IntPiPoMo - Darkshore

This evening I took a trip down to Darkshore. I'm still in the mood to reminisce about my early days in WoW and Darkshore was the second zone that I ever entered. I took a trip down to see the wreckage in early Cataclysm, and to snap this ridiculous fan-girl photo with Malfurion.

  That's right. I tried to play it off like we were both waving at the camera.

I haven't been back to Darkshore since then, except to fly through. In fact, last night I was going down to Un'Goro to train my battle pets and, hopefully, catch some new ones, I flew right through. Normally, I would just watch the tv, but then I noticed the river underneath my character.

 

 I took some without the Hippogryph too, but I ended up liking this one the best.

It was then, that I knew Darkshore needed to be revisited.

 This is a waterfall by the Grove of the Ancients.

 

The Auberdine pier, this still makes me sad.

 

Enormous waterfall, appropriately in the "Maw of the Void"

 Bridge in Lor'danel, the new quest hub that replaced Auberdine, over one of the rivers that feeds the Maw.

46/50

IntPiPoMo - The Barrens

What is IntPiPoMo you ask? International Picture Posting Month. It is a yearly event, put on by Angelya of Revive and Rejuvinate through the month of November to coincide with NaNoWriMo.  For more information, or to join in see this post.

I've been spending a lot of time in the barrens lately. I'm trying to catch myself a giraffe calf. Since WoW came out, I have wanted a barrens giraffe and now I can finally own one and the darn thing won't spawn for me.

This guy was prancing about, teasing me that he didn't have a baby for me to tame.

No baby here either....

I found a whole family, being stalked by a horde... but still no baby.

I went sightseeing in Tanaris out of frustration...the dragon soul instance area is particularly beautiful.

Further in.

While doing my dailies... I found some lovely pink clouds in the jade forest.

19/50

IntPiPoMo - Birthday

What is IntPiPoMo you ask? International Picture Posting Month. It is a yearly event, put on by Angelya of Revive and Rejuvinate through the month of November to coincide with NaNoWriMo.  For more information, or to join in see this post.

It's my birthday today. In keeping with tradition that one must get presents on her birthday, I spent a bit of my gold hoard and bought myself a couple of yak mounts. Oh man are they cute.

New. Favourite. Mounts. The stirrups sit a little low for me though.

I just can't get over them. I wish they could fly, so I could ride them all the time.

I also hung out a while in Kun-Lai, to get some pictures of wild yaks. I found this little family and a couple of lone yaks too.

Aww. I just love them.

13/50

Shared Topic: Confessional

Blog Azeroth proposes a new topic for bloggers to discuss every week. This week is courtesy of Mataoka of Sugar and Blood.

What is one thing, just one thing, you did that was pretty awful in Azeroth, that you wish you could get some kind of redemption or forgiveness for, or even just get off your chest?

This was a hard one for me. If it's not already apparent, I try to be very disciplined in my interactions with other players in Azeroth. So, I've spent most of this week trying to remember something horrible that was my fault. I've managed to unearth two.

1. A while ago, I was in this great social, family guild. We raided a little, but were never had a consistent group and were; therefore, never very good. The draw for this guild was the family element, not the progression... I made the mistake of inviting my Type A, progression driven boyfriend to put his alts in the guild, since it was where I hung out on mine. Worse, I made the mistake of inviting him on a couple of runs with the guild group.

Ultimately it ended with him cussing out the weaker members of the group. He was kicked out, and I left with him, primarily out embarrassment.

Looking back on it, I feel bad that I didn't apologize for the drama I caused, by proxy of inviting him to the guild and the raid. I always knew that it was not the right fit for him.

2. The second incident is pretty similar to that, except it happened between myself and a friend. Honestly, I don't even remember what the fight was about, but it ruined our friendship and I wish I could take it back.

Mr. Wiggles, I Choose You.

Unless you've been under a rock for the past few months you will know about the new pet battle system introduced with Mists of Pandaria. Well, I did my first pet battle this weekend.

For those of you not in the know: the pet battle system allows players to use previously non-combat pets to battle each other using a turn based battle system. You level your pets, capture new pets, battle other players and work towards being a "Pet Battle Master." Does that sound familliar? It should. If there were gym badges it would be Pokemon.

If you thought WoW was addictive before... just wait until you pet battle. I made the mistake of trying it out before I hit 90 and my priest has been sitting at 86% through level 89 all weekend because I could not stop long enough to do some quests. I did; however, capture enough pets to put me over 150. I've been systematically going through zones and capturing all of the unique pets I need in each zone. I'm more interested in capturing them all than I am on the quality at the moment.

