Approaching Hodir: Aug 2009

You may have heard this fact quoted in serious discussion about World of Warcraft: According to Malcolm Gladwell, 10 000 hours spent doing an activity (before the age of 21) is all that is required to become a “virtuoso”:

showing masterly skill or brilliance
a virtuoso performance _source

The average World of Warcraft player spends quite a bit of time in the game. To many it becomes something of a part time job: voluntary and unpaid, unfortunately. Play for a good few years and you could very well have approached that 10 000 hour mark.

Do you dare type /played right now to find out?

I first heard this fact quoted because I follow – and watch – a lot of the TED lectures. And, since I’m a gamer and avid World of Warcraft player, Jane McGonigal’s mostly upbeat short lecture on how Gaming Can Make a Better World really resonated with me.

It’s nice to think that, while I may never be a brilliant violinist or pianist, I might have some kind of special skill in something, even if it is a game played by millions. Actually I quite like the notion that many otherwise ordinary people – like me – might also be secret World of Warcraft virtuosos.

But there’s something that nags at me. And maybe a real artistic virtuoso could throw their two cents into the conversation (although, frankly, the idea that an artistic virtuoso from another field might also be reading this WoW blog seems highly unlikely).

Once you reach that level of mastery… what next? Are you always a master? Is it possible to lose your mastery without practise?

You see, I’m fairly confident that I’m past my peak. If I did attain the level of mastery required to be considered a virtuoso of World of Warcraft at some point (let’s disregard the fact that I’m well over the age of 21!) I’m certainly not as brilliant a player as I once was.

One expansion and many patches and over six months of no practice or play has definitely been a setback.

The only real metaphor that works for me is comparing skill and proficiency in the game with athletic ability. I have some of that (athletic ability, that is) and it’s something that I’ve had to work very hard at over a long time. It’s hard not to talk about artistic ability without running into arguments about talent and how talent contributes to mastery. You can have the same problem when talking about athletic ability. But I can honestly say I have zero talent in that area. Any mastery I have, I worked at.

Over time, and with lots of hours of practice, I can see that I’m better: I can run faster and for longer. Presumably if I ran and practiced long enough, I could reach some level of brilliance. But if I stopped running for six months I wouldn’t be able to pick up where I left off and perform at the same level.

Nobody expects this of athletes.

So is this expected of an artistic virtuoso? Is this expected of a World of Warcraft virtuoso?

I’m just not sure.

I received a bit of flack from readers since returning to WoW and writing for the blog. Because I tend to be vague about stuff that I say that I mastered years ago, and because I’m so clearly a novice right now in the game, my credibility seems to be in question.

I’m OK with that. It seems to me that for some players, they can reach the level of a virtuoso and maintain that level of mastery for years. And perhaps they are writing from that view point: having reached that level of mastery they have not wavered or had a set back that makes them doubt their own skill. And they cannot even imagine that, once attained, they might one day lose that proficiency.

However, I am most certainly at a different place. I am past my peak. I can say, for certainty, that I reached my peak as a raider at some time between Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel. And if I have any doubts, well I have game play footage of my raiding from most of those tier and earlier ones too. And I can see far less errors in my decision making when I watch footage recorded at my peak vs my ascent or decent from that place.

For example I always get caught up watching back our Hodir (I Could Say This Cache Was Rare) capture. There’s a moment when I’m not gathering additional damage buffs by stacking for storm power or standing near a comfy fire and every single time I watch it I think:

that’s a wasted moment – why didn’t I move into a better position?

only to see – before the thought has fully formed while I’m watching the capture – my past virtual self spring into action and step right onto a safe zone because Flash Freeze is imminent. I had the next move lined up way in advance. And I knew exactly what I was doing at the time.

And even if I didn’t take a break from the game at the start of Cataclysm I knew that my skill level wasn’t at its best anyway. Too much farm content at the lull in Icecrown Citadel progression and too many changes to the Shadow Priesting game.

As a guild we hit a point where we snagged on Heroic Professor Putricide for months and months. This meant that the earlier bosses were well and truly farmed and didn’t require much attention. And the final bosses were on normal and also didn’t pose too much of a challenge (although I don’t want to imply that you could AFK through the Lich King encounter).

But I’m pretty sure paying attention for one night of the raiding week while working on progression content and repeating familiar content the other 75% of the time didn’t keep me at the top of my game. I know I got lazy. Perhaps you did to?

There’s a fairly simple model floating around regarding MMOs. The play trend is described as so:

Novice -> Mastery -> Burnout -> (presumably quits game and picks up another game)

I don’t think I ever described myself as “burned out”. I certainly never reached a breaking point that made me consider deleting my characters, my account and unsubscribing. I never stopped subscribing – even during my break.

Like many others, I have played the game with varying degrees of commitment and mastery for years. I’m certainly not the first player to take a long break and return to the game. And I’m sure that some players have come back even stronger after a break.

Maybe the more realistic model looks something like this:

Novice -> Mastery -> Break -> Novice -> Mastery -> Repeat!

or you could take it a step further and look at mastery closer to training for sports:

Novice -> Training -> Mastery -> Off season break -> Training -> Mastery

I like that cycle I think because the most satisfying feeling is breaking from “training” mode – when you’re aware that you still have room for improvement – into “mastery” mode when you feel powerful as a player. When everything seems to come easily and anything is possible.

What do you think? Do you think attaining the status of a World of Warcraft virtuoso is like learning to ride a bike? Once learned, you are always that proficient? Do you think it’s something that you have to practice to maintain?

A quest giver (and hand in) who travels with you. I like.

