The Beast

I was messing in my graphics application the other day, playing with depth of field and filters, and decided to share a couple shots of my cat:) This is Loque'nahak, renamed Junior. He's been my beast of choice since forever. Ain't he a beauty?! Click for full size:)

Flying in Draenor

So apparently, all the people complaining about not being able to fly in Draenor have gotten Blizzard's attention, and they've decided to implement flying after the Tanaan Jungle patch (6.2), which is being released on June 23. In order to fly, you'll need to complete the Draenor Pathfinder achievement. 

Now to be honest, I wasn't really missing flying that much. I mean, there are other zones in WoW where you can't fly...and I have a lot of really cool new ground mounts anyway! To me, Draenor was just another one of those. But seeing all the whiny posts on the Blizzard forums, it seems that a lot of people claimed it ruined the entire game for them, that it made their flying mounts useless and a waste of time and money. There's like 90% of the game content where you can still use your flying mounts, so I didn't see how any of my flying mounts were useless or a waste of money. But whatever. It makes the game more fun for people, I guess, and it will be nice to be able to see the zone from above:)

I was almost afraid to look at the Draenor Pathfinder requirements, figuring it's just another grind I'll have to do, but I was pleasantly surprised. The only daily I have to complete is Assault on the Pit (for the Securing Draenor portion), and there's only one more area of Frostfire Ridge I need to visit to complete the Explore Frostfire Ridge part of the Explore Draenor portion. Master Treasure Hunter says it's complete, but that's going to change with the patch, so I think I have a few more treasures to find to officially complete that one. All of these are things I can knock out before the patch is even released, so once it's out, the only thing I'll need to do to enable flying will be the three reputations that you need to get to revered. Woo! 

I haven't been playing WoW all that much lately. I've been focused more on my genealogical research (found some pirates in my family tree, arrr!), so I've only been logging into WoW a couple of times a week. I got the Emerald Hippogryph mount from the Recruit-A-Friend thing I did with my friend Wes, so that was cool. 

I also bought the Mystic Runesaber from the Blizzard store. I had been waiting for that one, OMG! No freakin' way I could pass up a purple kitty!!!! Seriously, check this thing out:) The pictures do NOT do it justice, though;)

Of Archaeology, Beautiful Art, and the Guildiest Guild

I finally got my shaman through Tanaan and started on her garrison. She's at 91 now. I really don't know how people can rush through content the way they do, and I think it's probably a lot of the reason so many people are complaining about the lack of content in WoD...they rush through as fast as they can so they can level all their alts and, frankly, I think they get burnt out. Which isn't really Blizzard's fault...

I spend most of my time on my main (Mystrinixx, the hunter). She's the one I get most of the achievements on; she's the first one to get to level cap, etc. She's the one I do all the archaeology on, and I've been spending a lot of time on that lately. The problem I have with archaeology is that I sometimes get distracted ("Ooo! Shiny!") while I'm surveying digsites. Take last night, for instance: one of the digsites in Shadowmoon Valley (in Draenor) is in Shimmer Moor, which is a super super super beautiful place! So beautiful, in fact, that I find myself getting lost in all that gorgeous goodness and snapping screenshots and forgetting about my archaeology. Here are just a few of the glorious shots I got last night... [click them for a larger view]

The music is peaceful, the scenery is amazing. I just can't help myself, and I get lost in it. I zone out and find myself wishing I could stay there forever LOL! 

The same thing happened when I was in Outlands. It brought back memories of the leveling I did there - in old Nagrand, Zangarmarsh. And in Northrend, especially in Storm Peaks.

Nagrand, Outlands

Nagrand, Outlands

Storm Peaks, Northrend

You can see more images on my Flickr page.

The Blizzard forums are full of people complaining about the fact that there's no flying in Draenor, but to be honest, I haven't found it all that bad. The only time I find it frustrating is in Spires of Arak because that place is literally like a damn maze! Other than that, it's been nice to be "grounded" and take my time running around and exploring. When I feel the urge to soar, I hearth to Shrine of the Seven Stars in Pandaria and either do some questing/archaeology/etc. there or take a portal to Azeroth. 

