Tag Archives: link love

Your Favourite Gaming Blogs

As I appear to be blogging at the moment I’m looking to tidy up my Google Reader, removing folk who sadly no longer blog and adding people I’m not following that I should be, so that I can join in a little with the community. These links will also spill over into my blogroll a little :) .

What I’d like to ask from yourselves is a favour – if you could link up your favourite blogs (or your own blogs if you like) in the Linky at the end of this post I’ll pay you back in love! Just pop in the name of the blog and the url and that’s it. Simples! :D Please spread the word too, it could be a nice little resource for everybody to find new blogs to follow. ((And a little note, please don’t take advantage of the free link love – I will moderate this.))



Fantasmical Friday #5

This week I have a little request. My posting is going to go downhill for a couple of weeks. This week we have the house to ourselves, which means some peace and quiet to get a bunch of reading done and catch up on tv, and next week we’re going away to visit people, chances are it’ll take me a little settling back in before I start posting properly in the third week, so I would like to ask for guest posts just to keep the ball rolling around here. The only kinds of posts I’m not really interested in are raiding and pvp type posts unless they are aimed at the more “casual” type of player, and stories (RP or not) are great, aside from that anything goes. They would be your posts with links back to you (if you have a URL to link back to). If you can donate any unwanted posts to the Menagerie I will love you forever and perhaps eventually return the favour if you like. And please spread the word if you can! I’d really really appreciate any help I can get.

The only thing really of note this week, aside from winning the fishing contest, is Fae’s Goblinification which has been a long time coming. I’ve always preferred the “pretty” races but I just have such a soft spot for Goblins. They’re so little! So Fae the Blood Elf turned Draenei Hunter is finally short and green with awesome hair and yay for the Swift Horde Wolf‘s return! I also ninja name-changed. I never did like Faesiala, so I changed it to Faelysia which was my original second choice ((after, of course, Fae, which I should get back when I transfer back to Vashj)) and to me, it looks a lot better. Doesn’t remind me of Tikka Masala any more (mmmm…).

And the obligatory “omg all of the achievements” screenshot after a faction change. (Click to embiggen)

World of Ponycraft

As promised, Fae the Goblin Hunter as a pony.

Screenshot of the Week

Dressing up in Karazhan.

Linkies

Nngh. I’ve been bad this week. I realised yesterday that I’ve spent my blog reading time primarily on book blogs and entering contests for books (I won one, yay!) and that I hadn’t kept up with the WoW blogs like I usually do. I’ve tried to make up for it but sorry if I missed any awesome posts this week! Either way, these are all very interesting reads.

  • ManaliciousHow Playing My Alt Was Hurting My Raiding: Vid’s discussion on how to keep your head straight when you raid as one character but also play a few alts on the side.
  • Mortigan The WarlockMade In China: Whilst I still don’t and never will agree with the practise of buying gold, Mortigan does raise a few good points about Chinese gold farming.
  • Priest With A CauseWhat if WOTLK had never happened?: Shintar’s exploration of what Cataclysm could be like without the introduction of game mechanics brought into the game during Wrath of the Lich King.
  • Pugnacious PriestThe Family that feasts together: A look at whether eating together ingame causes some kind of bond.

Happy Friday!

Fantasmical Friday #4

Honestly guys, this is one of those weeks that has simply passed me by. I start browsing the internet and then “Whoops! Where did the day go?”

Earlier in the week I played my Hunter a fair bit. I’d decided that while she’s still Alliance, I should get Old Ironjaw to save messing around in Ironforge when she’s Horde. I installed Fishing Buddy, configured it and off I went. It took me about 150 casts and then I fancied a bit more fishing, as I’d also tried the STV fishing contest the same day and failed miserably to a Druid who fished in everybody’s pools *grumble*, so I had the fishing bug and went off to try and get a turtle. That didn’t last too long. I tried out Marksman in a couple of dungeons and it was okay but I found it a little frustrating after playing Survival, and I wasn’t completely feeling Survival either, so I tried Beastmastery and hooboy was that a good fit. I wanted something that would quickly kill things while levelling as opposed to waiting “patiently” for Aimed Shot to cast yet again, and this was just.. wow. I love it! Plus I can now use Loque’nahak (or BLUE GLOW KITTY as I affectionately call him) finally who I named Ailuros after a cat in my NaNoWriMo story. So that was some fun.