I had a little spare time to play the other day so I branched out from my daily Heroic Steamvault run to try something new. But what to do? I left so much partially done when I stopped playing after the January floods that I’m often at a loss to know where to start.

I inevitably have these thoughts “what to do?” when I’m standing in the heart of Stormwind when I’m contemplating logging off for the night. It seems as though everyone in the city is busy: chatting, negotiating or otherwise playing with A Purpose.

I want one of those.

My quest log is full of half complete quests from Twilight Highlands at the moment. I had some thought a few months back to finish my achievement there (I’m going through Achievement withdrawal at the moment and the space underneath “Cass’s Recent Achievements” isn’t an HTML error – it’s a reminder that nothing I’ve done is recent enough to qualify for the widget!).

But I’m not keen to reread all the quests in my log to try and recall where I am in the Twilight Highlands story. About all I remember of the zone is that there are a bunch of Dwarves who drink a lot and keep losing their family members in the middle of a war zone.

It’s hard to have sympathy for stupidity.

Suddenly the giant yellow exclamation mark on the Hero’s Call Board in the middle of the Stormwind Trade District has appeal.

Blizzard posted up Hero’s Call Boards in each major city at the start of Cataclysm – well the last patch of Wrath - to lead players to new questing zones as they leveled up through the Cataclysm zones. They also seem to use the board to hand out quests that introduce new patch content.

It’s kind of the place to go for quests that don’t really logically start anywhere or from anyone in particular. And, I suppose, it’s hard to argue with the convenience of having the board right there. Clearly visible from the mailbox and auction house whenever you log in or out.

I picked up all the quests off the board. I wasn’t sure what was “new” and what should have been done levels ago. I just decided to do them and enjoy myself.

It didn’t take me long to remember that the first quest in a quest chain doesn’t really clue me in to what the rest of the chain is going to be about. They all start off simple enough – go talk to that bloke a couple streets over – and 20 minutes later you’re chasing a panther on the other side of the world for its left eye.

Quests tend to have short, cute, simple or funny names – and because they’re all short, simple and often cute and funny I have a hard time remembering quest names entirely.

What my brain is really trying to do is:

1. read through the title and quest text
2. logically connect the start of the story with a major event that I know is part of the game (eg. an Alliance ship sinking off the coast and down in Vashj’ir)
3. mentally jot down the “real” destination – not the first hand in but the general area or zone where most of the questing is going to be done
4. figure out what to do for the first quest and where to go to hand it in

I think this is why people skim read quest text. It’s too hard to get immersed in the story when you’re trying to pick the simple facts out of a wall of text. Perhaps they need to give us more information in the Quest Log. This is what I’d like to see:

Level – Quest ———————- Zone  —————- Chain —- Chain Zone ———– Type
[85]       Marcus hates trolls!     Stormwind              1 of 6        Stranglethorn Vale    Patch 4.2
[84]       My brother the dwarf   Twilight Highlands  3 of 4        Twilight Highlands    Cataclysm
[1]         Put out the fires!          Outlands                 1 of 1        Outlands                   Holiday

Oh yeah, and a space for me to jot down notes so I can remember what the hell I was doing when I begin my next game session.

Because I was overwhelmed and confused by my mishmash of quests I instead grouped them by looking at my map:

…I have to fly to there to do that one … but I could just stop off on the way because there’s a ? on my map over the harbor… I don’t want to get distracted … but I’d have to stop there eventually anyway…

Anyway that’s how I ended up talking to Bwemba, a troll, at the Stormwind Harbor. Not because the quest that led me to her sounded the most interesting (I could care less about Trolls and they way they talk annoys me greatly*), but because it was time saving to visit her first.

Efficient.

Having picked up her follow up quest (telling me to head to Stranglethorn Vale) I filed that away and looked back through my quest log to find the next closest hand in – by proximity.

I had already forgotten what group of trolls Bwemba represented (Darkspear… or Zandalar?) and which group she was worried about in Stranglethorn Vale (still not sure but I think it’s Gurubashi which should be easy to remember cause I’ve been ganked around that evil PVP arena many times) and well and truly forgotten what the original quest I had put aside in order to stop by the Harbor to talk to Bwemba.

Questing isn’t difficult to do. But it is difficult to follow.

At any given time you can have 5 to 25 different small stories to follow. And you only get the story in small pieces spaced out over perhaps an hour or maybe even days – if you’re juggling many, many stories.

The best way to follow the story is to have one, just one, quest in your quest log and follow it faithfully. This will probably cause you to fly all over the world and back many, many times just to talk to the right people. And you’ll be given next to no money or experience for your troubles.

With multiple quests going the glowing yellow question marks on your map are, for the most part, distractions.

Guild chat? Trade or General chat? Distraction. Background chatter. Heaven forbid you have real people in your real life trying to chat to you too. You’ve got no hope!

It’s really a miracle that anyone can follow a quest plot at all. Give me a book and a quiet room any day.

I flew out to Stranglethorn Vale with my attention sharply focused on just following this one Troll quest chain. I freaked out in the skies of northern STV – I was being followed across the sky! I soon realised that, having stepped into the right zone, my quest giver was going to follow me side by side throughout the entire chain. In spirit form nonetheless.

This is how to quest. I’m not sure exactly how killing a mad panther (also impersonating another panther using his evil mojo spirit form!?) and adopting its now orphaned cub helps sort out the Zandalar or the Darkspear Troll clans. But gosh it was fun. And it wasn’t tedious at all.

I didn’t have to fly out of my way to do any quest hand ins. Each quest just flowed on from the quest before. And it was damn handy having Bwemba alongside me to quickly finish up one quest and roll it into the next.

Not once did I have to read back over my quest log to ascertain my objective. Not once did I get lost or fly to the wrong place only to find that I was missing a quest item.