Now that my shaman is through the WoD starter quests, I've started building her garrison and spend a little bit of time on her working on getting her closer to 100. The other night, while I was questing, Pathrunner spawned. Pathrunner is one of several rare spawns that drops a mount. I've spent a lot of time on my main looking for Pathrunner, and BOOM, there he was! I immediately logged to my hunter and ran like hell to get over to where he was, hoping that nobody else had already taken him down. I put a call out in General chat that Pathrunner was up and asked if anyone wanted to join me (he drops a mount for everyone who participates in taking him down, grouped or not). There were no takers, which was unusual, but it was a weeknight... When I got to where he was, the only one there was a Level 93 dwarf, don't remember what class. I told him nobody else had replied to me and said, "Ok, let's do this!" I don't know how hard Pathrunner is at 93 (which is why I switched to my 100), but he gave me a big THANK YOU!!!! afterwards as he rode off on his new mount:) That felt pretty good:)

Things are awesome with the new guild. It's the guildiest guild I've ever been in, and I'm getting more comfortable with joining them for events. I was disappointed that I missed their FLEX raid last night because we'd gone out to dinner and got home after they'd already started. Next time!!! Things are very laid back, a few of the members are "used-to-be-hardcore" players who wanted a more relaxed atmosphere in WoW, so at least there are people who know how to run the groups, but nobody gets pissy if things go wrong. There's no pressure at all to top charts or be geared "just right," etc. I've done some dungeons and gotten some good feedback, so I'm feeling more confident:) Of course, it helps that BM hunters are OP right now, or at least it doesn't hurt LOL! Sooo different from when I left. And it's good that I know how to play my class anyway. I was so proud of myself that I didn't stand in bad shit at least LOL! Though I did forget to turn off growl on one dungeon (oops!). 

Anyway, so that's that. In the real world, the weather if FINALLY starting to improve. It's up and down right now - 30's this morning when I got up, should be in the high 60s/low 70s later this week. We had a dusting of snow one night last week. I'll be glad when it's at least in the high 60s. I'm done with winter, and my sinuses and achey knees are done with the fluctuating barometric pressure!

It's Official!

So I am officially a member of the Embervale guild now, woo! My two-week trial period ended at midnight last night, and I was upgraded to Citizen. They are a great group of people and have made me feel so welcome! I keep saying that it's the guildiest guild I've ever been in; it is what I have always thought a guild would be. They have fun events, dungeon groups, outside-WoW events (movie nights, Cards Against Humanity nights, etc.). So so so glad I found them!! They are exactly what I was missing!

The dungeon leveling group I joined was supposed to start last night, but one of the members was ill so we have postponed the start date to next week. So last night some guildies wanted to do some normal Draenor dungeons and were looking for members, so I offered to go as long as they didn't mind that I (a) didn't know the fights and (b) haven't been in a dungeon in three years. I think the fact that this is my first time playing without "friends" has me a bit anxious. 

When I played before, I always had two friends that I played with, and I never really ventured into dungeons without them in my ear. 

Now I'm sort of on my own and, while I know I know what I'm doing, there's still a part of me that is so afraid of screwing up. I was a little bit stressed at first, so unsure of what I was doing, but about halfway through the first dungeon (Shadowmoon Burial Grounds), they were saying "Don't know why you were so afraid of doing dungeons; you're doing AWESOME!" and at the end of the second one, someone posted the recount in guild chat and I was #2 in dps. I think that's pretty good because I'm almost certain I'm less geared than the others (I'd have to be since most of my gear is just from apexis dailies and questing. I still have a couple of 600 pieces). The tank even said, "You can come on runs with me anytime! You were great!" Soooo...big confidence booster last night! Yay!

