Weekend Update

I'll make this part short: Drama did not improve. Whatever, it'll shake out eventually. I just need to start recruiting.

Went and did a bunch of easy achievements with Zully. I finally finished off those three critter quests, Pest Control and the two Squirrel achievements. Went to the Alliance part of Kalimdor and got my Explorer achievement. I also got exalted with the Ebon Blade, finally getting my Northrend Vanguard. I started gathering materials for the Northrend Gourmet title. All this came about because I made a list of the easy achievements I could finish but have been too lazy to do.

I spent some time messing around with Mal's rogue. I was just going to help him out with his JC dailies, but I ended up flying to Argent Tournamenet, so I did those, then I got dropped off the mount into Wintergrasp on my way to Sholazar, so I did that, then I figured while I was there I'd do the Wolvar dailies. It's all good, he was shockingly broke anyway, and I got to play with some of the high end rogue stuff. Killing Spree is pretty awesome.

I jumped on Yoka for a little while and was invited to do Gun'drak with the Trig clan. It was nice to have an at-level vent group for a bit. It went OK, but I felt really bad because I was barely breaking 1k DPS. On a DPS warrior that's just shameful, and does not cut it for PvE. Of course right before I was asked I had dropped my Fury spec for PvP arms. After that dismal performance I sucked it up and bought dual spec. I found myself a cookie cutter PvP and PvE spec and plugged those in, and glyphed up the best I could using what was in gbank. I think I had to make one minor on Zan and bought two from the AH, but I managed to get the other 5 or so from gbank. Bought a new PvP ring from the vendor. The savage stuff is going to have to be good enough for PvP for a while. Next on the PvE list is probably the same thing I did with Zully, go nuts on the Icecrown quests and grind out the Ebon Blade rep. The Argent stuff is pretty sweet too so I should probably work on that along with Hodir. I should get some mats for enchants as well. Probably should have put some on scrolls before I transferred.

You Know You Play Too Much WoW When...

Your personal trainer tells you to stand on the balance ball and think about something else, and the easiest way to stay upright is to pretend you are casting a flash heal.

In the same thought, you think it might be easier if, like a troll, you weren't wearing shoes.

You spend over an hour looking for just the right bumper sticker or license plate for your car to proclaim your WoWness... and reject them all because they're too cliche.

You use all of the goblin merchant sayings regularly. "Glad I could help". "Have a good one". "Catch ya later". I use "yo" "heya" and "what's up" regularly too, but I don't think those are WoW related.

(Side Note: Many apologies for being so emo yesterday. I was having kind of a lousy day and Tar caught me off guard with his email)

The Drama Post

So far, things have been relatively drama free over on the new server. Having said that, I'm going to talk about drama. Heh.

I've had a little bit with Goblin over the 'loot incident'. We were running some low level newbie run and from what I can tell, he accidentally hit 'Need' on a cloth item he couldn't use. Creeps was kind of rude, which isn't surprising because he has a low noob tolerance, and now Goblin is all bent out of shape and refuses to need loot because he 'doesn't want to get shit on if he makes a mistake'.

I'm also anticipating some drama that I'm really not sure how to handle. Tar saw the ads for the shiny new expansion and is making noises about coming back. There are two issues with this:

1. I moved my main
2. I don't know if I can let him into my guild

I won't get into it much because it's a touchy subject, but he had a hand in the fall of the old EnM and I don't expect a warm reception for him on the new server. Honestly, I'm hesitant about bringing him in too. If he stays on Dalv, I can still play with him on my warrior, but I know I can't split time between realms so I don't know if that will be good enough.

I think my dilemma is pretty clear, but here it is anyway. If he comes back and wants to play with me, I may have to tell him I can't let him in the guild. It would be really inconvenient and difficult because it will probably hurt his feelings and I'd rather not have to say no to my guildies because I want to do stuff with him. I'd end up blowing him off in game, which would not do good things for the real life friendship.

I really enjoy playing with Mal and his crew. Not only are they fun to hang with, but they're pro and we can actually get somewhere in the end game. I mean geez, I recreated the guild to bring us all back together. I don't want to rip it apart the same way it died before. Mal has had a huge effect on my gameplay since, well, forever. It goes beyond WoW too, with us being e-mail friends even when he wasn't playing. I just can't choose between him and Tar, and it's going to be really hard to do what I usually do, which is keep friends who aren't compatible apart.

Every time I mix RL/WoW it ends in tears or drama. You'd think I would learn. I was sad when my RL buddies quit playing WoW. I was hurt and lost when the first EnM fell apart. I cried over some of my SDS guildies. I cried when Mal left. I got in a fight with Goblin over looting. Now I'm stressed about Tar coming back.

On top of that, I feel like a loser because WoW seems to stir up intense emotions in me more often than RL. It's just not fair. This is supposed to be a fun game, not a painful QQ fest.

First Impressions.

I was going to just edit that last post, but what the heck. I haven't had a multi post day in a while.

I've been mulling over the ideas behind the Cataclysm expansion in the back of my mind while I've been crunching my spreadsheets. I'm kind of excited about it, the same whay I get excited about anything new, but at the same time...

