Omigodohmigodohmigodohmigod I want one I want one!! When I saw the picture I thought it looked okay, but what the fuck is it? Then Dan made me watch the video. This mount is frickin’ amazing!! Just makes me sad that it’s more than probably going to be either TCG (*sob*) or Blizzard store, from which I’ve bought nothing since Celestial Steed.. when you’re unemployed with a mean book habit, there’s no spare cash for Banana Dragons and Creepy Flying Lions and Flying Closet Goats. But omigod isn’t it equally adorable and amazing looking? It poops rainbows for goodness sake, people!!
I just wanted to know – why does everything always have to have a group of haters? Okay, the trailer won’t be for everybody but by no means does it signal the end of WoW and surely the arguing is a little unnecessary?
And then I got all curious over “Why do HC raiding guilds say ‘no’ to females?” and clicked on it and I honestly have no idea what went through my head because I know what the vast majority of male WoW players say to this sort of question. I know. And I still clicked. And I was still disgusted.
And they’re just from page 1, I couldn’t bring myself to read any more and risk seeing anything worse. The state of gender inequality within the general World of Warcraft community drives me insane. And I love that two of those comments were so bad that they had to be edited by a mod…
So there’s my daily doseage of hate. But isn’t the trailer amazing at least?
Yeah I’m hugely excited for Guild Wars 2 and I guess some of you will see that as me being a part of the so-called “hype”. Sorry, but I’ve been waiting for this game since I quit WoW in February 2011 over a year ago and so yeah, I’m pretty damn excited. And as such you can expect a few posts around here about the game as I’m not limiting myself on the Menagerie to just posts about WoW anymore, I decided that a long time ago I just hadn’t really played anything else recently. If you’re interested in Guild Wars please do follow me. I have signed up for the beta (*touch wood*) and I’m hoping to read the books which I’ll most likely review here rather than my book blog as my book blog readers most likely won’t be interested in those. I’m hoping to blog a little about my thoughts and adventures in the game and I will still be playing WoW as well so there’ll hopefully be a mix. Ideally, I’d like this to be an MMO blog rather than a WoW blog it just depends on time and money constraints as I am primarily a reader and book blogger still.
I’m just trying to work out which race/profession combination to go for. I usually go for a red haired human Magey character, so that would be a Norn Elementalist I believe? But there are so many cool looking races and professions (classes), including Ranger, Mesmer, Necromancer… And will I enjoy the PvP or will I prefer PvE or perhaps a healthy mix of both? Will I have time to play a little Guild Wars before the release with everything else going on? There’s so much to work out and look forward to, I can’t wait.
And if you haven’t heard much about Guild Wars 2, though I imagine by now you will have, here are a couple of videos that initially garnered my interest:
I saw this on MMO Champion this morning and absolutely had to link it. It’s such a great but subtle idea, I love it. Although, my characters are basically going to permanently have their heads stuck in a map, I’m always going the wrong way!
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 Bear – The Best Part of the Dungeon Journal: This post highlights some good points about the dungeon journal for all flavour of player.
Flavor Text – Titans 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 Obscura – The 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.
This spoiler warning is here for those of you who want to wait until you get your games to watch the cinematic. If that doesn’t matter to you, feel free to continue reading.
Yesterday, I was told that the cinematic has been officially released by Blizzard. I could have waited for the game release like I’ve been doing with near enough everything else (although I keep stumbling upon screenshots of the Goblin zone, so the visuals for that will be less new and exciting /sadpanda), but I love cinematics, so.. yeah, and if you haven’t seen it yet and want to:
*squee* I’m really excited for Cataclysm, though I don’t think I’m going to rush my levelling as much as I tried to for Wrath and as much as I planned to. I had been thinking about taking a tiny bit of time off work (I’m only doing Monday mornings and Friday and Saturday afternoons and it’s voluntary), but I don’t feel like I have much to rush for at the moment, and I’ll only be at work for 3 or 4 hours each time I go in, so I’ll see. Plus, it is kind of my birthday on the 7th of December, and yes I did shake my fist at Blizzard a little.. or perhaps it was just a picture of the Blizzard logo on my monitor BUT THAT STILL COUNTS! One good thing about my birthday being release date? Collector’s edition.
There are some amazing Shadow Priest bloggers out there, though I couldn’t give my opinion on the wow.com Shadow Priest columnist ((being a no spoiler freak, then traipsing wow.com and MMO Champion like there’s no tomorrow would not mix well)), I have heard that they are very good. Not to mention the brilliant community behind ShadowPriest.com, who, if you look properly, have answers for pretty much everything, to the point that even Elitist Jerks use them as a reference point, rather than the other way around. And of course, a couple of great web comic artists (both of whom are in my blogroll). Yet, it still seems that Shadow Priests are a little under-represented.
I’d like to say that it’s the curse of being a hybrid, but there are plenty of Retribution Paladins, Moonkins, and Kitty Druids. I suppose Shamans are in the same boat, mind. Here’s the thing though, as things currently stand, Shadow Priests are pretty boring to level until you have the proper tools: Shadowform, Mind Flay, Vampiric Touch. Until then, you’re not really a Shadow Priest, let’s face it. I think the slowness to actually become what you’re trying to level does put a lot of people off. They’ll either go all “Fuck it, this is lame, I’m gonna heal dungeons instead,” to which I just have to say – DON’T DO IT, THINK OF THE COOKIES YOU’RE ABANDONING! Or, they just stop playing their Priest altogether.
This is why the new talent changes are AMAZING. Less bother over where to put your points, better talents to choose from, cooler abilities to make 5 mans much, much more fun, and of course, you get the Shadow Priesty stuff ((Mind Flay, Shadowform, Vampiric Touch)) from a much earlier level – hopefully making Shadow Priest feel more like Shadow Priest, and bringing our awesome class a lot more, well deserved, love. This needs some celebratory dancing methinks! (By the way, the following video is a clip from Eurovision, if you know what that is, yes I did watch it, great for the rofls! But I truly loved this.)
There are some amazing Shadow Priest bloggers out there, though I couldn’t give my opinion on the wow.com Shadow Priest columnist ((being a no spoiler freak, then traipsing wow.com and MMO Champion like there’s no tomorrow would not mix well)), I have heard that they are very good. Not to mention the brilliant community behind ShadowPriest.com, who, if you look properly, have answers for pretty much everything, to the point that even Elitist Jerks use them as a reference point, rather than the other way around. And of course, a couple of great web comic artists (both of whom are in my blogroll). Yet, it still seems that Shadow Priests are a little under-represented.