Wes is still playing, and it looks like he's going to stick around. He actually is liking his shaman much more than the warlock he was playing first. That's pretty cool since my main alt is a 90 enh shaman, so I can at least give him some help if he needs it:) Well. Unless he decides to heal (or tank? Can shamans tank? I don't even know!). The closest I come to tanking is vicariously through my hunter pet and healing through Mend Pet LOL! I have no problem tossing a Spirit Mend on an ally, but that's the extent of my "healing" - I'm perfectly happy just shooting things! XD

I finally finally FINALLY got my Archaeology to 700! Woo! Got some great stuff to send to my shaman too! I had no idea that archaeology dropped BoA gear, so at least once I get her through Tanaan, she'll have a decent axe or mace (I think I sent one of each to her) to start with in Draenor:) 

I also got some - er, strange? - items to display in my Trophy Room. One is a statue of an ogre holding a leatherhide bull over his head... Last night, I got "Pristine Stone Dentures"... Like I said, strange LOL! Now I need to find a decent archaeology guide and see what other neat things I can get. I think there are pets and mounts I could get, and I'm a sucker for those things especially! Fossilized raptor? Yeah, I want that BAD! My bodyguard of choice right now is Leorajh, and that's what he rides, so it would be awesome to ride around Draenor on similar mounts:) I swear, between Leo and my pet, I'm like a one-draenei army - tank (pet), healer (Leo), and damage. Woo woo!

I'm in "screenshot mode" a lot lately too, so check out my latest pics on Flickr! I love taking shots in WoW. The artwork they've put into the game can be so incredible and sometimes breathtaking! Seriously, just look at this! This is Frostfire Ridge in Draenor:) So beautiful! [click images for a larger view]

Archaeologist and Class Snobbery

So I spent most of my time in WoW this weekend leveling my archaeology up from the 200s to the 600s. Still a bit more to go to reach 700. I was spoiled up until 600...because I could pretty much let my pet take care of any mobs that hit me (since they did little to no damage to me). When I hit around 575, I hearthed back to my garrison and headed out into Draenor, where the mobs are all my level now. So I can't let my pet take out the mobs for me anymore LOL! Now I'm getting why people are bitching about the lack of flying in Draenor making archaeology a pain in the ass. Still not really missing flying, though. Truthfully, I find it sort of a pain in the ass to keep getting on and off a mount to get from one survey spot to another in a dig site. Even in Eastern Kingdoms, Outlands, and Northrend I wasn't mounting and dismounting when I was surveying.

My friend Wes has been playing the starter edition and I'd decided to level another hunter from the draenei starting zone - hence the "class snobbery" in the post title. It's not so much snobbery as just class preference. I love playing a hunter, and I play it well. My new guild has dungeon leveling groups, and I've joined one that starts on April 1. Wes rolled a shaman and we were sitting at Level 7. So Sunday afternoon I realized that April 1 is this Wednesday (no idea why I thought it was next Sunday!!!), and I need to get my toon to Level 15 before then! Yikes! I haven't leveled a toon since I got back, so I didn't really realize how much they'd nerfed it, and especially with heirlooms, it didn't take me long to get her to Level 15. Now I just have to pick up some gear from the auction house since we won't be using heirlooms in the dungeon group.

I can't wait to start the dungeon group. I have a new headset coming from Amazon which is supposed to be delivered on Wednesday, so hopefully I'll have that in time so I can talk to the other members in Mumble while we're in the dungeon(s).

Anyway, so that was my weekend (in WoW anyway). IRL we got more snow on Saturday, and it's snowing again today (Monday). I've had enough. It's almost April ffs. I'm ready for spring!

Freefallin'

Last night's garrison campaign was in Shattrath City in Talador (that is the new zone, which takes place in the past, which means that the new Shattrath in the WoD expac is actually Shattrath before the old Shattrath in Outlands...how's that for confusing?).

Anyway, so I took the flightpath over to Shattrath City in Talador and hopped on my raptor mount and headed over to the elevator to get down to the ground where the campaign was...ran straight onto the elevator platform just as it headed down and dove to my death. Spectacular. Just like I once did in Shattrath in the old content years ago LOL!