I also boosted Dan in Blackrock Spire to get us both the two pets and sod it, while we were there, some whelps died too. Kalithe has a title - yay!

And last night as Dan had finally got up to level 60 ish, I did a couple of instances with him on my Mage (that would be ‘Twylite’). I did mention this on twitter but you don’t all follow me there or catch everything I ever tweet, so I’m specced Arcane. I wanted a taste of how overpowered it is before it’s hit with the nerfbat (read: very). I think personally the fun in Mage is actually the utility rather than the playstyle. Having various survival cooldowns, buffs, dps cooldowns, Mirror Images, polymorph (I have an animal lottery macro for that), the ability to make free food, portals, that’s where the fun lies. The great damage is just icing. Anyway so there was this Rogue in the party. He’s doing about a third of my damage and obsessing over how Dan has 10k health on his level 64 tank and basically calling him sad for having 30 stam gems in his gear and such, and suddenly after the first boss tells me that I should go Frost. If there are two things I dislike, it is being called by my class (which he did but I let it slide because I still prefer ‘mage’ to ‘Twylite’), and being told what I “should” do. The guy was very difficult to understand and eventually asked if anybody speaks Swedish and spammed “hor” in party chat about twenty times before he was vote kicked and the Shaman informed us that it meant whore in Swedish.. Whether it did or not we don’t know or particularly care but yeah, he was rather odd. Thankfully the rest of the party was lovely. It was a shame Dan had to leave else we’d probably have done one or two more with those guys.

I’m still focusing on my Hunter though, despite the Maging, I just want her to be a Goblin already! I am quite glad that she already has the Midsummer pet and achievements because we’re going away on the 23rd til the 28th or 29th so we’ll miss a week of it, and probably the beginning of 4.2 as well. I’m not too worried about that though.

World of Ponycraft

Designing and sharing ponies on the pony creator (enjoy your new addiction!) became a bit of a thing on twitter last week and since then Norm has written a post over at Flavor Text which fantastically looks at the comparisons between our ingame characters, why a lot of us choose fanmade art, and the pony creator. Kamalia made a response post as well.

I also made my Blood Elf Death Knight, Kalithe:

I don’t want to make Fae as her Draenei self because I don’t want to get too attached to her before she goes Goblin, but trust me, she’s on her way to being short and green.

Screenshot of the Week

Somebody always has to get in the way of the perfect picture. Always.

Linkies

Another handful of awesome posts!

And finally, a blog I came across this week that’s worth following:

  • Tome of the Ancient – A fun blog to read! I also happen to think that [they] are great with photoshop.

Happy Friday!

Fantasmical Friday #3

Well this week has been a little.. different. Well.. I say different.. it really hasn’t. I spent a lot of it gearing up my Death Knight. I did some normal dungeons until she could enter heroics, I did some heroics, I finished the Deepholm quests and I’ve been doing dailies. I’ve also been making a fair bit of gold which isn’t necessarily relevant, but it did take up a chunk of time. When it came down to it, I’ve really, really enjoyed playing my Death Knight this past week and I did get very lucky while in Deepholm. (Hooray and squee!)

The trouble is, the guys in the guild invited a friend of theirs who also happens to be a Death Knight, as does my friend, and with a 10 man group and 3 Death Knights? It’s very unreasonable for me to think I might possibly not cause issues by wanting to raid on my Death Knight. The problem is, Death Knight is currently my favourite class. I really do love it, and I’m incredibly bored of casters right now, especially Shadow Priest, and I’m not at all interested in healing or tanking. ((I have a history of panic attacks when it comes to those roles so I just avoid them these days aside from the odd bit of healing while I’m levelling up.)) So trying to roll a melee is a problem, the guild desperately doesn’t need melee, and I desperately don’t want to play a caster, so what does that leave? Hunter, of course. The move will be expensive as she will need a faction change and a server transfer, and we’re going to have to do it in bits, but it will be nice to have some previously farmed mounts/pets/achievements, rather than starting from scratch, and be playing a class that’s both needed and I can stand to play. Even with the Hunter becoming my main again, I still prefer the Death Knight and she will definitely be a main alt, or a second main. I will do the Firelands dailies on both characters, however insane it will make me, and I’ll probably slowly work on my Death Knight’s pet collection as well as Fae’s because I’m just that crazy. But Fae will again be my achievement hunter, and main pet and mount collector. She will finally have the name Fae back (big yay!), and as I have soo many Blood Elves and aren’t a big fan of playing Tauren, Trolls, Orcs, or Undead, plus because they kick ass, she will more than likely be a Goblin (though I hear they can’t do the Argent Tournament quests at the moment?). So I may need to collect a few RSS links for decent Hunterish blogs and read a couple of guides to get me up to speed with Hunters again, I haven’t really played one properly this expansion yet. My only problem now is that it looks as though my guild have decided to start doing heroic mode raiding, for which I don’t have the gear (I’m level 82), and I’m not particularly interested in it at the moment either, but I’ll see what happens.

