Concentratin' on Consecratin'

I'm a bad druid.

I'm a worse paladin.

But I love it.

I've been neglecting updates for a variety of reasons: first, not much going on and not much to say — and some of the things I would say aren't very nice, so I just leave it alone. Second, work has kicked into overdrive and I've been really busy there, so not much WoW time. Third, what WoW time there was I spent as my retloladin blood elf doing PvP stuff on Anvilmar. Not much healing or bark-dancing or any such fun things. Finally, it's Hallow's End season, so what wasn't spent as a retloladin was the vast army of alts flying hither and yon getting candy bucketloads of experience.

I was sad to see Ratters hang up his sword. He was a great blogger, funny and informative and entertaining. I've stopped reading a lot of blogs and journals because they're SO negative. His was never filled with the diatribes you can find on some blogs... wink, wink, nudge, nudge...

A great rebuttal (pun intended) to a lot of this negativity is this recent post by Bellwether. That is such a great attitude: see someone doing something wrong and HELP them. Don't be an idiot and post screenshots about it. Ugh. It's what I like to see in bloggers — a helpful attitude, an attitude I see as "I don't know everything, but what I do know I'd like to share."

Anyway, moving on... I am once again solo in my own guild. The two friends I'd made decided they really wanted to be in a more active and larger guild. I wished them well and they joined with friends they had made in a "levelling" guild while they were working on alts. I'm sad to see them go, not gonna lie, because I felt like we were right on the edge of having a full group of five good people to do Heroics with... but everyone has to make their own way.

I am considering joining a semi-casual 'raiding' guild with Petal... just to see some more of the Trial and Grand Crusade. I was pulled into a really good PuG with about 8 members of this guild and they seemed like nice, normal folks. We'll see... I'm pretty solitary, though.

Candy + Levelling = Awesome!

Tricks and treats, smell mah feets!
Give me a level so on monsters I can beats!

BUSY WEEKEND

I went a little berserk this weekend and got a lot of stuff done I'd wanted to do for a while.

First, I got my paladin up to level 65 and was able to power-level inscription up to 425. This allows me to actually do something with all the flowers Petal ninjas from poor slow-mounted Death Knights and also also to make some Northrend Darkmoon cards. I figure this will be profitable in the long run, as I can spend one hour picking herbs (I wait until I get at least 3 Eternal Life) and then send them to my paladin and have her mill herbs and make a card. I took all the herbs I had on hand and got 12 cards in one day. Of course it'll slow down now that I don't have a big stock in waiting... but I figure I can make two cards a days pretty easily.

Second, my little warlock Babette dinged 76! After being 75 forever and a day, I got to 76 and that opens a bunch Sholazar Basin quests. I'll go back to doing the fishing and cooking dailies with her, but it also gives me a chance to do some random questing in my favorite zone. For some reason, I can definitely see the end (level 80) with her at 76, that I couldn't at 75. Maybe it was just psychological, but re-speccing and learning some new skills seems to have upped my damage and I can finish quests pretty quickly.

Finally... I transferred Amakua, my draenei shaman to Anvilmar and faction-changed her to a tauren named Nihlasioki aka Blackmoon (roughly translated from Miccosukee), a great big black tauren male. He had a big load of Heirlooms for all my Horde characters, a pile of gold, some random Alliance cooking recipes, a couple of the Alliance faction pets and some miscellaneous magic items and dresses and other craziness. Hopefully, this will give my Horde characters and servers a shot in the arm so that I can start levelling them more regularly.

Non-Update Update

This week I took it relatively easy, although I did get my protadin alt up to 63 (to keep up with my speed-levelling guildmates who went from 55-60 since last Friday). Didn't really do much beyond a couple dailies every day, as I'm going to probably dedicate next week to pushing my warlock to 80. Of course that may all change. I'm not really ready for her to be 80 and I'd like to get some minor gear upgrades for her, but... well, it's all up in the air honestly. I just feel like it's a stumbling block because I keep meaning to get to her and she's so close. She's gotten at least half of her level from just doing fishing and cooking dailies and while it's fun to do them, I can't really see doing them all the way to 80. I'd go crazy.

