Category: Current Affairs

A Time to Remember

This weekend, we celebrated the life of our Gnomeregan Forever guildmaster—and friend—Forbidra.

It was lovely to have so many players take time out of their day to share a few words about Forbs, or to simply join in the cheers of “Forbidra Forever!”

This show of support for Forbs—and for the gnomes—greatly touched me and my fellow guildmates.

In the crowd, I saw former members, Twitter friends, and Warcraft community leaders—especially the WRA guilds—all coming together to celebrate one gnome’s life’s work.

After the formal memorial, we marched in a procession to Ironforge, and set up shop in Tinkertown, sharing ale and stories.

Thank you so much to everyone who came out.

For more screenshots and remembrances, visit the #ForbidraForever Twitter moment.

What’s on your pre-WoD Bucket List?

Anexxia getting her black wings of legendary doom from the Black Prince (a.k.a. legendary cloak quest line complete).

Now that we have the Warlords of Draenor expansion’s release date in hand (it’s November 13, 2014 if you hadn’t heard), it’s time to make that last pass at a bucket list for the Mist of Pandaria expansion.

At the top of the page, those black wings you see are my beloved Forsaken shadow priest getting her black wings of doom from the Black Prince, in exchange for finally finishing off the legendary cloak questline. I’d stalled out and not done the PvP portion of the chain after it taking forever to get my tokens in LFRs. So there’s one item checked off my list.

A shadowy Xu-Fu battle pet with Anexxia

I’ve been doing a serious amount of pet collecting as well, with the 4 Celestials pets at the top of my want list. I’ve gotten my first one, Xu-Fu, seen here in shadowform with me, and am on my way to the other 3, and should have them in hand before WoD drops.

I’m also working on getting my first-ever paladin to 90 (she’s at 77), and got my first level 90 hunter Alliance side a couple of months back. Which means of course I had to go and start a horde hunter this weekend…

But that’s the easy part– the what I’ll be able to accomplish. It’s what won’t be done that always weighs heaviest. For me, it’s the Challenge Mode dungeons. I had high hopes of getting a regular group together to run these, but it never seemed to happen. So I’m actually going to end the expansion without having done even one. Which is a bummer.

So how about you? What’s on your bucket list for the next 3 months?

The Joys of the Newbs!

WoWScrnShot_010514_203348

Lookie! I’m a quest giver, on my new Belf paladin. I’ve never gotten a Paladin past level 21 before until now. And I hadn’t leveled a Forsaken or Blood Elf post Cataclysm, so I hadn’t done all the quests out that way either. Tho this one I’d done on my Forsaken shadow priest. Johnny Awesome never fails to crack me up!

Oddly enough, this is not the only baby alt I’m working on at the moment. I’ve rolled a Panda hunter on a new to me server, to check out a possible place to play some of my neglected Alliance characters. Although my heart belongs primarily with my Forsaken ladies, I do enjoy some gnome shenanigans from time-to-time. Which means I need to find a new place for that, given how many of my D’tan peeps have faded away over the past two years.

I’ve levelled so many baby alts over the years, and have 6 or 7 90s spread across 5 servers. I love that now, in addition to questing and LFG, I can pet battle my heart out to get that much needed XP, if I’m not feeling a particular questing zone. Mostly, that restlessness with questing sets in when I get to the Cataclysm content. I’ve pushed about a dozen characters through it in total, and really and truly over it. (see all those level 85s gathering dust after that push).

Honestly tho, I love all the newbie little quests. And revisiting my favorite quest areas. So much has changed post Cataclysm, but some of my favorite places and NPCs are still there to make me smile.

WoWScrnShot_110613_173133

In other amazing alt news, I finally leveled up my Forsaken mage to 90! That’s right, my wee lass who sat out the Cataclysm zoomed up from 80 to 90, primarily through doing my pet battling bidding in the greater Mount Hyjal area. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly she was able to gear up and be ready for SoO LFR, thanks to the island loot pinata. Good stuff.

What’s keeping you busy in game?

Iron Circle: A New Home for my Forsaken Shadow Priest

Can't we all just get along? This means YOU, Lady Jaina Proudmore.

I am happy to report that as of a few days ago, my Forsaken shadow priest has officially found a new home, on LLane, in Iron Circle. Huzzah!

As those of you who follow me on twitter know, it’s been a real challenge for me Horde guild-wise since mid-Cataclysm. When our friend-led raiding guild server transferred off Bronzebeard in the dark of night, leaving us guildless, I mostly stopped playing this lady, despite her being my all time favorite character.