I applied to that other guild I talked about in a previous post. I'll be talking to one of the GM's tonight. Can't wait! They have events and things, leveling groups, lots of fun stuff.

Yay!

Yesterday was "reset" day. I guess it's something to look forward to on Tuesdays! See, at work, Tuesday is my worst day of the week because I have meetings all afternoon (being the secretary, I get to sit in a roomful of doctors going on and on and on about things that I barely understand and take minutes on it all. Not fun). So I look forward to going home after work and hitting up old raids and dungeons on my quest for MORE STUFF!!!

I find myself doing the two in Uldum first, hoping for some dragon mounts. So after I did those (no mounts, but I did score a couple of battle pets), I headed to Karazahn and...

I also had put in "adoption requests" over at the Azeroth Adoption Agency and those came through too! AAA is a Horde guild on the Bladefist realm that takes donations of battle pets and "adopts" them out to people who want them. Basically, you create a Level 1 toon on their server, request membership to their guild (via their web site), then you can donate pets to them or request pets from their guild bank tabs. I got the Anubisath Idol, Pandaren Air Spirit (that was the only one I was missing!), and Egbert. Woo! I had donated a bunch too - 2 or 3 of each of the Zandalari dino pets, a stitched pup, and I think a doom bloom. So it was a pretty even trade for me:)

I also did the last three dungeons for the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement (King of Dire Maul, Lower Blackrock Spire, and Scholomance). So it was a good night!

Talked to one of my guildies last night about how dead the guild is. The whole reason I'd joined was because the WoW forum post said the guild would be becoming more active. So far, it's just two or three people ever on at one time, usually me and the person I was talking to last night. He brought up the deadness of the guild first, so I told him about another guild I've been watching that has planned events, etc., but that their recruitment is currently closed. He said to keep him posted and maybe we'd guild hop LOL! It's nice playing solo, but it would also be nice to have some friends to play with. I still haven't done much leveling on my Horde toon on my friends' server, but...well, someday LOL! When I run out of things to do on my Alliance toons maybe...

I've gone a little crazy with the pet battles LOL! I have 27 pets at Level 25 now. Check it out! And I'm only JUST starting to comprehend the "breed" thing and realizing that two of the same exact pet can have completely different stats and a completely different set of abilities! AND that they have genders...because Blizzard mentioned the possibility of eventually adding a breeding aspect to the game. Ha. Pokemon takes over WoW? Now that I've got the hang of pet battles, it's pretty easy to level them up.

Oh! And I almost forgot! I didn't realize that two more netherwing drakes had been added, so I headed over to Silvermoon Valley (the old one) and bought them and BOOM!

Anyway, so that's my update for now. Back to the grind (work!); lunch is over:(

Go away, snow!

More pet battling last night. I have 10 pets at Level 25 now. I was severely lacking in variety when I went to start doing the Cataclysm pet battle quests. So I figured out what I needed (magic and mechanical mainly, though I should level a humanoid pet too), so hopefully tonight I can knock out those quests and head to the next area. Still loving it LOL! I thought I'd hate it, but it's pretty fun trying to figure out strategies to defeat other pets. It's also fun capturing new ones too, which is where some of my Level 25 pets have come from. 

Oh, and here's a picture of my red primal raptor mount, along with a cameo by Skittles:) Unless I'm doing my apexis dailies, Skittles is running around WoW with me. 

I've tried using him for the apexis dailies, but I've found Junior (spirit beast Loque'nahak) is better for his buffs. Skittles works well for the <100 mobs, but for Level 100 mobs, especially elites, the spirit beasts are definitely a boost.

With my garrison and most of my buildings at Level 3, I love logging in and seeing my favorite battle pets running around all over the place from the menagerie LOL! Same with the stables - seeing a random assortment of my favorite mounts is pretty awesome:) I wish Blizzard would hurry up and release the damn mystic runesaber mount in the shop that they announced with the 6.1 patch:( I wants a purple kitty mount!!!!!!! I check the shop every day, but still nothing. And no word from Blizz on when it's coming out! C'mon, Blizzard, TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY ALREADY!

