horde-side that I consider attractive. But this is the reason they are sooooo popular. They are taking over the horde with their clear skin and flowing locks.
Therefore, the question is: Do I want to play a more visually unique character that is not my cup of tea or a super-common everyone-is-playing one toon that makes me feel pretty?
I’ve leveled a retadin to 64, and that was easy. I’ve leveled a holy priest to 65, and that was hard. I thought that these two would be on opposite ends of the difficulty spectrum. Nope. So wrong. Compared to leveling my frost mage, the priest was a cake walk–a cake walk that they don’t even require you to walk, they just give you cake. Never underestimate the priest ability to heal herself. The mage just has to hope that she can kill the enemy faster than the mob can kill her. I just have to watch my health bar drop while I have no way of making it go back up.
Ice Barrier has made leveling a little less painful and Ice Block is always nice, but as my level increases, so do the mobs who are breaking the ice block faster which means firing at range is getting less likely. They just pound away on my squishy, clothie butt.
To make up for this, I have learned to swallow my pride and do green quests. I don’t get as much xp, so I have to do more quests. But since I don’t die, the time evens out since I’m not running back to my corpse.
Also, I know so many people hate them, but I love my elekk.
Yesterday I rolled a new alt. How many times do I have to tell you I have a problem with alts before you believe me? Her name is Saoirrse. But wait! Don’t I already have a belf hunter named Saoirsee? Yeah…’bout that… Both toons are based on the same tabe-top rpg character that I played many years ago. Saoirse (the original spelling was taken on WoW, so I had to get creative) was the first character that I played from the beginning of a campaign to the end. Well, I started the horde version back in July when I first got into the game, but then last week, one of my friends suggested starting a guild based on characters from our pen and paper rpg days. Now there is a night elf druid Saoirrse.
Yep, I’m playing the healer again. Good thing I like it, huh? A lot of people would rather have their colon pulled out through their nostril than try to level a healer. Priests have very little armor and even less dps–they die before their mobs do unless they take the time to heal themselves every few seconds. Luckily, my priest runs with a group. All of the time. If I’m not with my guildies, then I have only to post that I am LFG and I get a dozen responses inside of a minute. Most of the time I get whispers from groups without even acting. Yes, the attention is very nice.
I am very excited to be playing a druid this time though. For three reasons: I’m still leveling Harper and leveling another priest wouldn’t thrill me, leather armor = more survivability, and there’s a paladin and a shaman in the party. I won’t be the only healer! The pally’s speccing retribution, and the shaman isn’t resto; however, in an emergency, 2 others can toss out heals. Plus, for the first time ever, someone can rez me if I die. We ran Sunken Temple on Friday, and twice Harper died and had to run all the way back while the others twidled their thumbs.
Most of the Warcrafters out there are aware that yesterday’s downtime lasted longer than usual. The forums lit up with bitchers and moaners, and I’ll admit that I was none too pleased about not being able to take my 30 lvl mage out for a spin on her new Elekk. Luckily Sweeney Todd was on HBO, and a little Johnny Depp helped to ease the separation anxiety.
The intention of this post is not to harp on all of the problems that Blizzard has been having since the Echoes of Doom patch release. Yes, the errors and glitches have been legion, but Blizzard has been making a very heroic effort to stay on top of them. Just think, the techs responsible for regular maintenance Tuesdays got to stay late to fix the mail issue and then got to stay even longer with the accidental pvp gear giveaway.
What I am worried about is trying to log on tomorrow during launch day. My server had population issues during the patch launch–I can’t even imagine how bad it will be tomorrow after work. That’s right, I said after work. How can you be a Warcraft blogger and not have taken a day off work to enjoy the xpac? Easy, my highest toon is lvl 46. I have a problem with alts. Also, I have only been playing since July. But a lot of people can level to 70 in under 5 months! Like I said, I have a problem with alts. A lot of people take one character from 1 to 70 and then consider alts. I only wish that I had that kind of focus. When swinging a sword gets dull, I switch to the mage; when being squishy gets tiresome, it’s back to the paladin. An instance?!? Let me go get my priest. Have no fear, though; I’ll get WOTLK when one of my toons hits 55 so I can get a death knight.
How many alts do you have?
I have a knitting blog by another name, but my target audience for that blog is decidedly different than my Warcraft crowd. So that I do not bore the snot out of my family by going on and on about pwning that noob warlock and his blue guy (strangely enough, my grandparents just don’t care), I decided that I should have a blog for each hobby.
How do I manage two time-consuming hobbies? Manage? Hah! Not a whole lot of managing goes on. More like streaking. The entirety of August, September, and October were dedicated to WoW, but for the three months before that, I only played Lost Odyssey and that only a tiny bit when my right hand started cramping from the project du jour. November has started out with more balance. Some mornings I come into work early feeling peaceful and relaxed–very zen. The night before, I knitted. Other mornings I arrive a little late, a lot frazzled, and with one eye twitching. The night before, I gamed. Gaming is exciting in a way that knitting isn’t and shouldn’t be.