It just flowed. The chain even contains something of an Escort Quest (your companion is one of Nesingwary’s buddies) – and your escort can keep up with you even while you are mounted and he is on foot! He even lets you lead the way!

Originally I did feel somewhat slighted that I, as a Human Priest, had to bring along Bwemba, a Troll Priest, to fix up the ill soldiers at Fort Livingstone. Couldn’t I have done that? I’m as good as any Troll Priest damn it – even if Holy isn’t my preference!

And I could have used a few heals from Bwemba while I was defending the Rebel Camp. Three minutes is a long time to be out of mana! But otherwise I was glad to have company in STV. Even from an NPC.

Say what you will about World of Warcraft but over the last six years I think they’ve come a long way in quest design. There’s no comparison between this chain – strung together it’s at least 19 quests but feels like 3 or 4 – and the original Green Hills of Stranglethorn from classic WoW.

*I couldn’t agree more with Commander Sharp (the guard who introduces you to Bwemba in Stormwind Harbor) when he says:
(a) Why don’t these trolls just deal with their problems on their own?
(b) These trolls have just shown up demanding our help.
(c) I can barely understand what these trolls are trying to say.

Technically I could be wearing hot pink pants under this robe.

I’m in full transmogrification planning mode right now.

Lathere and I, with the help of two very geared guild-mates, did a quick run through the BC raids last night. We went right past our bedtimes (oops). It’s 7.30am now and I’m running on a couple hours sleep but, even without the alarm set, I always seem to wake up at the same time anyway (goddamn work alarm!). I hate that.

Running the BC raids last night (for those who don’t believe I used to play a Rogue in BC here’s a flashback) splintered my focus and got me trying to finish all my raid sets. I was very confused. I don’t think I got one item in the end. I had most of what dropped in the bank! I spent a good hour thinking I needed boots for all my sets, only to be reminded that, duh, boots aren’t part of Tier 4 and 5 five piece sets.

So I’ll point out some basics to remind you, dear reader, and myself.

Pieces in an Armor Set

Blizzard tend to stick to a trend here and usually pick the major five armor pieces.

Check out this link and you can quickly see on Wowhead’s Priest Armor Set page that the majority have five pieces to the set, but there quite a few three piece sets – my tailored Shadow’s Embrace set is one of theses – and the rare six piece set.

In Classic/Vanilla/Level 60 World of Warcraft the sets tended towards more pieces and I’d say that, with the exception of Zul’Gurub and the AQ sets, the standard was six pieces in a set or more.

By the Burning Crusade/Level 70 the five piece set was the norm. Originally Tier 6 (Black Temple and Mount Hyjal) only included five pieces but they added to the set with extra, smaller, items when they released their end-of-expansion raid zone, Sunwell Plateau.

In Wrath of the Lich King/Level 80 five pieces per raid set was consistent. They also stuck to the same shared class tokens (more on that later). I presume that they’ve stuck to this formula in Cataclysm/Level 85.

Regardless of what set you choose to collect you’re going to need to fill out a smaller set with accessories. Otherwise you’ll be running around in bare feet, like me!

Visible Armor Slots

Unless you’re completely a numbers man, or woman as the case my be, you’ve probably noticed that your character doesn’t actually look like they’re wearing a necklace or rings on their fingers. Not all armor slots are visible and contain 3D models that adorn your naked, virtual, self.

There’s no need to collect the non-visible items. I’m sure these will be greyed-out or disabled on the future transmogrification screen.

1. Helm: Visible (optional – in display you can always Show or Hide)
2. Neck: Not visible
3. Shoulders: Visible, extremely so
4. Back: Visible (optional – in display you can Show or Hide)
5. Tabard: Visible (although if you’re rocking an awesome set I wouldn’t cover it with a Tabard)
6. Chest: Visible, extremely so
7. Bracers: Not visible
8. Gloves: Visible
9. Waist: Visible
10. Legs: Visible; Not visible if you’re wearing a robe in your chest slot
11. Feet: Visible
12. Ring 1 & 2: Not visible
13. Trinket 1 & 2: Not visible
14. Main hand: Visible
15. Offhand: Visible
16. Ranged/wand: Visible (you might hit need to hit “x” to see it in hand though)

Basic information, yes, but important!

The most simple set of visible armor for a caster class would contain:

• Caster Basic: Shoulders, Chest(Robe), Gloves, Belt, Shoes, Weapon

The helm and cloak would be hidden using the Display options and the robe would cover mis-matched pants.

The most simple melee visible armor set would contain pants:

• Melee Basic: Shoulders, Chest, Pants, Gloves, Belt, Shoes, Weapon

 The Rules

As Klep pointed out in a comment on my previous post the only rule to transmogrification should be “awesomeness”. That means

• YES: making a set from different expansions
• YES: wearing a set that you never collected when it was current and all-the-rage
• YES: wearing items that were intended for another class originally (I’m looking at you Mages and Warlocks here!). As long as you can equip it, go for it
• YES: wearing a set from Cataclysm

I’m going to focus on raiding armor sets on this blog because, frankly, I’m not sure how easy/difficult it is to get hold of the old PVP stuff. I have a feeling it’s impossible to collect past Arena sets because the currency has been discontinued.

Resources

There are some great resources out there, and I hope I can be of assistance to other Priests reading this blog in the future. A guildy pointed me to:

www.DEAzeroth.blogspot.com

They have a visual guide of every single Staff, Shield ect available in game. At first glance it doesn’t look like enough but I could be wrong! An amazing resource for selecting your weapons by looks alone. I’m not sure if they will be tackling armor, too.

www.wowhead.com

Wowhead has had a nifty feature tucked away for the last year or so. When you browse to an item (for example: Collar of Cho’gall) next to the Comments tab you should be able to see a “Same model as…” tab too. Clicking that tab will show you all the other items in the game that, while they have different stats and names, use the exact same 3D model and colouring.