Not really a great shot of my stable, but you can see some of my mounts there - the vitreous stone drake, my green proto drake, my armored brown bear, the meadowstomper, and the very back end of my enchanted fey dragon. Haha, sometimes I run around and /pet them;) Yes, I'm a dork; but I'm a lovable dork. 

Come spring, we'll see what happens. Right now, there are six-foot snow drifts outside and it's been damn cold out, so here in New England, we are essentially in hibernation mode. When I come home from work, the last thing I want to do is head back out in the cold:(

Meantime, in "real life," my favorite hamburger/ice cream stand opens tomorrow night. In protest against Mother Nature, we're going. And dammit, I'm having a burger and a damn ice cream. With jimmies on top. Snow or no snow!

What the....?

I've been on the WoW forums a lot lately, mostly when I'm on lunch at work, and there are a LOT of posts about people quitting because there's no flying in Draenor. On the one hand, people complain that there's nothing to do in the WoD expac. On the other hand, they complain that because they can't fly in Draenor, they just sit in their garrisons and do nothing because they don't feel like using a ground mount to get where they want to go. So I'm confused. Is there no content? Or is there content...but they just don't want to be bothered to do it because - QQ - they'd have to take a flight path to get to it? I see words like "tedious" being used...and a lot of whining about how LONG it takes to get anywhere on a ground mount...then in the next sentence they're saying there's nothing to do (tedious or not?) and that Draenor is WAY too small (but a flight path "takes too long!"). I wish people would make up their damn minds.

I am actually having a blast. The latest patch came with a stone to boost one battle pet to Level 25. That was a lifesaver, especially for someone who didn't play Pandaland and missed the whole battle pet craze. It was maddening because our garrisons come with a ready-made pet menagerie building that was "locked" until you defeated three Level 25 pets. You want to talk about tedium? Considering I had no clue how to go about leveling pets up to 25 without flying all over the place, boosting one to Level 25 (I chose Chuck the crocodile) made it at least bearable. Using him, I was able to take a couple of other pets, stick them in a fight for one round, then put him in to win and level the other two up pretty easily. Once I realized that captured pets retained the level they were caught at, well it became a bit easier. So right now, I've got...I think (since the Armory is down)...seven or eight Level 25 pets. Once I hit the teens with them, I head to Pet Battle Level 20+ zones to get them the rest of the way. Along the way, I capture all the blue (epic) pets I can. And I continue the quests from Audrey Burnhep in Stormwind. Tonight I'll defeat the last of the Battle Masters in Northrend.

Other than that, I'm doing the garrison missions and invasions, continuing Yrel's quests. She is by far my favorite WoW character now (well, other than my own toons:) In last week's quest, she became the newest Exarch. But the battle pet leveling has been a hoot and has given me an opportunity to visit a lot of the places I loved when I was leveling my toons when I first started playing. Haha, I also have been soloing some of the old dungeons and raids - like Karazahn and the Wymrest instances (got the black drake). I did finally get my red primal raptor mount, so I've got all of those now (red, black, green, and the bone-white one!). Woo! The red one, same EXACT coloring of my devilsaur Skittles, is my favorite and has actually got me running around Azeroth and Draenor with Skittles again:)

I've sorta left my shaman sitting in the Tanaan Jungle with Khadgar because I don't feel like going through all those WoD starter quests again right now. Maybe this weekend! I have a couple of more pet families I need to level up, so that I'll have one of each at least, and that's the sort of brainless fun I am in the mood for right now:)

On a Mission

From the Bard:

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

Tonight I committed an act of revenge...for old times' sake. When I played WoW several years ago, some friends and I were questing in Hellfire Peninsula, we were often haunted by (and sent running by) the quaking ground as a high-level mob called Fel Reaver made his way around the area.