Also: I cannot wait to catch a Bandicoon... and call him Socks, that's just how much The Jade Forest still resonates with me

My Collection : [X]
Warcraftpets.com Guide to Pet Battles : [X]

Warcraftpets also has a handy tool to display wild pets by zone, which I have been using.

Leveling Discipline

I've said it before, I was not super excited for Mists and the crux of it was really because of the state of priest healing in early Cataclysm. When Cataclysm hit Disc was in its prime and bubble-spam was in demand. In raid my character felt powerful, and competitive against other healers. Heroics... they were a joke if you had a decent group and if you had a good healer mistakes were survivable.

When Cata hit my powerful, awesome priest became what felt like a weak, useless waste of pixels. Forget raiding, I couldn't even do Cata heroics confidently. I understand that Blizzard was trying to reintroduce crowd control as a necessary factor in both group make-up and the thought process behind pulling as well as bring back the idea that mana is a limited resource and that one needed to think before healing. In theory, I'm actually ok with that model. The problem is, in practice the damage tanks took was still spiky and that priests took the nerf to mana efficiency and spell efficacy too hard. If my groups did not have enough crowd control to give the tank one mob at a time it was almost a guaranteed wipe, and if not my mana efficiency was so bad that I needed to stop for water every pull. If a dps pulled aggro, they died. End of story. I did not have enough mana or the time in between tank heals to heal a dps and keep the tank up. In the end I tabled my main, and leveled an enhancement shaman. Honestly, the dps queue time was worth the anguish I avoided.

Yes, through patches the healing game got better. My priest started raiding again, and is still the only one of my toons to have earned "Destroyer's End," but I spent the better part of a year hating my favourite toon and suffice to say I was not in the mood for another expansion to come along and potentially break my class again. I feel like a level 85 character, even if not the maximum level, should still feel powerful. I don't need the games I play to make me feel inadequate.

Now, I'm currently only level 88, classes and work severely limit my play time so I have no commentary on End Game content - raids or heroics, yet, but so far my leveling experience has been pleasant. I've really enjoyed the new leveling zones, both in content and the overall esthetic. I level as Disc because of Atonement, which keeps me healed while I smite things to death and because of the ease of transitioning from leveling via questing to healing dungeons.

I have really enjoyed the new dungeons, particularly the "Stormstout Brewery," once you kill Ook and the Hozen come out and start dancing. That's a riot. I feel like the level of difficulty for a potentially unskilled pug is just fine. Some mistakes will kill you, others just cost me mana. A hardcore group of friends or raiders will find likely them too easy, and that's fine. I feel like dungeons, and even heroics to some extent should cater to the causal audience anyway. My mana efficiency is pretty good. It's not unlimited, nor should it be. My heals are appropriately effective as well. Overall I don't feel overpowered, but I don't feel weak or under powered either.

From what I've experienced thus far I'm excited to see what Mists has to offer us as players, but will have a better idea on the state of priest healing once I too hit the level cap.

Blog Azeroth: Shared Topic "Wow Faux Pas"

Blog Azeroth proposes a new topic for bloggers to discuss every week. This week is courtesy of Ninevi of Flask Half Empty.

A faux pas, noun, \ˈfō-ˌpä, fō-ˈ\ is a violation of accepted social norms (for example, standard customs or etiquette rules). The term comes originally from French, and literally means "misstep" or "false step". (via Wikipedia) Shared Topic: Do you think there any faux pas in WoW? If so, please explain your thoughts or maybe share your own memories and experiences! Feel free to include serious ideas (ie: etiquette in LFD/LFR) and silly ones alike (ie: fashion disasters in transmog)!

Let me start by saying I feel like there is an unwritten code of conduct in WoW, one that all good, respectful players know instinctively. I've given the rules a bit of thought and what I think it all boils down to is "If you wouldn't do it to someone in real life, don't do it online."  

I feel like with the introduction of many of the tools that make WoW accessible to people with very rigid schedules has brought on the consequence of exposing decent, knowledgeable players to more ignorant players who are looking for a free ride in dungeon and raid groups. It used to be that you could only play with other characters on your server. If you had a bad reputation on your server you didn't get into any groups. For example, during Wrath on my server there was a mage who was notoriously poorly geared.  He would spend peak hours in trade chat spamming for an invite for ToC, which was current content at the time. Now eventually he did gear up but his reputation for being lazy prevented him getting invites into raids. These days no matter your reputation, you can get a dungeon group, and even a raid group with no prior screening and with people you never encounter again. This added anonymity seems to give a lot of added freedom to ignore the rules of conduct.

