Racial Diversity FTW

Why yes, I did roll an alt when the Cataclysm hit.  It wasn't one of the  new combos though.  I decided to re-roll my lvl 28 Orc hunter, and I'm actually really glad I did.  It all started in the Valley of Trials.

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Things to do while waiting for Cataclysm

No raids?  Tired of dugneons?  Here's what I've been doing to pass the WoW time when I'm not in the mood for Starcraft.

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Quest Log Updated?

I'm a fan of the new LFG tool. It has been a very long time coming, and I'm glad Blizzard finally got it right. However, I fear this may be the final blow in the death of questing.

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Dribs and Drabs

I wanted to QQ about how fail this weekend was, but I guess it wasn't all bad. Yamira hit Northrend after Jaqu did some lowbie runs with me and the British Twins. I quested with her on and off, she's sitting at 69 now. Haha sitting. 69. Oh never mind.

Didn't really do much with Zully. Wasn't in the mood. I'm irritated that I still haven't found an arena team. Looks like I get to raid again this week, were gonna do Ulduar.

Yokanolu is revered with the Hodir after a UP run with the guys last night. I think I actually nodded off during the first fight. Got killed by the giant sword. Also couldn't count to five for the spears. Good news is they're running Ony tonight and will probably need bodies. My DPS is topping out around 1.6k, but it's better than nothing I guess. I'm not even sure if I'm hit capped LoL.

I think I played WoW this weekend...

I actually had to check Zully's achievements to see if I did anything with her this weekend. I did H ToC for the first time (what?), got champion/exalted with Thunder Bluff, and finished punching furlbogs in the face for my knuckle sandwich/master of arms achievements.

I spent some time on Yoka as well, H Nexus and a whole bunch of Isle of Conquest games. I also did the first "boss" of Ulduar. I was a gunner, so my gear level didn't matter.

Yam is lvl 44 now, I finished up Dustwallow and will be moving on to Tanaris. I haven't been 'sent' to Feralas yet, I wonder when that will happen. Tonight I think I will run around the world with her and turn in a bunch of random quests. Hopefully I can use the portal near Swamp of Sorrows now and save myself some running/flying. Also, I completely forgot how to get to the Badlands.

One of my big chunks of time was doing JC and other dailies on Mal's rogue. It was partially to help him out, but a lot of it was just me wanting to quest for a good reason. Zully's pretty much done with the Northrend rep grind, I just have 2 more factions to finish in the tournament. Mal's rogue, however, needs pretty much everything. I was able to get to 9 dailies remaining easy by doing the tournament, the brunhildar bear gamble, cooking, JC and Hodir. I would have done the last 9 but I couldn't think of what to do. I should have done Wyrmrest thinking back on it.

Breakfast Topic: I Hate

You know what I hate the most in WoW? Stranglethorn Vale. I refuse, utterly REFUSE to quest there any more. Even now I can't run through there without getting attacked, even on my F'ING LVL 80 PRIEST! Stranglethorn Vale single handedly caused me to abandon my first priest because it was impossible in Vanilla.

Probably a strong #2 in things I hate about wow is that damn troll ziggurat in the Hinterlands, that you had to do to get the mallet of Zul'Farrak. It's not so bad now, but back in the day all the trolls were ELITES, so it was basically a 5-man instance, out in the world, with mobs on a fast respawn and quest items on a slow respawn, where Allies could come kill you and spit on your corpse. In fact the only redeeming quality of the Hinterlands is the abundance of leveling herbs.

I think I've talked about this recently. I forget where. Hmm.

Wow.com Breakfast Topic: I Hate

All hail Zully, champion of the Undercity!

This weekend was pretty uneventful. I spent a decent chunk of Saturday leveling my shammy, since the raid was full (though they didn't go anyway - short tanks). I didn't really do any instance runs, except a couple on Yoka, who is stubbornly still 70. Ugh, i just can't bring myself to level her. Not even for Alchemy purposes. I don't know where I developed this aversion to melee, I love playing melee in every other game. I guess a lot of it is I've learned how to survive at range.