Ooh, and this week our guild did this:

I’m not exalted yet, but it’s nice to have Mass Resurrection and all.

The Week in News

The lion mount, the ‘Winged Guardian’, went live this week. A lot of people have been outraged over it, just as they did over the sparkly pony last year, but it’s really no big deal. It’s just a mount. I must admit though, when I first saw it I thought it looked absolutely ridiculous, since seeing it ingame I’m persuaded – it’s pretty cool looking.

There are also 8 new tameable rare pets available to Hunters in the Firelands. These are all very rare and require you to use particular tactics, different for each rare, in order to tame them. For example, one of the spiders dies when its’ rage bar empties, this rage bar fills when it is in lava, and you can only tame it when it’s at quite low rage, so you need to balance things and such. It’s supposedly quite fun. As for the models, 2 Gondria style spirit cats, 1 spirit bird, and 7 spiders. This thread links to images, videos, and information about them. I’m not sure if I’m too bothered about these models personally but it is an interesting idea to add.

Screenshot of the Week

Never trust Orcs with cauldrons, you can almost guarantee that they’re upto something.

Linkies

As usual, there are more great posts shared in my reader, so do check those out, I’ve tried to link to people I haven’t linked to before as well. Enjoy!

  • ManaliciousHeroic Chimaeron (10): Vidyala’s posts always deserve a mention and I haven’t mentioned her properly yet. A lot of effort go into her guides and even if you’re not interested in raid strats, her chibis are wonderful.
  • Oddcraft - OMGWTFITZSOCUTEBBQ?!: This post deserves many internets just for the use of “man police”. Bravo! That and the murlocs are pretty cute.
  • red cow riseThe Innkeeper’s Daughter: A well-written piece of fan-fiction about the artifact, a lovely read.
  • World of SazThrough Your Interface: I found this one through a tweet from Windsoar. Could be fun!
  • WoW InsiderReal Life Jewelcrafter Creates Horde Pendant: Vid mentioned this in a Livestream last night and I had to link it because despite it being the “wrong colour” and “upside down”, it is a beautiful piece of jewellery and very well crafted. I love it.

Fantasmical Friday #2

In the past week I have been levelling my Death Knight some more. I completed Vashj’ir and Mount Hyjal, and I made a good start in Deepholm too, finally culminating in:

It took a hell of a lot of fumbling around near the top of my keyboard before I finally managed to land on print screen.. But yeah, I have to say that I’m really enjoying being back! A 3 month break seems very long, but it gave me enough time away for the game to de-stagnate. Okay so the Priest was a no-go, but this Death Knight is just so fun. And not just that, but I’ve enjoyed reading blogs again. It’s been a lot more than 3 months since I really enjoyed sitting down and catching up on my reader! It feels quite odd to feel a little sad when I reach the ‘O’s and realise that I’ll be all caught up soon, even if I have just spent 4 hours reading blog posts. Anyway, the Death Knight.

Kalithe is my second 85. It’s quite weird playing this Blood Elf Death Knight who had been sat at level 73 for so long, and is in fact older than Soupdragon who levelled to 80 way before she did, that it is second nature to me to skip past her in the character screen when I’m scrolling about.. that’s going to take some getting used to (or character screen rearranging OH YEAH – best patch note ever!). But yes, my second 85, at last.

She’s a Frostie, of course, I fell in love with Frost towards the end of Wrath and it’s still a damn good spec which makes me a happy panda ((not all pandas are sad)). I’m playing her as a main at the moment because my previous mains just don’t feel fun any more. It’s a shame, I’ve achieved and collected so much on both my Priest and my Hunter, but I’m bored of doing the same thing I’ve been doing since just a few months into TBC, I don’t heal, and focus feels too much like energy for my liking and I struggle with energy classes.  That left the class I have always had a soft spot for – Death Knights. I try to stick to characters I’ve worked on previously because I put a lot of time into my characters, but I’m playing for fun, so sod it.