I didn't do anything on my RP character either, but think I'll try and get her to at least 10 this weekend. I still have little over a week on Recruit-A-Friend, so it's definitely possible. Maybe just power her through with the old "double mage" trick. Dual mages can just nuke like crazy and level quickly in my experience... if I get them to 20 in a couple hours I could boost the rogue and be done with it.

The biggest excitement is my little benefit for Sir Noggin. The Landro Longshot card is higher than I expected and still has 7 days left! Plus it seems like he's gotten quite a few other donations. With 75% of the needed donations, I'm hoping that little guy will get enough for his head surgery and live a long and happy life... but you could still click and donate if you wanted to!

Trying to whip up a troll-proof (haha) recruitment post for our Realm forums. At the point where just two or three more people would round us out quite well.

Noggin Update

Sir Noggin's Noggin

The short version:

A realm-mate of mine named Fatty adopted this cute little kitten that the shelter wanted to put down because he has a bump on his head that turns out to be a cyst. They can't take the cyst out because he has a wee hole in his wee skull which keeps his wee brains in. It costs a lot of moo-lah (for you Taurens out there) to keep a brain inside a kitten. $4000 is what they're after and if enough nice people chip in say $1 or $2 they can get some cat scans (pun intended) and have him fitted for a custom wee helmet (which is made of win, if you ask me).

Here's a longer version on YouTube: Noggin's Noggin and here's a handy link for how to donate: Click Meh!

I know we all have jobs and lives and are hungry and times are tough and all that jazz, but $1 or $2 or even $5 isn't going to break ya, is it?

I'm going to donate, but I'm also going to offer something up as well: a rare 'Tabard' card from the WoW TCG, Landro Longshot's Tabard of Flame.



Click this link to bid on eBay!

Like I said, 100% of the proceeds from this auction will go to Sir Noggin. Pimp this around to cat lovers, tabard lovers or whoever.

Dear Mr. Direbrew

Adventures in Role-Playing, Part 2

Last night was my first 'event' on Cenarion Circle... a "come to our clinic and get healed of maladies" kinda thing put on by Da Doctas, a guild of... well, healers and others.

It almost didn't happen (for me anyway) because I had mixed up my Tuesdays and Wednesdays and was lurking waaaaay over in Silverymoon killing dragonhawks and waiting for a different event. I was -just about- to ask someone in the guild that was sponsoring this other event when I decided to re-check the forums and saw what I did. I had about two minutes to make a 15-minute dash over to Crossroads. A quick hearth and zepellin over and I was in Durotar. Seeing Brewfest, I 'cheated' and grabbed the quest for the Ram's reins (free fast mount ftw) and whipped it up to a gallop, straight towards the event. Of course, half-way there a raptor started chasing me. It unmounted me (that just sounds wrong, doesn't it?) and being 8 levels above me had a nice long gnaw on my undead bones. It worked out well, because I was close enough to spirit res and shamble into Crossroads just as the first 'Docta' got there.

I had a great time... going with the whole "I want to be cured from being Undead" thing... and a nice enough priest explained how I was raised and so on and so forth. I also pickpocketed a couple people, got in a great long conversation about some 'job opportunities' and overall really enjoyed myself. Stayed up way too late, but it was worth it for sure.

It took me a bit to figure out what the ((double parends)) meant... i.e., conversation that's 'out of character'... and I'm still kinda unsure as to what text that is 'emoted' means. For example: there'd be an emote with a sentence, and I don't know if that means everyone is 'hearing it' or just the person emoted to or what. I'm generally a fast typer, so I had a bit of trouble waiting for people to talk and often would blurt out more nonsense when someone else was just taking their time forming a reply. Hopefully I'll learn a little more patience.

Another event tonight and then I'll get back to my druid for the weekend... but this is definitely something I could get used to.

Adventures in Role-Playing, Part 1

Meet Fredericka.

I've created an RP character on the Cenarion Circle realm. Fredericka is loosely based on Fredericka Mandlebaum, a New York city 'fence' of the late 1800s. I wanted a rogue, someone with a strong will and head for business... and someone who is ultimately out for herself.

Now, I am a complete noob when it comes to role-playing in WoW. In fact, I'm pretty much making it up as I go along. It was interesting being on an RP realm. I noticed right away there wasn't as much 'chatter' in the General channels and Trade chat seemed very on target as well. Surreal!