I decided to finish up Dragonblight after I went around and did the quest chain for the Wyrmrest Temple daily. Finally. Turns out I missed an entire village full of Tanuka on the west side. Part of this was the Wrath Gate quest chain. I had an issue with the cut scene, I couldn't get any sound, but I got the general idea. This led up to the Battle for the Undercity, which was basically a half hour long interactive cut scene. They incorporated the Lament of the Highborn from the low level newbie concert, which I thought was a nice touch. In the end we were victorious and everything returned to normal. Even trade chat. Sigh.

Other than moneymaking I'm really not sure what to do with Zully. Battlegrounds are next on my list but I'm rarely motivated to do them, especially with my internet connection being so flakey. Hopefully the maintenance guys will figure out the problem today.

I'm Broke!

Well, my quest for Moonshroud is over whether I like it or not. I'm down to about 150 gold spread across all my toons right now. Well, maybe a little more than that, I haven't actually robbed the lowbies of their meager funds yet. However, I did manage to get my tailoring up to 415 with that last expensive push for cloth, so I can make my own Moonshroud every 4 days now. I better go dig up some Fire and Shadow to make the other two types of cloth to sell, because at this rate I won't even be able to repair.

The other good news is I still have plenty of quests to do to make some funds. I'm about halfway through the chain to get Sons of Hodir rep in Storm Peaks, and probably about halfway through the quests in Icecrown. I picked up the Flesh Giant Shoulders yesterday and put the Scryer enchant on it even though they'll probably get replaced pretty quick. Tran was linking some blues from the Heroic Utgarde Keep run he was doing last night and I was turning quite green with envy for the Drood he was running with.

Also, ironically WoW insider had a post about the healer shortage today, and the comments section has loads of people with the exact same issues as me. I'm not alone in being overworked and "underpaid".

The Healer Shortage and How to Fix It

Best Comment Ever:
"Healing is like tetris.
Dps is like mortal combat."

Crusader!

Well, now that I know what path I want to take to get my blues, I've delved into Icecrown. I was thinking of just doing all the low level areas until 80 then get the gold in the higher areas but...

Well, I have some RP tendencies on occasion and I get a good amount of glee from doing a good plotline. What better way to level to 80 than to bolster the forces of the Argent Crusade to fight against the Lich King! Woot!

(And lots of nice blues for heroic running too, as per yesterday's post. Can't forget about the loot)

Easy Right?

You have defeated Your Inner Turmoil.

Oh, if only it were that easy.

Wild Mustard and Rhino Dogs? You're kidding, right?

The expansion is a lot of fun. Duh. How could it not be? I took a few days off work to get some good playtime in. I would have just been thinking about it all day anyway if I hadn't. I got Zully to 73. Not bad considering what a slow leveler I am. I am thoroughly enjoying the Howling Fjord. Those level designers deserve a pat on the back. Everyone's complaining about not being able to fly in Northrend, but I'm jumping off cliffs and leaping over stuff with my new Armored Brown Bear like nobody's business, and I love it. Also, the starting zones aren't very big and there's lots of little towns with flight points to stop over at, so it's not a real burden to get around like it was in Outlands before flyers. I'm also very VERY glad I saved up some gold before the expansion. I dropped from over 4k to around 1.5k training all my professions, buying up some greens for enchanting, and yes, I dropped 500g on that bear. It's SO worth it.

Unfortunately, despite being home to play and all the fun new stuff to play around with, I was a little out of my mind this weekend. I talked Danny's ear off about it already. All of a sudden at least 5 people I can think of off the top of my head just poofed back in out of nowhere after months of being gone. Some I'm happy about, some not so much, but generally I feel annoyed that we were struggling to get it together and do end game stuff and people started leaving. Now all of a sudden when we're back at the beginning again, we're full again.

I'm trying real hard to think of this as an opportunity to pull in people for the eventual end game that we're going to get around to in a few months. I also know there are a lot of reasons people leave, and a lot of reasons people return. I shouldn't generalize, and I shouldn't get so upset about it. Some of it too is that I wasn't an officer when all these people were around and now I am. So if they cause problems, now I have responsibility to do something about it. There's a million "what ifs", and that's my downfall in pretty much anything important in my life. I spend too much time worrying about the bad things that could happen and forget about the good things that do happen.

Oh, and Mal appeared out of the blue on Sunday. I was really happy to see him, we ran around the Fjord ganking Allies and generally being jerks for about an hour before I had to log. I don't think he's going to be playing regularly, but I hope to see him once in a while. I still don't like his new hairdo. LOL.