Yesterday, after the ding, I started fiddling around with SimulationCraft for the first time since Cataclysm hit and I love the way it looks now! These are my scale factors as of today:

And out of interest, my damage sources pie chart:

Yesterday, they weren’t too far off the stat weightings posted on EJ, but I’ve equipped a couple of things since then and whilst the stat priority is the same, it really seems to love haste today. I always find it interesting to see how mine compare with the optimal stat weightings put forward by the theorycrafters. My favourite part of using SimulationCraft, because after all, I am a theorycrafting noob, is letting it plop my stat weightings into Wowhead and let it list and score gear based on item slot. I particularly like the GuildOx ((based on my simulation from yesterday)) site’s list for this, though it’s no different from Wowhead. It’s nice to see what gear is best to aim for. You’ve probably noticed if you’ve been following me for any length of time that I like putting together immense gear lists. I did one for Hunters in Wrath which I kept updated, and when Cataclysm was released I did a couple for Shadow Priests as well, but Rades has already done the work for me in regards to Death Knights and he has done his gear lists much better than I ever did! So that saves me some time. Hooray for Rades!

Dan had some Valor Points on an alt so he bought me the Woe Breeder’s Boots, and I found a couple of Gurubashi Punishers for 670g each ((they’re usually about 999-1200 on my server)) so I grabbed those, though today I saw a guy wanting to sell one for 500g in trade *shakes fist*, and I started levelling her Engineering. I think I’ll get Enchanting for my second profession when I’m ready for that, that’s going to be fun (nngh). Towards the end of the evening while I was relogging to smelt I was asked if I could join the raid because they were down a dps, the deliberating of me pointing out my boredom of Priest, lack of gear on Death Knight, and lack of knowledge of the fights went on for so long that they managed to either find somebody else or end the raid. It was nice to be asked though!

The Week in News

Let’s get the “controversial” part out of the way. Normal mode raids are being nerfed to make them easier. The people are angry. My opinion? Hooray! I’ve been deliberating over raiding a little, and I’ve been worried about fucking up a lot and burnout. This change can only mean good things, and even if that wasn’t the case, it still isn’t the end of the world. The hard stuff will still be hard, and the entry level stuff will be a lot less steep. Even so, it’s not for a couple of months yet.

They’re removing the keyring. Do you know what? I found this more annoying than the raid nerfs and the resulting swell of melodramatic forum-goers. Why remove the keyring? What has the keyring ever done to you? Are you trying to punish us for having big bags and want to takeover our bag space with silly keys that one day might be useful but usually really aren’t? ((I’m a hoarder, I keep things ‘just incase’)) This is not good enough! Bring back our keyring! *ahem*

Finally, it seems they have finally sorted out the rewards for the 100 pet, 125 pet, and 150 pet achievements! This has to have been the best bit of game news all week for me. Nuts (the squirrel) is now the reward for 100 pets. For 125 pets, you’ll get a kaliri bird. And for 150 pets, and this is the good one, the Celestial Dragon (seriously, watch the video in the link, it’s such an awesome model with fantastic animations) seems to have finally shown its’ purpose! I need to get 2 more pets on my Priest if I include the 100 and 125 pet achievement rewards (otherwise she needs 4 more for 150). My Death Knight, on the other hand, won’t get it, but it will be nice to have one character who has reached the 150 pet achievement and I can always see how far I can get.

Jae’s Screenshot of the Week

Apparently, when you use the item that turns you into a Qiraji Battle Tank, your name changes but you keep titles and everything. I like the idea that a Qiraji bug might have been doing Quel’danas dailies.

Linkies

And finally, what have I been reading this week? There have been a lot of fantastic posts I’ve shared, and this has been the first week I’ve purposefully sat down to catch up on my reader, so here are a handful of those.

The first thing I want to link is something that I really think everybody should read if they haven’t. It is about gold farming ((in multiple MMOs)) being forced on people in Chinese forced labour camps for re-education. The original Guardian article can be found here, and WoW Insider has also covered it here.

I found this video on WoW Insider and it made me giggle. I love Alice in Wonderland, so I absolutely had to share it.

Stumbled across this WoW Census site over at Stories of O and OMG IT’S SO ADDICTIVE! I was supposed to be sorting through my reader, but instead I was trying to work out which is the least popular race for Mages and suchlike.