In any case, I play Fredericka as this: she just woke up as a Scourge with very little idea of what happened, where she is and what she is to do. She knows her name, a vague idea she lived in Lordaeron and had a husband. Seeing the Shadowpriest and hearing all the stuff about the Lich King and the Scourge didn't really interest her. She's handling being 'undead' pretty well, and eating corpses doesn't really bother her as much as she'd thought it would (having lived very poor all her life). I play her rogue abilities as not so much as being 'trained' in them and more like 'remembering' how to do certain things (although there's definitely some things like poisons she will be or is learning, but things like backstab and pickpocket and stealth are more 'remembered').

So there she was, level one and asked to kill zombies, rattle the rattlecages and collect duskbat pelts. She'd /scowl a bit and do the tasks asked of her, but I spent a good hour just pick-pocketing, figuring she'd be trying to get as much cash set aside as possible. I did try to RP with some people, but my /scowl and stealth at the level 80 warlock nuking spiders didn't help things, I think. My only "RP encounter" was with someone who probably wasn't RP'ing with me...

A warlock named Mathiand asked for help finding the Scarlet Converts. I asked "What's in it for me?" and after a long pause he said, "I'll give you this cloak." I agreed and led him over to the mobs where he proceeded to attack the mobs and grab his quest items. I waited for a minute and said "Okay, so about that cloak...?" and waited some more. I /poke'd him and said "You owe me a cloak!" with no response. /Scowling (again) I stealthed as he ran back to town. Knowing he'd have to come back, I went into stealth and hid behind Meven, the named mob he'd need for part 2 of that quest. Just as he approached, I stepped out of stealth, backstabbed and killed him... 'stealing' his mob. He didn't say anything, but I /laughed and ran away (after looting the mob).

I finished up there and headed to Brill and ran around, in my own mind RP'ing with the NPCs because there sure weren't many people there. A level 1 warrior named Huxleyhobbs and another warlock named "Iwillfearu" or something like that. I could have probably initiated a convo with the warrior, but was feeling shy so I moved on to the Undercity.


So... any clues on what I can do to meet people? Are there standard RP 'channels' I could join? What's acceptable on General chat? I think my biggest issue is that I don't know the 'rules' of RP.

Growing A Guild, Part 2

When growing a guild, one of the most important places to begin is with your expectations. These form the 'roots' of your guild. Have as clearly defined a goal as you can have and you lessen the chances of surprises down the road. Saying "We're going to be a raiding guild and push content!" and then have a very casual approach is just as bad as saying "We're a guild where friends and family come first!" and trying to get everyone ready for Ulduar 25. My guild's 'roots' if you will is simple: a small group of mature individuals who enjoy solo play but also enjoy running Heroics and 10-man content with people they can trust. That's a lot, but covers my bases I believe.

Mature: You may be the best 18-year-old on the continent and the most mature and the funniest and be an awesome player, but I'm not gonna give you a guild invite. Why? Because the current (and future) members I am looking for are generally working professionals with families who happen to play WoW. We don't have boyfriends, girlfriends, buddies and class... we have husbands, wives, children and work. We have a common ground outside of WoW that we can draw upon when stuff comes up... and inevitably stuff will come up, I am sure of it.

Solo Play: I came out of my last guild determined to primarily play solo for the rest of my WoW time. After being joined by Beircheart, and playing my Horde alts with him and his mother, I saw the possibilities of group play with people I like and respect. However, because of the small nature of the guild, people should be willing and able to play solo a good chunk of the time.

Heroics/10s: Thank you, Blizzard for the 10-man option. I have heard (and seen) that raiding is oft-times like herding cats... and I'll be fine with herding just the 10 for quite a long, long time. Having just 5 people will be great for a while, but we all know there's a lot more content coming down the line and I really would like to see it.

Trust: This is the biggie. My goal is to get a group of people who all genuinely trust one another. I want that main tank to not be worried that he's going to die, because he knows that I have a Swiftmend and Rejuvenation coming his way. I want my mages to see they're pushing aggro, but trust that if they DO 'get a lucky crit' and pull, the tank will be able to Taunt off of them. Also, that if people sign up for something they will do everything they can honor their promise.

So those are what the 'roots' are to the new guild I am growing. I am trying to both make the ideal guild for myself, but also my members. In part 3, I'll explain about guild ranks and bank access and all that other 'regular' guild stuff.