I can't help but feel like Blizzard has sold out. I think I'd almost rather see them throw their efforts into a new MMO than mess with the game that's already there. Heroic old instances? Great! New races, well alright, though I think werewolves is a stretch. Blowing up Azeroth? Uh...

I'm sure it will look awesome. I'm sure it will play awesome. I'm sure I will take 2-3 days off work and wait in line in the freezing cold to get it. But a not so little part of me will have a hard time letting go of the old world as it is now. Once it's destroyed, it will never go back. Good thing I took screenshots I guess.

My comments on the Blizzcon Keynote

It's the end of the world. Quite literally.

Looks like Zully better dance her little voodoo troll butt back to the old world before it happens. I was actually making a list of achievements earlier, and I think the old world ones just got bumped up higher on the priority scale.

I'm sure this will all be phased, and I'm sure our current 80s will be starting with the new content.

Time to start saving up a few holidays to take around expansion time. :-)

Everyone's Greedy...

There's an article on Wow.com today about sharding etiquette. I was interested mainly because of the pug I did for ToC the other day (my first on Alterac).

I did 2 runs with mostly the same people. The first run it was just everyone greed, and it was hunky-dory. The second run, magically after the first boss when everyone had already rolled, I won the item and, as I usually do to preserve bag space, D/E it right away. The tank then declared that we would roll on shards at the end. I stated that I wanted to keep this one because I won the roll, and we could do that for the rest. He just repeated himself and said "if we're lucky, we'll all get one anyway". Oh, I see, so not only might I NOT get the shard I won, but I had no chance at getting more than one because they were going to use "top rolls". I didn't argue, and I was just going to jet with one regardless, but I won a top roll so it was a moot point.

I'm not sure why this bothered me. I usually don't care. Then again, now that I don't have as many people backing me for runs and throwing me stuff to D/E, I see myself actually *gasp* running out of mats. I want to be able to chant my stuff with whatever I feel like, damn it. I put a lot of time and money and effort into maxing my chanting out. At one shard a run that's going to be really hard. I'd rather gamble that I'll win one or more items with rolls TYVM.

So I'm going to try a new policy. Everyone greeds, and if they want something D/E, they can trade it to me after the run. We can do that now with the 2 hour BoP window. It'll make my life a lot easier in PuGs.

New Troll Here...

So I keep hearing rumors about Troll Druids. This brings up a bit of a dilemma for me. I'm loving my druid. If it takes a year for the next expansion to come out, I'm sure she'll be 80. But...

Will I reroll Troll? Right now every single class I play could potentially be a Troll. As it is, all my "best" toons are either Troll or Tauren. I suppose I have a Tauren warrior, not a Troll, and now a Tauren druid. But still. Considering my little troll brigade, there is an appeal to have my druid be part of the blue skinned family.

What are the odds Blizzard will allow a freebie one-time race change now that they're going to allow faction changes? I don't see myself paying for race change, honestly, but if they add new classes, especially for druids which only had one option, I would think they would consider letting people switch.

Future... Future.... Future....

I have a vision. A vision of the future.

I see EnM starting 10 man raids in a few weeks, maybe a month. I'm really excited about being able to raid again. Anyone who knows me knows I'm about the content, not the gear. We'll probably have to PuG a few, but at this point that may be a good thing. The five of us rip through instances like nothing, so I think anyone who PuGs with us will consider joining us. The loot rules might be a little tricky for a while though. I don't know if PuGs will be willing to go for a "guild first" raiding policy. Maybe if we specify certain items as straight up rolls, like weapons and tier gear, like the Steaks used to do. I'll have to think about that.

As for our current roster, I'm really hoping Dep will quit his whining and maybe feral tank for us. I'm pretty sure at least one of our DKs is a tank as well, so we should be set with that. I'm not sure if there are any other healers besides me. That could be a challenge. That may need to work itself out through recruiting. PuGging healers is always scary. We've got lots of melee DPS, but not a lot of ranged. I guess it depends on who wants to bring what character. Generally, it looks like we have as regulars 2 tanks, 1 healer, and 3 dps. There's 2 or 3 more DPS out there as well, they're just not 80 yet. I could probably bring at least one of the Wolves, maybe two if I can coach them a little. That's a pretty good start for a raid. If Coffee and Dkow come back we'll be in much better shape (though they're not approaching 80 yet). I'm hoping they're just on vacation. I miss Krom. I wonder if he'd switch servers if my guild starts raiding.

Goblin set up a Vent server for us (though it looks like we'll still need to pay for the server license. 8 slots isn't going to be enough once we start raiding). That should help even in heroics. We're going to be running a lot of heroics over the next few weeks. Then again, I like to talk. Other people, not so much.

We need a raid leader. Someone less anal than me. I don't want to end up like Px giving everyone orders all the time, it makes me feel like the succubus looks. Which I suppose isn't all bad, depending on who you ask. I'll probably end up doing it for the earlier instances (Naxx/OS/Maly), but whoever wants it is starting with just as much knowledge as me once we get to the "new" ones (Ulduar/ToC). Mainly though I am good at administrative BS and event planning, but I'm not very comfortable leading a group. That's been covered before, of course.

Overall, I'm feeling optimistic. Once I'm back into an early evening schedule it should make raiding easier. I think the 6p-10p Fri-Sun schedule works pretty well. We'll see which of those days I end up cutting short.