Scanning this list is the best way to find the most attainable piece of gear that looks the way you want. My example above shows me that there are 5 items in the game that will give me the look I want for my helm.

Collar of Cho’gall: This is a drop from the first boss in Gruul’s Lair. We cleared this zone with 4 last night so this is definitely a go-to option. You can only clear this raid zone once per week though.

Arcanist Crown Mage: This is ruled out for now because I can’t wear a Mage class piece. I’m not sure if transmogrification, once implemented, will let you transmogrify to something in your possession… or only something wearable. For now I’ll play it safe and not upset any Mages.

Battlecast Hood: This one is crafted. Which sounds easily attainable. Except that I know the pattern is an extremely rare random drop from the Burning Crusade level 70 heroics. I don’t think it’s farmable. And I never got it. If you can find a tailor on your realm with the pattern you might be paying a hefty crafting fee (and finding some tricky mats). If you’re playing on a newer realm don’t even bother.

Hood of the Arcane Path, Hood of the Royal Wizard: Possibles. Should be soloable, BRD isn’t my favourite grinding spot though.

Mage-Collar of the Firestorm: This is from Heroic Blood Furnace. I don’t think this would be fun to solo. And it might be difficult to convince your friends to come along. At least clearing Gruul’s Lair will offer up quite a few Tier 4 tokens.

Sharing Tier Tokens with Other Classes

If you’re pugging old raid zones it’s probably good to know a bit about the Tier Tokens before you get there so you don’t miss something you want.

For the level 60 World of Warcraft dungeon and Tier sets (Tier set 3 cannot be obtained because old Naxxramas was thrown out when new Naxxramas was brought in) most of the Tier will just drop, ready to equip. For example, when you kill Golemagg the Incinerator in Molten Core, he might drop this item:

Robes of the Prophecy
Binds when picked up
Chest, Cloth
222 Armor
+45 Stamina
+10 Intellect
+17 Spirit
+10 Fire Resistance
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 60
Item Level 66
Vestments of Prophecy (0/8)
(3) Set: -0.1 sec to the casting time of your Flash Heal spell.
(5) Set: Improves your critical strike rating by 28.
(8) Set: Increases your chance of a critical hit with Prayer of Healing by 25%.

A Priest in your group – or you – can loot this item and equip it. 1 piece closer to your Tier 1 set.

However by the time you get to the end of Classic WoW, the ZG set comes to mind but it’s no longer available, Blizzard implemented shared tokens for Tier gear. That means an item will drop that is flagged as equip-able by 3 or 4 of the game classes eg Warrior, Druid, Priest. These can be traded to the right vendor, usually in the major city of the expansion or near the raid zone itself, for your class Tier.

For example, you might kill Curator in Karazhan and see this drop:

Gloves of the Fallen Defender
Binds when picked up
Classes: Warrior, Priest, Druid
Requires Level 70
Item Level 70

This item, once looted, can be taken to a vendor in Aldor’s rise or Scryer’s Tier (depending on your loyalty to either team) in Shattrath and traded for:

Handwraps of the Incarnate
Binds when picked up
Hand, Cloth
295 Armor
+50 Stamina
+26 Intellect
+33 Spirit
Durability 55 / 55
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 70
Item Level 120
Incarnate Raiment (0/5)
(2) Set: Your Prayer of Healing spell now also causes an additional 150 healing over 9 sec.
(4) Set: Each time you cast Flash Heal, your next Greater Heal cast within 15 sec has its casting time reduced by 0.1, stacking up to 5 times.

You’ll note that this vendor only shows you your own classes Tier options. I don’t think it’s possible to purchase another classes’s Tier items: you can only buy what you can equip.

Cassandri in level 70 gear, current gear and future transmogrification set

I must be the last player to catch the news that Blizzard intend to bring transmogrification to World of Warcraft.

While I’ve not really been playing much (cough – not at all – cough) I have kept on top of my feed reader. I’ve been reading about World of Warcraft. I’m sure I’ve skim read at least 10 posts that mention “transmogrification”. And I just kept thinking that:

I’m going to transmorg my latest pair of gloves!

actually meant

I’m going to crudely turn the blue polygons on my latest pair of gloves into a greenish snot colour instead

Hardly inspiring stuff! But that’s not what Lathere promised me at all. I popped over for some tea, cake and baby cuddles (not necessarily in that order) last Friday.

“I’m surprised you’re not mad keen on the whole transmorg thing… I thought you would be jumping at the chance to wear your Frozen Shadoweave set again. But, technically, still have your latest gear on.”

I was outraged. You can do that?! Nobody told me you could change the armor model to something else entirely!

I didn’t even wait to go home. I logged in from Lath’s place. Unfortunately I then remembered why I’ve accomplished so little in the game since reaching level 85. I don’t really know anything about the game anymore. I don’t understand what people are talking about in General chat (although I’m fairly sure that BOT doesn’t stand for Botanica anymore). And I don’t know the people in my guild.

I guess I should be grateful that I’m still in a guild! This continually surprises me – whenever I do log in the first thing I do is hit “j” to check that I am in a guild. Ok, that’s a lie. The first thing I do is hit “o” and then after a bit of confusion I hit “c” and then I remember that the Guild stuff is its own window and has its own shortcut now. That’s when I hit “j”.