Tonight I was in Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge doing some pet battle leveling. All the lava and parched ground got me thinking about Hellfire Peninsula and going into a panic when we heard Fel Reaver coming or - worse - when we realized too late that he was coming and he killed us.

I flew to Stormwind, and from there took the portal to Hellfire Peninsula. And there...off in the distance...I spied him.

The ground shook, and I prepared myself. For some reason, all these years later, he didn't look as big as he once did...but when I say the ground shook, I mean the ground shook. It rumbled, and on my screen, the ground shook with every step he took. He didn't look as big from my vantage point, but he was still intimidating.

So I flew over him a few times, then I swooped in for the kill, landing a short distance away from him, and then...

Sadly, I was able to one-shot him. He doesn't seem so frightening anymore. It still felt good to kill that thing, though. Bastard. That's for all those times you scared the shit out of us.

On another note, today was Patch Day in WoW, my first in three years. Not a huge patch, just a few fixes, some buffs, and some changes to some items. But still...

There was rejoicing. And dancing. And the usual crowd around some of the NPC's. This is in Iron Forge at the heirloom vendor.

Still enjoying the game. My shaman is now at 90, she's at the Dark Portal on the edge of Draenor. My hunter's garrison is Tier 3 now, and I have one more Apexis Daily to do (which I should be doing now, but I think I'll just wait until tomorrow night) to start my next set of gear (ilvl 645, I think?). Still haven't ventured into dungeons yet:\ From the sound of it, I'd be sitting in a queue with about a million other dps waiting for a group anyway, so I'm not missing much at this point.

Big thing this expac is "hunters are OP!!!" Which simply means that a LOT of people are rolling hunters right now. Ha! I think this latest patch actually puts BM and SV above MM, with BM being spec of choice for some instances and SV for others. Not by a lot, mind you; from what I've been reading, Blizzard finally seems to have the three specs pretty balanced. Now they just have to balance all the other classes so they won't be whining about hunters so much:(

Like Coming Home

So now I've been back in WoW a little over a month. My hunter's at Level 100, and I've been doing my apexis dailies to get my gear up. I'm consistently getting Silver on my garrison invasions (yay, solo even;) I could probably easily get Gold if I brought a group in to help me, but it's actually kinda fun to try to hit Gold on my own.

I started leveling my shaman this weekend in Pandaland. She's at Level 89 right now. Stupidly (or not so stupidly), I missed a quest that would send me to the next leveling area, but it's mostly because I am enjoying the quest lines LOL! That's why I say "not so stupidly." The story is fun and different. I haven't made enough gold to buy flying training for Pandaria yet, and frankly, I'm not really that concerned with it. Haha, especially since mounts are account-wide now, and I'm having a blast running around on my raptor mounts:P My hunter can fly in Pandaland; my shaman can just use ground mounts until I feel like grinding gold with her;)

It's taking me a bit to get reaccustomed to my shaman's rotation, especially since things have changed so much. Meh, I have played my hunter so much that I can fire off her rotation blindfolded. With my shaman, I haven't quite got the key binding right. I also know I had an addon that gave me an action bar for my totems, but I'll be damned if I can find it:( So at some point, I have to sit down and make some macros. Some of the spells have changed too, so finding the right rotation has been a pain in the ass. I tried following the rotations I've been finding on sites online, but then when I try things in a different sequence, I find myself one-shotting mobs...which makes me think I need to use a different rotation than what they're recommending. Maybe it's just a trinket or something that I have, I don't know. Sometimes following the "rules" is overrated;)

I got the "bone-white primal raptor" on my hunter. I actually like the green one better LOL! The second primal egg I looted ended up being another green one, so I went off to the Isle of Giants and killed mobs until another egg dropped. Two days to go on that one. It took me awhile, but at least the bones sell decently on the auction house:)

Still having fun, even without flying in Draenor and without flying in Pandaland on my shaman:)

Famous Peoples on Zangarmarsh realm????