  • A Sunnier BearThe Best Part of the Dungeon Journal: This post highlights some good points about the dungeon journal for all flavour of player.
  • Flavor TextTitans and Chamber Pots is Perculia’s first post about the flavour text in the Bronzebeard and Wildhammer artifacts found with Archaeology, and Dethroning the Bronzebeards is her second about the same of the Dark Iron Dwarves. Both are very interesting reads!
  • Kiss My Alas - Alas’ New Treadmill Computer Desk: Best idea ever! I want one. I had considered an exercise bike with a cushioned seat and something to lean your book on, but this is something else. NB: Originally wrote the blog title as ‘Kill My Alas’ – woops!
  • Mana ObscuraThe Best Warcraft Smartphone: Whilst I don’t have a smartphone, and probably won’t do for a fair while, Gazimoff’s smartphone discussion is very interesting and useful to those of you who might be swayed by these points.
  • Postcards from Azeroth#688: Fin: Riorel says goodbye. Sadface.

Happy Friday!

Fantasmical Friday #1

I don’t know if any of you remember my Sunday Link Love posts back when I was the Lazy Sniper, but I decided to bring them back. This time on a Friday. So why Friday? Well, I decided to get it going today and it’s Friday, thus it will be a Friday feature. I plan that far ahead of time! I also wanted some alliteration in the title. Deal with it. Unless you have a better idea? Because I’m pretty renowned for sucking at naming stuff.

These posts are going to be a kind of weekly medley. I plan to post my screenshot of the week, do a little bit of catch up (without repeating myself, of course), and the main point in the posts, share a bit of link love. The point in this to share posts that I’ve enjoyed reading and share blogs that I feel deserve some recognition, and not just an embellishment on my blogroll because those guys are already linked twice ;) . So without further ado.

Jae’s Screenshot of the Week

Apparently if you fly through the blue lady area of Storm Peaks while using Vial of the Sands, you swim through the air the same way Druids in flight form do. If you happen to have a passenger at the time, hilarity ensues.

I took this screenshot when Dan came to Zul’drak to help me kill Ragemane, who I managed to get to about half health before going all splat, and then the Zul’drak Ring of Blood. He collected a few flight plans for me, though I can’t remember what the heck we were doing in Storm Peaks now.. even so, it was funny.

Linkies

Firstly, I have a handful of posts to share.

  • Disciplinary ActionStained Class: Fairly certain you’ll all have seen these by now, if not, go look. They are fantasmical!
  • I Like PancakesDarishea: Another arty type post. I love Traxy’s art style, there’s a lovely unique simplicity to it, and this latest one is no different.
  • Wowhead NewsA Guide to Collecting Tabards: This guide is so handy, especially as I’m levelling a Death Knight at the moment (I don’t really like tabards on my casters) who will be requiring a nice tabard collection eventually.
  • The ConsortiumDalaran Limited Supply Route: Okay, so I know some people don’t like the whole buy from vendor, sell on auction house for a profit market, but it can be worthwhile and this guide for Dalaran items is pretty good.

As I’ve been away for a while, I missed a few blogs. Some of these may have been around before I quit, some may have popped up while I was gone, but it is just a handful of the blogs I’ve recently added to my reader. Enjoy.

  • Elfi’s World: A nice fun read. Discovered when Rades tweeted that he had been interviewed there.
  • Flavor Text: I only found this one today actually via Pewter’s ‘follow friday’ this morning (despite already following Norm on twitter). I’m very unobservant, this was an instant addition to my reader.
  • Mortigan The Warlock: Because he came back just a little bit before I quit so I never really got the chance to say this, “Squeee!”
  • Player Vs Auction House: A gold blog with a twist – it isn’t smothered in ads and ebooks! I love reading gold blogs, but I can’t stand all of the money making ventures a lot of them seem to take. Guess that’s what readers are for but when I find a gold blog that not only gives good advice but is also clean, it really shines.
  • Foo’s WoW Musings: This is another gold blog with the exact same appeal to me. Both are well worth a look, they’re good with tips.

May your Friday be Rebecca Black-less… starting now.

Forgive Me For I Have Sinned..