I have weird stuff in my bags. I don’t know if Dragon Flank is worth keeping, selling or auctioning. And it’s a million little uncertainties like this that paralyze me. I have to think hard to determine if Eternal Earth are from Cataclysm or Wrath of the Lich King (Wrath, I determined). Frankly all my game knowledge, one expansion to the next, has kind of muddled together into a great big grey cloud that’s almost impossible to get really, useful, data out of.

I wandered around Stormwind for a little bit. I tried to seek help from a city guard but they didn’t seem to be able to point me in the right direction. I walked up to The Cathedral to say “hello” to my priestly trainers. They were very keen to scrub my mind clean but they didn’t seem to know anything about transmogrification.

Like a noob I did those Stormwind call ins on horseback… because I keep forgetting that you can fly inside a city these says. /sigh.

I didn’t really want to ask strangers (guild members or otherwise) where to go to begin the magic of transmogrification so I just skipped straight over and headed to the bank – AKA Cassandri’s Wardrobe – to try on a few outfits.

If I can wear anything, what do I want to wear?

The single most stupid decision that I have ever made in game, and I’ve made some doozies, was disenchanting my Shadow’s Embrace set in favour of extra bag space when I was level 71.

Thought process at the time: I’ll never need this again.

Stupid Cass! After finishing off The Insane at level 80 I planned to recraft the set for sentimental reasons.

But did I just think about doing it or did I actually do it? Well it turns out that I did a bit of both. Nearly all the materials were there in my bank bag – including 20 shadowcloth and 20 primal waters.

I spent Saturday night grinding some extra Primal Shadow on Void Ridge in Hellfire Pennisula. This was a job that I could comfortably do. I knew where to go. I even remembered the approximate drop rate of Mote of Shadow.

It didn’t pass my notice that I was, essentially, trying to live in the virtual past. I’m not proud of that. I should be jumping head first into Cataclysm content. At the very least I should have queued for a Cataclysm heroic while I grinded BC materials in a BC zone. Why didn’t I try and get a group to check out the Zul’Aman heroics? A part of me is interested to see if Harrison Jones still comes to open the doors and how else ZA has changed.

I didn’t even take my guild mate’s offer (since some people I knew had logged in as I was heading out of  Shattrath - and on that point I cannot remember which characters are Scryer and which are Aldor supporters – argh) to be summoned in to meet Ragnaros the New Raid Boss.

While I was grinding BC style I was confronted with the fact that I no longer know how to play Cassandri. I dithered over whether or not to Mind Sear. I remember reading something about it channeling off friendly targets. Did I also read something about it killing the mob you cast off?

My Shadowy Apparitions were bugging the hell out of me. I don’t want to think of the number of times I thought “what’s is that th?- oh that’s right”. My action keys were lighting up like a shopping center at Christmas time. Since when does a Shadow Priest proc so many other spells?! It’s quite Mage-like. Although, to be fair, perhaps it’s very Wrath Mage-like and Mages are something else altogether now.

To make a very long story short: I got my mats. I flew out to Shadowmoon Valley and crafted the last pieces of Shadowcloth (no cooldown on Shadowcloth creation now) and was soon enough in possession of all 3 pieces of Shadows Embrace. Bound to me on Equip.

Only to find out that the Transmogrification feature has only been announced by Blizzard. It’s not going to be implemented in game until some future, oh god let it be soon, patch.

Not to worry! Now I’ve got a bit of time to track down the matching belt and helm. And then I need to pick out, or find, some awesome looking staff. Because even though I’ve always preferred the dagger/mace+offhand combination, a staff certainly looks more impressive.

Would it be wrong to mix generations? Benediction (60) with Shadow’s Embrace (70)? Probably.

So… anyone for Magtheridon’s Lair? Epic cloth gloves LOCKED.

I must confess that even though I haven’t been logging much, if any, game time, I almost always skim through my feed read and will read the WoW posts that catch my attention. So many of Lathere and my blogging contemporaries (er… cronies?) have gone silent. Instead it’s a new crop of writers who are catching my attention.

And the one thing that’s most definitely become clear in my mind is that bloggers are writing about the same topics and quandries and general grey areas that have existed in World of Warcraft play since day 1. It’s still relevant. And each new voice brings a new perspective and new circumstances to the same dilemmas.

I wish that I was writing this post in order to announce CASSANDRI RETURNS TO RAIDING. But it would be a lie. I’m not even really writing this to say that I’m coming back to be a casual player. I’m still sitting on the fence.

I almost titled this post as “I’m at Peace”. I have a new understanding of all those government anti-smoking ads that encourage smokers to think about “life as a non-smoker”. You could stick a picture of me up there with “life as an ex-WoW raider” and I would say that the message holds true.

I think of myself as someone who used to play World of Warcraft.

I don’t miss the game at all. I don’t think about what I could be doing if I could just carve out a couple hours of uninterrupted game time. I don’t wish I had the titles that the new crop of dedicated raiders have. I don’t wish I had the gear, or the mounts or any one of those things.

I do really miss the friends that I used to speak to most nights of the week. I really miss what Lathere and I have achieved here: our blog – a place for us to ponder (or rant) our experiences in game.

The problem seems straight forward: in order to be part of the blogging world I need to write about game experiences. Thus, I need to play the game. Play with friends. Play with strangers.

But I can’t quite find a reason to log in. To log in and do… what?

I’m at a loss.

The truth is, I feel that I accomplished everything that I really wanted to during Wrath of the Lich King. I began the Burning Crusade with the regret that I didn’t pick the stupid box up a year earlier and had completely missed the chance to raid at level 60. I began Wrath of the Lich King with the determination to not just be a raider, but to be a serious progression raider who played with the best of the best and saw real achievement.

