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!