Just learned this tidbit:

Zangarmarsh is home to the official "The Guild" web series' guild <The Knights of Good> (Alliance) and WoW Insider's <It came from the Blog> (Horde) community guild.

Felicia Day plays/played(?) on my realm?! WHAT?!

Also interesting, I learned the other day that Mike Nesmith of the Monkees has a guild on Zangarmarsh as well. They actually are a currently active guild!

Reviving this old blog...

A few years ago, I had a WoW blog, then I stopped playing. Now that I'm playing again, I thought I'd start another one. I started playing right at the end of the Burning Crusade expansion pack, played all through Wrath of the Lich King and through most of Cataclysm, then quit...for reasons. Recently my friends Dre and Jim started playing again and told me I should play, that they were really enjoying the new expac.

Believe me, when it comes to addictions like WoW...for me it doesn't take much. So I resubscribed, made a toon on their server, then promptly "retreated" back to my draenei hunter Mystrinixx (my comfort zone???). Because my friends play Horde...and I prefer Alliance...I just can't bring myself to move Myst to their faction and server.

Anyway, so my hunter has hit Level 100 now, and I've worked a little bit on leveling my shaman Dissonantia (she currently sits at Level 85). While I skipped the Mists of Pandaria expac, I'm looking forward to diving into those quests with her; have done some of it on my hunter, but not a lot, and admittedly, Pandaria is a gorgeous place. I know that eventually I will continue leveling the toon I created on my friends' server and playing with them, but anyone that knows me knows I am not suited for Horde LOL!

I joined a guild, hoping it would be more active than it is. As it is, only a couple of people are ever on at any given moment, though the Guild Master has popped on a few times to say that life's kept her busy but she's planning on being back soon, so I'll wait a bit before looking for another one. For one thing, it's a Level 25 guild, which has some perks. And for another, while it is a bit inactive, at least it's quiet and there don't seem to be any jerks in it;) There's another guild I've been looking at, but for now I'll wait and watch their website and forums and see if I'm really ready for a very active guild. I'm not a raider or a dungeon or PvP (player vs player) freak, I LOVE the questing aspect of the game, so for now I'm good where I am.

I did make a new friend recently. I was in Shadowmoon Valley looking for treasure chests (seriously, Blizzard seems to have put them ALL over the place) and there's this elite tree-creature there. I had tried to kill it in the past, so I knew soloing him (at the level I was at) was pointless, so I was ignoring him. Well, along comes another hunter and she attacks him and BOOM, she's dead. I whispered her and asked if she needed help, and when she spirited back to her body, she grouped with me and we gave that tree-thing Hell LOL! 

My devilsaur, Skittles. Taste the Rainbow;)

Afterwards, while we were regaining our health, we started showing each other our hunter pets, then our mounts LOL While I know a lot of players collect things (mounts, toys, battle/vanity pets, etc.), I think hunters are a species unto themselves. When you think about it, we are a package deal with our combat pets. We have our own personal "tank" traveling around with us and, with this new expac and some buffs to our talents, we have some pretty decent heals and health regen buffs too. 

I think the boost to our talents is a good thing. While it's true that hunters are probably one of the easiest classes to play, they can also be one of the toughest to play well. Sure, there is some built-in forgiveness when a pet is doing part of your damage and you're able to stay at range and attack mobs; but at the same time, if you don't use traps and CC (crowd control) well, things can get ugly pretty quickly. Pets that aren't properly controlled can pull things (sometimes LOTS of things) you don't want them to pull. Lucky for me, I was taught to play by a couple of people who taught me how to play WELL. No huntard here...well, at least not MOST of the time. I'm only human, and I've done some stupid things from time to time. The difference between me and a huntard is that a huntard won't realize what they've done wrong and will probably do it over and over again; whereas, as soon as it happens, I mumble, "Oh shit. Well, that was dumb!" or simply "Oops." 