When Wrenz and I returned from our time away from WoW (a.k.a. our flirtation w/SWTOR), I had hoped to find that things had livened up on Bronzebeard, but I really didn’t ID a guild that would be a good fit for my interests and raiding timeframes (I’m PST and can not get online prior to 6 PT weeknights.)

I had been a little stubborn about considering other realms, in large part because almost all of my playtime on Anexxia had been on Bronzebeard. But at a certain point, you have to know when to let go of the past and move on.

For me, the turning pointwas my getting restless with not raiding. Even tho my gnomey shadow priest was quickly geared up via LFR, I was not able to find her a raiding team. And although I love doing the retro raids with friends, the inability to form a cross-realm raid group meant she was pretty much stuck with LFR as her only raiding outlet. Now don’t get me wrong– that is better than not raiding at all. But in my heart, it’s the comraderie and sense of achievement from raiding that keeps me most interested in the game.

And thus, I shipped off this lady, and a passel of alts, to app to Iron Circle last month, at the urging of a number of twitter WoW peeps, with @glyneth being the prime inspiration/instigator for my application.

I’ve been thrilled to get to do a few of the recent tier raids in the team 2 10man group, and the weekly current tier raid LFR with almost a full guild raid. I’ve got my WoW mojo flowing again. I am filled with the urge to compile best-in-slot gear lists. And write posts on optimizing your raid DPS. i.e. things are back to normal again.

Now, I can’t promise to be better about posting in the blog mind you as I am still super busy with the new job. But I can promise that when I do, it will be back to the raiding shadow priest topics of yore.

And just in time to get prepared to put that jerk Hellscream in his place…

Wish me luck!

P.S. Vol’jin for Warchief!

Gone Fishing…

Anexxia has gone fishing. BBL
Farewell, and thanks for all the fish!

I’ve been putting off the inevitable. But this morning, I took the plunge, and canceled my World of Warcraft subscription, almost 6 years to the day I started playing.

I haven’t logged in since Christmas Day, when I logged in to pick up a few gifts for my alts under the Winter Veil tree. MIA were the many folks who’ve made the game fun for me. And thus I quickly logged off and went back to playing that other MMO.

I have 6 years of memories– both amazingly awesome and incredibly disappointing– behind me with this game. I don’t think I can say the same for any previous game or online distraction.

And then there are those of you who are actually reading this post. The amazing online blogging and twitter community that has sprung up around this game over the years has been a prime motivator and instigator of so much of the fun I’ve had in game. I won’t miss you guys b/c I am taking you along with me via twitter and the other blog.

🙂

I may be back for the next expansion, becuase I really am excited about my 150 vanity pets becoming Pokemon.

In the interim, I will still write about MMO guild management topics here when the mood moves me to do so.

But for now, I’m shifting out of the purple shadow form and hanging up my Boomkin dancing shoes for a bit.

Catch you on the flipside…

My 2011 World of Warcraft Year in Review

hitting a dead end in Tanaris

As evidenced by the increasingly irregular posts to Bible of Dreams, 2011 was not the best year of my almost 6 years of playing WoW. But still, I bring you, my annual year in review meme…(see also 2010’s edition)

What were you most excited about in the past year?

I managed to find time to level up some goblin ladies and found myself enjoying every minute of it. Well, other than a few really jerky LFD groups. Overall though, had a blast and highly recommend you roll one as they are just too darn adorable to miss out on. I also logged in to make the most of the various holiday activities and bosses, other than Winter Veil.

What was the best thing you bought?

Buying myself and Wrenz each a Vial of the Sands was definitely my most well spent G of the year. A big Bank of Azeroth balance is nice and all, but being able to turn into a huge shadowy dragon, grab a friend in my claws and fly off– that’s priceless!

What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

I would like to have a new reason to log in and play. Right now, I am really not terribly motivated to do so. There have been little pockets of excitement like logging in to transmog my favorite ladies into the gear I most loved, but honestly, other than that and a few other things I’ve blogged about this past year, I haven’t been super motivated above and beyond logging in to hang out and chat w/some of the folks I love playing with across my collection of servers.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Hitting the 125 pet mark for Anexxia and Psychocandy, with a little help from my friends. Thank you. 🙂

What was your biggest failure?

I tried to lobby Blizzard to add a tuxedo kitten to the assortment of vanity pets in game, but they didn’t bite. Even though I served up the most adorable cat model for them, my much loved and missed kitty.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Waiting around to see if I was going to actually be invited to a raid group.

What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2011 that you’d never done before?