I did all that. I could do that again if I wanted to.

And I stuck it out when they announced Cataclysm’s release date. I became somewhat envious of players who had taken 6 month breaks mid-expansion only to return and catch me – surpass me – on the gear ladder. I intended to begin Cataclysm with a holiday. And to catch up as Tier 11 was winding down and Tier 12 was beginning.

The floods in January didn’t ruin that for me, but they did force me to quit for a short time and quit quite suddenly.

I blogged in January that we’d lost only the lowest floor – our study – and that we had been spared the worst. I’m still grateful that we can live comfortably, albeit cramped, in our home. But I also misguidedly thought that our insurance policy would finally pay out. I’m not in any financial position to rebuild with my own funds or even to take out a personal loan so I waited and waited and waited for an assessor then waited again for a decision from RACQ. Eventually they called me only to wriggle out of any obligation entirely citing that “rising river flooding” wasn’t part of the package. I have a nasty suspicion that rising river flooding coverage isn’t part of any RACQ package giving them free reign to decline all claims.

Please, I ask that you learn from my mistake: do not trust or pay RACQ to protect your assets.

So, unless I miraculously stumble across a spare ten thousand dollars I will be without a gaming den for many, many months.

That alone isn’t enough to stop me from picking up where I left off and becoming a raider again. But it’s yet another change. Another thing that separates me from the person I was this time last year so eager to conquer Icecrown Citadel twice over, heroics here I come. I’ve also celebrated a birthday, my 29th, and am attempting a pretty major career change. I’ve even cut my hair short.

I’m trying to complete some major achievements in my real life. And that doesn’t leave me with much mental energy to chase after achievements in my virtual life.

I’m not saying that one achievement is more important than another. In the long run who is to say what affects us the most deeply or for the longest time? I might be willing to debate that when I’m old and grey. But I do believe that when we lack the sense of achievement in our personal lives it’s only logical that we try and satisfy that drive with a virtual achievement in World of Warcraft.

You could say I ought to go “casual” but I’ve never really played World of Warcraft in any way than chasing achievements. And back before there was an official achievement system I had my own personal goals: kill this boss, understand the acronyms in that battleground, learn that tailoring recipe etc.

If I play Cataclysm at all, it will still be for the people – the friends and teamwork – and for the raiding.

Perhaps I need to draw myself into the lore of the Cataclysm raiding scene. I don’t know much about Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight. I mean, I’m sure in the recesses of my brain I know a bit about the major baddies who are trying to take over the world. But nothing really springs to mind while I write this.

Perhaps I should draw my copy of Day of the Dragon off my virtual bookshelf. Or pick up a copy of The Shattering: A prelude to Cataclysm. I need a method to reconnect to the game. And I most assured do not feel very connected to my guild or fellow Alliance players on my server. You might think I’m mad to reconnect to a game by reading a book. Maybe I am and my plan won’t work at all.

I do finally understand why players re-roll new characters of the exact same class and spec as their main. I could see myself rejoining World of Warcraft as a level 1 Priest and a level 10 (that’s when you get to specialise, right?) Shadow Priest. I would be relearning the world in baby steps from the ground up. And still inside the very comfortable, if slightly unfamiliar, trappings of a Shadow Priest.

Both ideas sound silly. And if I’d suggested them to Cassandri on the 7th of April 2010 I know she would tell me to stop wasting my time! Then again, this would be the same Cassandri that spent approximately 156 nights in Icecrown Citadel without complaint.

I never said I was perfect

Introducing Caitlin Elisabeth

So the Hots & Dots blog has been very quiet of late!  For those of you who have been following us over the last few months, you would most likely know that I have been getting more and more heavily pregnant and my playtime slowed down this year considerably. On top of this, Cass posted about a week ago that our home town of Brisbane, Australia had been declared a Natural Disaster Zone leaving me without power and Cass’s place flooded out.  In amongst the Christmas and New Year festivities and flooding mayhem my beautiful baby girl decided to make an early entrance into the world!

I believe I’m very lucky – the entire labor was relatively stress and trauma free (aside from being 8cm dilated by the time I got to the hospital – just a tad further along than I wanted to be!) and lasted about 6.5 hours in total.  My partner and I named our little girl Caitlin Elisabeth, and she was born on the 5th January 2011 at 11:11pm.  She weighed in at 3350 grams (7.2 pounds for those of you not using the metric system) and was 50cm long with a 34cm head circumference which is nice and healthy for a bubby born a teeny bit early.

So far motherhood has been a truly wonderful experience, she is a happy baby who sleeps and feeds beautifully and while bringing her home from hospital a day before our city flooded and going without power for 5 days was a challenge (think cold showers, nappy changes by torchlight, working out breastfeeding in the dark etc etc) it made both myself and my partner confident that if we could handle that, we could handle anything.  While parenting has been a life changing experience, it has been nowhere near as stressful, sleep depriving or exhausting as I had built it up to be and here’s hoping it continues that way!

Now that we’re back with power and she’s starting to get into a little bit more of a feeding/sleeping routine, I’m hoping to  be back online and in WoW shortly, albeit in a very casual fashion.  I have vaguely heard that resto druids got buffed (I guess I really should read up on that at some point) and I’m sure there are many other things to catch up on too.  Here’s hoping all your entertaining blog articles accumulating in my feed reader will have me back up to speed in no time!

A quick update on Cass: Cass will hopefully be back at her place and with power in about a fortnight – until then her internet access is limited so probably no posts from either of us for a while!

Caitlin Cradled in Daddy's Hands

The Brisbane River. Photo taken by Dave Hunt, AAP.