So the last several days, I've been in Pandaria, farming dinosaur bones on the Isle of Giants. It's a quest, a long, drudging, grueling quest... The goal is to collect 9,999 dinosaur bones for the achievement "I've Got 9,999 Problems But a Bone-White Primal Raptor Ain't One." With the achievement, you get a mount - said bone-white primal raptor. I will say, while I don't like most of the Horde character models (I have loved my draenei since I first started playing), they do have some pretty badass mounts, moreso than most of our Alliance mounts. I mean, the draenei mount is an elephant ffs! From the first moment I saw the Horde's raptor mounts, I wanted one. Until now, the only way for a casual player like me to get a raptor mount was to either level a Horde toon or get a lucky drop from Bloodlord Mandokir in the Zul'Gurub dungeon. I tried, believe me. So many times.

My brand-spanking new raptor mount!

So when I learned that there was a raptor mount you could get for an achievement, I headed to the Isle of Giants and started farming dinosaur bones. Ironically enough, farming so many bones also gives you a chance at looting a Primal Egg, which in three days hatches into one of three raptor mounts - black, red, or green. Those have been dropping like CRAZY for me. Alas, you can only carry one egg at a time. My first one hatched last night, into a glorious green raptor. Yay me!

With that one ready to hatch in about 20 minutes, I killed some mobs and two of them dropped Primal Eggs. Lucky for me, the corpses didn't despawn before my egg hatched, so I was able to pick up another as soon as I got my new mount. I'm hoping that one hatches into a red or black one:)

So I could essentially stop farming the bones, since I finally got my raptor mount. But you know what? I've got 7,774 bones collected...so I'm not stopping now. Also, killing the human mobs around the island, I've gotten about 15 pets to drop that I'm able to sell on the auction house, so it's all good! Not to mention the huge number of people who kill mobs and don't have the skinning profession. So I skin what I find that I can, which gets me exotic leather I can ditch on the auction house and also very often an item (I forget what it's called, like bloated intestines or something) that I can open up and normally contains gold and the occasional green gear item. And every so often Oondosta, the island "boss" mob will spawn. NOT soloable, though I have seen many people try (oh, believe me, I tried my first time there...that was comical lol!). But when there are enough people there, a group will usually form and kill him.

One of the mounts from the Stable Master achievement.

That brings me to one of the the things I'm kinda liking about the Warlords of Draenor expac. I don't know if it's because I play on a PvE server or if it's just the nature of the game, but it seems that players are helping other players more. There are some stable quests that players can do to "train" mounts as part of their garrison quests. The daily quests are to take your mounts-in-training out to Nagrand and kill specific boss mobs. Some of them can be tough, especially for hunters since we do rely so heavily on our hunter pets and our pets vanish when we're on our training mounts. I think Marksmanship hunters are the best suited for having their training mounts survive a couple of the mobs, though once I realized I could macro my Mend Pet spell, it became a LOT easier. Duh!

But what's been interesting is to see several people fighting the same mob, all on our training mounts and all working together and getting the achievements together - sometimes from the same faction, sometimes from different factions. The reason I think part of it is being on a PvE server versus a PvP server is that, for instance, if I'm running down a road and I see someone getting wrecked by a pack of mobs, their health is running low, I won't just keep running by, whether it's a Horde player or an Alliance player. If it's an Ally, I'll spirit mend them or drop a Gift of Naaru on them; if it's a Horde player, I'll help kill the mobs that they're fighting. 

PvP in a battleground is one thing; that's what it's for. World PvP I have never liked, not since leveling my hunter to 80 on a PvP server and spending a LOT of my leveling time being ganked by people WAY above my level. If you can one-shot a player because you're 40 levels above them, (a) you're not getting any honor kills/points and (b) all you're doing is taking some of the enjoyment of the game away from that player, especially if you're one of those assholes who camps them and just keeps on one-shotting them every time they resurrect. The way I see it? If you're out one-shotting low level characters, it's just because you suck against players of your own level. There is no challenge at all in killing a player who's 40 levels below you, and it only makes you a dick.

Anyway, enough rambling. I'll be making more posts about my adventures in the World of Warcraft!