Here are some of the Dungeon faux pas I've encountered:

1. Intentional Non-Tank Pulling. I'm not talking about accidental fear pulling or when a dps switches into tank spec because your tank has been afk for ages. I'm talking about the idiot in the group who intentionally runs off and pulls another group, usually while you are killing a perfectly good group already.
2. Needing on things you don't need. Related: Needing on everything. This applies to the guy who needs on all of the greens "for enchanting" and the DPS who needs on tank gear and steals it from the tank. Easily avoided by asking permission first.
3. Signing up for a tank or healer role, and running as a DPS spec. I know, the DPS queue can be long, but it doesn't matter when you get booted from every group you enter because your cpec in wrong.
4. Starting an escort quest before everyone in the group has the quest. 'Nuff said.
5. Wearing gear with inappropriate stats. The image below was a mage in Heroic Oculus at level 80. For real.

The Mists Have Receded

Mists of Pandaria has finally launched. Here is a picture of my new baby Monk.

I have to say that I was lukewarm about Pandaria since it was announced. I don't really like change and Mists proposed a lot of new changes. I have not gotten to play a whole lot yet, I have school and work to deal with. but my priest is about half way through smiting her way through the Jade forest and my Mistweaver Monk is nearly level 19 and so far, talent system aside, I really like this expansion.

Mists received a lot of criticism about Pandas, the Asian theme, and there were a lot of "Kung Fu Panda" references thrown around. Honestly from what I have seen so far I think it is beautiful. From the expressions that my new little panda makes to the cherry blossom trees that I saw on the Wandering Isle. Thus far it is beautifully crafted.

As for healing on the Monk, I don't have much commentary. At level 19 I have only one healing spell. It works well enough. I like that my auto attacks heal, feels reminiscent of my priests atonement healing, and it gives my little Panda something to do while waiting to heal somebody. I've been mostly questing though, the lack of energy limiting my attacks is nice but my decision was based largely on the poor quality groups that I've been getting in the dungeon queue. I mean come on people, the game has been around long enough for DPS to understand that the Tank is the only one who pulls. Clearly some people think that group etiquette is unnecessary in low levels, and to avoid slapping a disclaimer macro up that says "No heals for DPS that pull. No Rez either." or simply acting on that philosophy, I have chosen to quest, disappointing but it saves me grief and frustration.

Draw me, like one of your French Girls

Escort Quests in Dungeons Suck

For the past couple of weeks I have been leveling a new disc priest on a new server and have until now leveled completely through dungeons (the exception being levels 1 through 15) and have thoroughly enjoyed my time spent playing disc from the ground up. That is, until I got put in a group for my characters first run of Razerfen Downs. For those of you not familiar with the dungeon there is an NPC Quest giver named  Baelnistraz who gives out an escort quest, this would be fine if the quest were sharable; however, since you must accept his quest and then exchange it for the escort quest it is an unsharable chain and a huge pain in the butt and it is safe to say that none of my characters have successfully completed this quest. It's just too irritating.

Now, I'm the first one to admit I'm trying to level this character quickly, so this afternoon I decided to pick up the quest - the first one - the one that starts the chain. Directly after that someone started the escort part. I'm pretty easy going so I shrugged it off and saw it as an opportunity to get a little more exp and maybe a few scraps of cloth. The feral druid (read: kitty druid) did not take it this way, and immediately starts demanding that the escort portion be shared with him. Of coarse the quest is a chain and cannot be shared.

I should also mention that in groups I am the token quiet one. I sit back and heal. I have little to no interest in socializing with groups that are not on my server who I will probably never encounter again.

So, in true "quiet one" style, I sat back and let the drama deal with itself and did not get involved. Or at least, I thought I didn't. About halfway through the escort encounter I found myself back in Brill, where I had just purchased my new undead ponies. Apparently my silence had made me guilty of starting the quest, when I didn't even have the quest to begin with.

I know that getting kicked wasn't my fault, they were upset at not being able to complete the quest and needed someone to blame and I was easy to pin that on. It just... well, it upset me. Other than this I cannot remember the last time I was kicked from a group, and I usually equate being kicked with being bad and it's painful to feel like you weren't good enough, even when you've done nothing wrong.

Rationally though despite however much I hope that group wiped after kicking me it wasn't really their fault that they kicked me either. Ultimately it was a design flaw that got me removed from that group. If the quest were able to be shared that druid never would have mistaken my silence for guilt, because it wouldn't have mattered who started the escort.

Also: when things go wrong, it is not always the healers fault.