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!