It’s been 9 days since I last posted ((though I’m ecstatic that my last post seems to have been so useful for a fair few of you!)), and I haven’t exactly had writer’s block, I’ve had plenty to blog about, a list of topics ready to be written. I’d planned to do a little post about how I was enjoying levelling my Mage upto 60 to get the Tome of Polymorph Piggy, and how I started levelling my Druid upto 70, so that I could get the epic flight form quest done to make mine and Dan’s Raven Lord runs a lot easier, and that I’d rediscovered how awesome Druid healing was, I even had a little bit of link love for some newly discovered blogs. All of the passion for these subjects came and went, I was either too busy getting things done, levelling said alts, seeing friends, reading, (whatever it is I do outside of blogging), or I simply wasn’t in the mood to write, which admittedly made up a large part of it, and I guess it still does, which is why I’m rambling a bit now.

The thing is, a friend of mine moved his Paladin over to Terenas a while back, where my Alliance alts live, and while helping him with group quests I logged into Soupdragon, my Night Elf Death Knight, because I figured a plate class would be easier to murderise elites than a Hunter who I haven’t played in months, and playing her reminded me of how much I loved the character, and the fact that I still needed to gear her up and improve my playstyle a little.

Now he’s got himself to 80, we’re doing a few heroics to gear him up, and in the meantime, I might be gearing myself up a little too. I already had a Ghoulslicer sitting in my bank, so when I got a Black Icicle I decided it was time to try out Frost dps (I’ve almost always been Unholy), and honestly, it’s taken me a few days to get the hang of it and really get used to it, for a while it felt weird as I’d been Unholy for so long, but I’m really starting to enjoy it now and finding it to be a much better spec for my dps as well. I find Frost has a fair few more buttons to play with, for single target, and for AoE. I guess it’s also important to note that I’ve never really been a big fan of Blood, it’s great for soloing things but I find it a little too “spammy” for my preferences. Frost is perfect, really, and I’m trying to get my hands on another Black Icicle – though if I got my hands on a decent 2hander upgrade I wouldn’t say no to going Unholy again.

I’m sitting on about 4.7k gearscore at the moment, and I’m pulling off anywhere between about 5k-7k dps depending on which boss and the group setup, which I think is perfectly fine for the first few bosses in ICC 10 but I’m not even going to try until I’ve finished my BiS heroic gear set, which also seems to include 3 crafted pieces (chest, wrist, boots) for a total of 8,000g, and 2 parts of tier 10 – the Sanctified legs I paid a guy in Vault 5,000g for because I really badly wanted them, luckily he was happy to trade for the gold, the shoulders I earned through many weeklies and a few random heroics (well, I say that, I’ll have them by Sunday).

I have had some really awesome pugs in this battlegroup, and on this server, which sucks a bit that it’s not going to be my main server because it is my favourite of the 3 I play on, but everybody I’ll be playing with in Cataclysm wants to stay on Vashj so I’ll be keeping my Alliance alts there, definitely. There was the Icecrown geared Warrior tank who kept apologising whenever anybody died, despite it not being his fault, more likely the healer’s who seemed to have a problem with dispelling. We stuck with him for another random because he was pretty cool, but after he called my friend “palladin,” he wanted to leave and reform, so we did. There have been many pugs where the group have complimented each other, stuck together after wipes and had a bit of a laugh while we waited for new members, people making mistakes and not being berated for it, and it’s just been a pleasure, a real breath of fresh air to get away from “omg noobs!”

Mind you, I’ve also had a couple of terrible pugs, giving me people to add to my ignore list, though by this point I think my Rogue had around 10-15 people on hers. One where the tank was so terrible that I decided to gather myself a tank gear set when I finish my dps gear set, just because I know I can do much better than they did. It was the kind of tank who ignored patrols, let people die a lot, stood around staring at the next pull, just jumping around for no real reason except perhaps to see their Night Elf twizzle in the air.. I don’t mind people who are clearly new to tanking, but I tanked more of that instance than they did. Another in which the tank insulted my friend, the Mage, and the healer for not being good enough. They kept dying, and doing around 2k dps, in Halls of Lightning heroic, each with about 3k gearscore, honestly they were doing good with what they had. I was in a particularly bad mood and really laid into the guy, I hate egotistical twats who treat other people unnecessarily nastily. After I was finished with him, he shutup and carried on, until the healer, a Paladin, struggled to heal Loken because they kept being one shot by the Lightning Nova. The tank left with a “omg you fucking noobs” and the Mage got in his much better geared friend and we got it down. The other one that stuck in my mind was more of a case of I’d had a terrifically bad few days, and the guy wearing heroic Dawnbreaker’s taking the normal Forge of Souls boots (which I’d greeded on hoping to win them to replace my blue ones, but didn’t want to need on them because I thought it was rude for the Death Knight to take Shield Block boots for their offspec.. well yeah you can see where I’m going with this), the guy took them. I asked why, he said “cause I can”, I said “a little dickish”, he said “good job I’m a dick” and left. I was not a happy panda, so it’s a damn good job I’d pugged with some lovely people earlier on, and the following heroic wasn’t quite so bad, else I’d have ended the night with a really bad taste in my mouth.