Since Christmas I’ve been watching the news coverage as the northern half of Queensland floods. Keeva over at Tree Bark Jacket struggled to get by as major towns and highways were cut off by flooding near her home. I’ve logged into WoW a few times since Christmas checked up with my guildies living up north: they seem to have avoided the worst of it.

Never did I think my own city and my own home would flood. Welcome to Brisbane, Australia.

Right up until Monday night my brother (handy to have a dam engineer in the family) assured me “No, Brisbane will be fine. Do you know how big Wivenhoe dam is?” (and yes, he’s that condecending in real life).

I’ve spent my entire adult life living in a drought, living within strict water restrictions, taking 3-4 minute showers and buying washing machines, dishwashers and shower heads based on their water efficiency. In September 2010 we took a day trip out to visit Wivenhoe dam to mark a joyous occasion: after hovering at extremely low levels (10-15%) for years the dam had finally reached ideal capacity (100%)  and opened its gates to let excess water run downstream.

100% capacity means that we have more than enough stores to run the city’s water works. But the dam can store almost double that amount of water. And that’s what it has been doing. But by Monday night, after months of rain, the dam was at 190% and the Brisbane River was already high. Unexpected flash flooding hit Toowoomba and other smaller towns only an hour or two away from Brisbane. Unfortunately most of the deaths caused by the floods occured that night. Parents died trying to save their young children.

I woke up the next day to phone calls and visits from concerned family and friends. I live not 100 meters from the Brisbane River in one of the suburbs that went under first in the last Brisbane flood (1974). My townhouse is built up over three levels, but like so many modern apartment blocks, they dug down into the ground to cave out that lowest level with room for a garage and study.

I started packing. The internet was the first to be switched off (it’s down in the basement study) and I packed up as much as I could and moved it up a level. At that time I expected only part of the lowest floor would go under.

Only a few hours later the news reports changed. Residents were warned to expect the flood to exceed the height of the 1974 flood. I started the much more difficult task of moving what I could from my main floor up to the bedrooms on the top floor. The lowest level inner city suburbs were already being evacuation. And I wanted to be out of there before they shut my power off.

I feel like I moved house in the space of half a day. Under the water (I was soaked from the rain) I’m sure I was soaked with sweat.

Right now I’m staying with relatives high up in the mountains on the outskirts of the city. I didn’t sleep very well that first night (the high tide was at 3am) so we drove out to see the damage first thing in the morning (not an easy thing when so many roads are covered over or closed off). 

Half of the lowest floor was already under water. With reports suggesting that the river would continue to rise 1 – 1.5 meters higher over the next two days I left convinced - resigned - to the fact that I would likely lose the second floor of my house: the bathroom, kitchen and living room.

But someone up there is looking kindly on me. I woke up this morning with the news that the flood had reached its peak and not risen as high as expected. With a mere 20 centimetres to spare my main floor is entirely untouched. That’s the depth of just 1 step on the staircase. Talk about a close call!

I can’t tell you how happy I am. This is probably the difference between covering the costs of repairing the flood damage with my insurance… and having to find tens of thousands of dollars to make my home livable again.

I wont be able to return home until it’s safe and the water has completely receeded – hopefully by the start of next week – and then I’ll be looking at a few weeks before my suburb is put back on the grid and the power comes back on. Gosh knows how long it will before I can have my electricity and network cables fixed – they were all wired into the floor that is flooded – so I doubt I’ll be back to blog or play WoW for a while yet.

Finally I just want to say that we’re lucky, as a city, that we had as much advance warning as we did. I felt that I salvaged as much as I could. Most people have been very helpful and, as far as I can tell, most people evacuated long before the police were called in. I hope we don’t see nasty behaviour such as looting (I know 3 people have been arrested, but hopefully that’s about it).

It’s estimated that 13 000 – 20 000 homes have been flooded in the city alone. Please open your hearts and your homes to those who have been displaced.

*Updates*

Most of the wreckage was moved out of our lowest level on Friday and Saturday the 15, 16th. Volunteers are everywhere … making me wish I hadn’t worked so hard to clean up myself (my friends and family had pretty much done most of the work by the time they arrived). One of my insanely organised neighbours is calling in favours left right and center: we had a generator (for power) and a high pressure water hose on Saturday which was amazing.

It’s a bit unknown whether or not I’m covered under my insurance policy but I’m not too worried because the government is forcing all insurance agencies to accept claims. I think they plan to step in and pick up some of the bill if they insurance companies refuse to.

My “untouched” main floor is covered in muddy foot prints and it’s driving me crazy. Yet I’ve discovered that I’m happier when I sit on my messy, empty, ground floor without power than when I’m staying with relatives and have access to hot water, cooked food and the internet. “Home” means so much. 

There’s something wrong with the power in my group of townhouses (the primary?) and also at the street level. No electrician can start to evaluate my place until Energex rebuild whatever is wrong on the street level – at the earliest 1 week away. Lathere (one suburb away, and high up) is still without electricity. The houses on the other side of the street to her have power!

There has been some mad, but inventive, brainstorming sessions on what could be done to really flood proof the townhouse: everything from one way drains to water tight walls and doors. The truth is we’ll probably just rebuild what was lost without many improvements simply because it’s cheaper. Which is boring and uninspired.

Oh, yeah, the only material that really comes through floods well is concrete and solid wood.

One of my favourite Mount Hyjal quests. I don't think I'll ever get tired of Just How Stupid Are Ogres quests.

I am one of those people who reads quest text from beginning to end before I hit the Accept button. I don’t know when I became one of those people. I know I didn’t start out like that.

I’ve also noticed a disturbing new habit that I’ve developed since the release of Cataclysm: I talk back to NPCs. (The quest givers seem so surprised when you are able to complete a quest it’s insulting!)