I stopped raiding. And it was really really weird. I’ve been raiding consistently on one or two characters ever since my first character dinged 58 and we needed another healer for our MC raid alliance raid. Raiding didn’t work out for me, despite being in both horde and alliance guilds that were raiding. As became all to clear to me once I gave up the ghost of raiding being a possibility, I didn’t find myself having as much fun in Azeroth on an ongoing basis without it, and thus, spent significantly less time there.

What was your favorite new place that you visited?

The new Dark Moon Island. And of course, SWTOR, but shhh that’s not in Azeroth.

What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

I honestly can’t pick one specific WoW blog this year, because I simply loved too many different posts from too many folks, thanks to the amazing WoW twitter community and folks like MMO Melting Pot and the WoW Insider Daily Quest that are always sharing links to posts that merit immediate reading/commenting. I will say I was really sad about so many of my fave peeps hanging up their WoW blogging hats, especially Reflections from the Pond.

Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2011.

Watch your back. The dwarves say this to me all the time. I should have heeded them! Also, actions speak louder than words. I have never heard as much malarkey from folks as I have this year. If you don’t walk that talk, don’t bother flapping your jaws about it! ;p

What was your Year in WoW like? Share a link to your year-in-review in the comments!

PS Haven’t written yours yet? Steal my list of Qs and link back to this post!

1) What were you most excited about in the past year?

2) What was the best thing you bought?

3) What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

4) What was your biggest achievement of the year?

5) What was your biggest failure?

6) What do you wish you’d done less of?

7) What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2011 that you’d never done before?

8) What was your favorite new place that you visited?

9) What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

10) Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2011.

Darkmoon Island: Fun for All Levels

Psychocandy in druid T2 with her My Little Seapony

I spent some time tooling around on Darkmoon Island this past Sunday, running errands for some carnies and fishing up a storm. the fishing is what netted me the Sea Pony vanity pet you see in the screenshot above. It too fewer than 50 casts off the coast (both in and outside of wreckage pools) to catch this guy. I obtained my second sea pony, on my Forsaken shadow priest, in a scant 12 casts. But in contrast, my gnomey shadow priest fished the coast off and on for several hours (while I baked cookies) and never saw a sea pony land in her bags.

The sea pony fishing wasn’t the only excuse to bust out my mad professional skills on the island however– there are quests you can complete for all flavors of professions, netting you some rep with the Faire, plus prize tickets and cash or XP depending upon your level. Some of the professional quests will require that you bring some supplies with you (or head out the portal to your staging area at the end of the dock to go grab some.) Thus I started bringing my stack of flour with me on all my chefs, and blue dye/red dye/simple thread on my tailors.

One of the more silly but fun aspects were the many new World event achievements the Faire brought with it, including the “I was Promised a Pony” achievement. As seen below, there are some ponies you can abscond with and ride around the island on for a bit. And who doesn’t like ponies?? EVERYBODY likes ponies. But I digress.

The Faire also hands out some quests that involve incenting you to grind mobs complete Battlegrounds and Dugneons back on the continents. Thus, even though there is a little bit of a grind involved if you plan to save up your tickets to purchase some of the fabulous prizes (which include mounts and vanity pets, heirlooms, and replica tier gear) they actively aim to make it feel less grindy than Firelands for instance. Somehow I doubt I will return to the Faire to play the games very often, or complete the in game challenges to rack up the tickets for even one pet, but it was a nice day’s excursion to bring out my favorite toons to go see.

My Little Gnome Pony!

Transmogrification: Validation for a Game Lifetime of Being a Pack Rat!

Psychocandy in her full 8-pieces of Druid T2, with Onyxia Scale Cloak and Shadow Wing Focus Staff

As recently noted, transmogrification was the #1 thing I was looking forward to in Patch 4.3 which dropped this week. Thus it should come as no surprise that when I finally logged in to WoW, post-SWTOR BETA weekend, that the first activity on my agenda (and my only activity thus far) was to get my transmogrifitcations in order.

My first order of business was my druid, Candy. At one point, all of her bank bags, plus two of her personal bags were stuffed full of old gear and vanity pets. Eventually, our pets went into the Companion tab, which meant she was able to hoard even more gear and tabards. I considered her full set of Tier 1, and the T2 recolored set from BC heroics, but settled on her full set of T2. In addition to loving its look, it was a minor miracle to have collected all 8 pieces at level (only 1 other druid on our team also got all 8 pieces, my friend El.). My vanilla WoW raiding days were definitely the high point for my druid, so I love that she is now able to forever memorialize that moment in time.