I also decided to get her a few of the easier achievements, like ‘the Explorer’, and ‘Ambassador’, it gives me something to do and gets Soup a couple of titles that aren’t ‘the Patient’, which I really don’t think suits her. The reason I’m spending so much time and effort on her? No, I haven’t rerolled again, it’s just that all my Priest really has to do at the moment is grind and PvP which aren’t particularly exciting activities to me, I mean, once in a while I don’t mind, but every day, every week and it becomes a chore, so I thought I’d play my Death Knight a little, to give me something to do in the meantime while I’m not reading, or watching anime.

And here’s the link love I mentioned.

The past few weeks I’m come across a few blogs who I added to my reader, and I feel they’re well worth sharing, check them out and go and say hello!

Shared Items & Feedback

Today I’d like to talk about link love. Well, less ‘talk about it’, because I don’t need to tell you why it’s nice, but just to let you guys know that incase you weren’t aware – I am giving it out a lot even when I don’t post.

See, a few months back I was having trouble with my reader. Certain blogs literally wouldn’t update and that was driving me insane, so, I asked in Single Abstract Noun which readers people were using and Erc ordered me to try out Feedly, which I believe is a Google Chrome extension. It’s supposed to be the magazine style feed reader, though I like the lists. I have it set up to show blog names and article titles, if an article says in the title, for example, ‘Cataclysm’, then I can quite easily skip past it and read something without Cataclysm spoilers and I love it for that.

Anyway, being part of Google, it’s connected to Google Reader, so I was able to import my blog list from Bloglines (my old reader) and it seems to synchronise. Another feature it shares is ‘shared items’, which I started using to just bookmark posts I enjoyed to come back to for either the link love posts I used to do, or to add to my resources page later on. After a while, I realised I could link to this as a feed in my sidebar and I have done ever since.

Below my Twitter box, you should be able to see ‘Interesting Blog Posts’, which I have renamed, it used to be ‘Interesting Stuff’. and the feed link in the little orange icon should work, if not try clicking here. I share posts that I find interesting, useful, and funny, so take a look, they’re worth reading. You might find something new.

I’d also like to ask you while I’m doing a more generic blogging post what you guys think of the theme changes? Apart from, “Dear God, woman, stop changing your damn theme every 10 minutes!” Because trust me, I know, but I’ve gone back to the old theme that I quite liked, couldn’t find anything else I was 100% happy with. I like the header and the sidebar, I’m just not sure about the background. Anything you might change perhaps? Feedback/constructive criticism is appreciated.

I Lost My Guest Poster

To some of you, I’m sure the fact that Dan won’t be posting here any more is great news, and to the rest of you, it isn’t. For those of you who don’t like this news so much – don’t worry, he’s just decided to start his own blog. So now I can flail about while he goes completely uncensored, with nobody to tell him that hey, that 4 lettered c word is great, but think of the children! I’m sure it will be fine. *bites nails*

He’s only planning to post sporadically, whenever he feels like it, so if you want to follow him, I recommend you add ‘I Gem Crit‘ to your readers. Go say hi!

Tales of a Transfer Goat

This post may well be a tad late, after all, the transfer went through on Friday night and it’s now Monday, but if I didn’t live up to my blog title I’d be lying to you all.. right? Anyway, I wanted to get this post out there because I’m still pretty darn excited about my main finally being the race I love, and on the server I feel most comfortable.

I mentioned that the transfer went through on Friday night, and I know it says “upto 5 days” but those few hours I was waiting I was getting so impatient (it didn’t help that when I tried to watch Spirited Away, the film would randomly skip back to the beginning and I’d lose my place), and worrying that the transfer hadn’t actually gone through, that when I finally got the email I may have squeed just a little bit. So we put the faction change through, I popped on, decided to go against the look a little from what I have been posting, and it took me so long to think of a name that when I tried to call her ‘Faelysia’, it shouted at me! The name is available but I had to go with ‘Faesiala’, which I don’t really want to admit but it reminds me of ‘Tikka Masala’. Sigh, my brain sucks. Miss Sophie, you are awesome!