Snakedriver in her Frozen Shadoweave set with the Staff of Infinite Mysteries

Next up: my gnome shaodw priest Snake. She was born a Draenei at the dawn of the Burning Crusade. And as soon as she hit max level, she was tapped by her friends and family guild to start coming to the weekly Karazhan raids. Everyone wanted her OP replenishment and healing powers. I still remember the night the Staff of Infinite Mysteries dropped for her. I couldn’t stop grinning for a solid hour. It totally made the outfit. “…the Menagerie is for guests only…”

Anexxia not wearing her shiny halo because it has gone missing

My beloved shadow priest Anexxia, however, did not have a similar happy transmogrification story to share. Her bank is somehow a mess of mismatched helms and shoulders, one dress, and a few other misc bits. But most importantly, her halo is missing. That’s right– my most favorite piece of her gear, which I have posed with in numerous costumes/dress up screenies– POOF! To say that this deflated my transmogrification high would be accurate. I poked around, and settled on an outfit, but I am not happy with it. I wanted the halo. I’ve put in a ticket asking to have the item restored, but given my recent track record with GM requests, I won’t hold my breath.

How about you — how has your transmogrification been going?

What Can a Guardian Cub Buy You?

Now that the 24-hour cooldowns have passed and the Guardian Cubs have started popping up on auction houses all around Azeroth, ranging from $9500-$20,000 G, I have to ask: does this RMT transaction really amount to much given the current state of the WoW economy? What can you actually *buy* for 10k-20k G anyhow? In my opinion, not much that matters.

Sure, you can upgrade to the fastest flying speed, or buy epic flying for another alt, or finally build yourself a mechanohog. But other than a few bits and bobs in the forms of random raid BOEs, there really isn’t a whole heck of a lot you can purchase with G in game that matters.

When I asked on twitter last night what those folks who’d purchased the cub for resale planned to do with their profits, no one replied with any big plans. Perhaps some were going to sell a couple of cubs to save up for something like the Spire of Scarlet Pain, or perhaps others might intend to blow their proceeds on purchasing other vanity pets for their pet collectors, but I suspect that many folks were just going to stash the cash away in their WoW bank accounts, and use it for the more mundane every day expenses that eat through your saving (i.e. repairs and enchants and gems etc.)

To me at least, it feels like the Real Money Transactions (RMT) tree fell in the Azeroth woods but no one heard it fall.

I’m a Face-Melting Shadow Priest But I Still Love the Whimsy and the Adorableness in WoW

This poor goblin must have been very naughty to be jack-o'-lanterned this way...

Recently, on twitter, pretty much from the moment Blizzard announced them as the new expansion’s focus and new race at Blizzcon, there has been much backlash against the Pandaren. I’ve seen many comparisons to Ewok and gnomes (because apparently many many people feel sickened and/or threatened by gnomey awesomeness) and assertions of how their “silliness” as a class equates to Blizzard having jumped the shark and ruined the World of Warcraft.

All I can say to that is: BALONEY!

Personally, I am equally at home with my love of vanity pets and gnomes and kittens and being a face melting shadow priest! I challenge anyone who has played with me to honestly say “Oh that Anexxia is such a carebear gnome lover and kitten scratcher that it gets in the way of her being a good player; she really needs to L2play.”

The entire style of WoW, to me, is somewhat cartooney, versus hyper realistic. It’s not meant to be a very serious representation of modern life. I don’t want to play a character that looks just like me in real life– I play me in real life every day. Having a little fun with appearances doesn’t change my ability to play in any way. Yes, sometimes we are going about very serious business, such as very important raid boss killing, but at the end of the day, we are playig a game, with a goal of having fun. And having a dancing gnome shadow priest in your raid is fun! Not as fun as a dancing boomkin perhaps, but FUN all the same!

You know what else is fun? Bouncing along as you run. I bounce on my night elf. I bounce on my Forsaken. I bounce on my gnomes. And the bounciness is contagious. Before you know it, you have other folks bouncing along in synchronization with you! And suddenly that long run back from that wipe isn’t quite as annoying.

Frankly, it always puzzles me how much anti-gnome sentiment I’d hear while playing my beloved gnomey casters. Now, Pandaren have taken up the mantle of most heckled and despised race. I don’t particularly like the hunchbacked, ever-sniffing worgen, but I don’t go on Internet tirades about how they ruined Wow and are ridiculous insults to my gaming self. I just simply don’t play one. Hopefully the anti-Pandaren uproar will die down and folks will find something else to deride. If not, at least all you pandas will have a nice thick furry skin to deflect the criticism. And hopefully you’ll have an awesome beer-powered dance to dance those cares away with…

PS a big thank you to Cyn for suggesting I actually post about this.