When I logged in I had mods in my face and bags that looked something like this:

The screenshot was taken just before I transferred and don’t judge my bunny sticks!

This time the change felt right and I enjoyed it, after the initial, “Oh God, I’m actually leaving the server I’ve played on for 3 years!”. Some of you may remember Fae’s being an Orc for 3 days, which I didn’t enjoy so much. Turning her into a Draenei was almost the opposite of that. The moment I logged in it felt comfortable, apart from Zal complaining that he couldn’t whisper me, and that some parts of the game told me that my name was Faesiala and some parts said Faelysia. That was fixed with a relog though.

The next thing I did, before fixing my macros, was play with my new mounts! I have around 75 so I had fun running around on Rams and Kitties and checking out the Swift Alliance Steed for a while, this just goes to show that I’m a sucker for anything new and shiny. Oh! And the fact that my Sunreaver Dragonhawk became a Silver Covenant Hippogryph! I’ve wanted that mount for about a year, it’s so pretty. Once I’d finished all of that, I quickly got started on my Valiant dailies (Yay. I’m the lucky devil that gets to re-do her Tournament dailies until she gets Crusader again).

On the Saturday, I was reminded of the Kal’uak fishing contest. I’d like to aim for Salty soon so I’m trying to win one of the contests in the coming weeks, gotta love El’s Extreme Anglin’ guides. I decided to fish in Howling Fjord because I’d be able to hear the shouts when somebody won the contest, there are a lot of pools fairly close together, and not only do I have a chance to get the Turtle at the same time, but also the Dark Herring. The best part of this? Knowing that I couldn’t have been ganked. I’ve really, really missed that. I can’t stand forced world PvP. One of the earlier reasons I didn’t like Vashj so much, and when you have friends on a PvP server, the last thing you want to hear is, “If you don’t like it move to a PvE server.” Yeah, cheers, that helps. Tangent! I didn’t win, but NomNom enjoyed the fish. We think that’s why I’m not winning these things, NomNom’s eating everything. It’s plausible.

A little bit after the contest, I was told that there was a Black Temple fun run going on. I got myself exalted with Ashtongue Deathsworn and Scale of the Sands a while back from pugs on Vashj, but I love Black Temple so I tagged along after I’d popped out. I missed the first couple of bosses but Najentus and Supremus aren’t too bad to miss, though now I’m Alliance I WANT to see a Gnome tanking Supremus. It was fun apart from me finding out that my microphone is very much borked, they couldn’t hear me at all on vent. It wasn’t muted, and when I turn on mic boost I get this lovely high pitched screech in my ear which gives me an instant headache. Shame I can’t afford a decent one, maybe a £20-30 one in a few weeks time.. will see. Sparkly ponies are important! Oh yeah, and I yoinked the Cursed Vision because I loves it.

That reminded me that I wanted to get Fae an RP set. Originally, when she was a Blood Elf, I wanted the shoulders and trash polearm from Sunwell, the Illidan bow, and the rest Tier 6. Now? Upgraded Beaststalker’s. Okay, and the bow from Illidan, but I found the Halberd of Smiting in my bank, which looks fecking awesome. I’ll be adding “farm Beaststalker’s” to my to do list.

One last thing, because I haven’t done this in a while, a little bit of link love.

Firstly, blogs that I have recently discovered that I’d like to mention:

  • Underwear Optional – I found Undies’ blog during the Great Noblegarden Egg Hunt and added her to my reader, her writing style is lovely.
  • Orcish Army Knife – Found Rades a few weeks ago but I don’t seem to have link loved him yet! Another Hunter blog.
  • The ‘mental Shaman – Pewter has also recently put up a new theme and it looks awesome. Took me a while to note the pun in the name too.. wasn’t until Ophelie pointed out there was one that I clicked.
  • OddCraft – A blogger who enjoys pointing out strange things and ranting about lore. Love it!
  • Murloc Parliament – Somebody many of us know and love has recently made a return, and with a parliament of murlocs? Woop!

Secondly, a couple of posts I have thoroughly enjoyed reading in the past week:

  • Righteous Orbs: a post in stories – Is it right to think that you don’t have the right to be offended, while the offender pretty much gets away with it?
  • Diabolical Minds: Saying Hello: Who Are Blog Authors? – I gave a little input to this post, and the overall message of “please feel free to join in the discussion if you have something to say!” is one I definitely agree with. I won’t bite!