I wanted to savor the new parts to the story as I leveled from 80 to 85. And I also really like to run dungeons – almost as a mental brake from reading questing – which probably explains how I can be level 83 and only now just completing the first questing zone: Mount Hyjal.

My gear hasn’t changed. The mobs haven’t gained more health or learned how to hit back harder. The only thing that has changed as been that number: my “level”.

With each level up I drop about 1500 dps. Instead of picking up a couple of mobs and using Psychic Scream to hold them for a few seconds until death (don’t worry, it’s glyphed) I now need to throw out a steady stream of Mind Flays to finish off an enemy.

Vampiric Embrace isn’t enough to keep me healthy. I need to use Power Word: Shield, or ditch Shadowform momentarily to heal myself before I can go on. Even at level 82, before I was popping extra heals, I was starting to run short on mana: cycling Dispersion and Shadowfiend as soon as they came off cooldown.

At level 83 I picked up my wings. I always thought Archangel was designed to give us a much needed, on demand, burst ability. But right now I’m popping my wings as soon as they’re available – even if I’ve just left combat and my party is running to the next group of enemies – just to recoup some mana.

I have to eat and drink whenever I can find a safe spot to stop. I have to drink before a boss pull in a dungeon. I’ve been shying away from Mind Sear and Mind Spike simply because they cost so damn much to cast.

I ran out of mana killing the final boss in Stonecore the other day: barely scraping together 7000dps and unable to AoE the last packs of Devout Followers while I waited for Shadowfiend, Dispersion or Archangel to come off cooldown.

I know this is the game readjusting me to what I’ll be able to do at level 85: with each level you need a ton more stats to get the same output. But it’s certainly no fun becoming weaker with each level “up”. And it’s particularly biting that the new UI tells you “You have become more powerful” when, in fact, the opposite is true. And it’s only going to get worse.

There’s something absolutely un-fun about it.

But it’s not all bad news. Around the time that most of my guildmates (and perhaps the battlegroup?) were reaching level 85 I was still queuing for Blackrock Chasm. I healed a few runs early on. The queues for DPS were 40-50 minutes long. And there were quite a few occasions when I would get through that 40 minute queue only to be dropped into a near complete dungeon: when other DPS had dropped out post-wipe. I’ve come into Vortex Pinnacle to wipes right before the final triangular-lightning-grounding-totem mobs and wipes in Stonecore before the last boss.

5 minutes of XP gains for a 50 minute queue? No thank you.

In an act of desperation I logged onto my Mage to see what the Random Wrath Dungeon queues were like for Damage Dealers. I thought they’d be horrible. Surely everyone would be too busy leveling their mains in the new Cataclysm zones and dungeons to muck around with alts and Wrath of the Lich King content?

Well, I’m happy to say that I was wrong! Hello 10 minute queues. I ran dungeons back to back and went from 78 to 80 in record breaking speed (well for me anyway).

The funny thing is, at level 79, I went to the Auction House and bought up a set of uncommon Cataclysm cloth armor. For a couple hundred gold I think I tripled my stats and damage output.

Now that was a level up that didn’t lie: You have become more powerful. Yes, indeed.

Cataclysm Quests

For all this complaining, I am liking the quests in Cataclysm. But I don’t like how linear the quest progression path is becoming: it seems very anti-MMO to me.

When I started playing World of Warcraft just finding the good quests was part of the fun/difficulty/intrigue. I liked that you could run into the backwoods of Eastern Plaguelands and find some farmer standing there with a pitchfork and a shiny exclamation mark above his head.

Perhaps it’s because they’ve used more phasing, I don’t know, but there seems to be a set order in which you can complete quests in Mount Hyjal. And it seems the most glaring when you make a mistake and – god forbid – don’t realise that you’re carrying around a core pup that you need to “activate” (I mean, really, how is it possible to carry a giant dog in your bag and not know about it) it and feed it the meat also in your backpack – and suddenly your Twilight Hammer Trainer won’t talk to you anymore. I was left foundering for several seconds trying to work out why, after handing in a quest, my Trainer didn’t want to give me a new chore and, in fact, none of the NPCs in the area had anything to give me.

Of course by then I was jolted out of the story long enough to discover that I had done the hard part of a silly, mostly unrelated quest, but not technically satisfied the criteria and hadnt actually handed it in at all. Apparently not feeding meat to a corehound is enough to halt the recapture of Mount Hyjal.

When I first read Save the Wee Animals I immediately turned to my roommate, lover of Hello Kitty and all things cute, and said “you have to do this quest in Mount Hyjal”.  She was part way through her first quest zone, Vashj’ir, and asked me:

Can I just come and do that one quest? Or do I have to do other stuff first?

Honestly, I didn’t have an answer. Even though this quest has so little relevance to the overall story of reclaiming Mount Hyjal from Twilight’s Hammer and Ragnaros and Deathwing something tells me you can’t just fly in and pick up where to start.

Most Memorable Quests

Look! I'm right in the cinematic!

The entry into Mount Hyjal is breathtaking: you start with a quest that flies you over the entire zone to survey the damage. I snapped up a beautiful screenshot of Ragnaros and Deathwing chasing after me as we flew away from Sulfuron Spire.

I felt like I had been dropped straight into the cinematic!

There are so many run of the mill quests in Mount Hyjal that I just loved for the tiniest little reason. Sometimes it was just a quest name that made me smile (Fighting Fire with… Anything, In the Rear With the Gear) or when the quest givers disagreed with each other (Ysera’s response once you’ve spent a fair bit of time hiding a Night Elf gone bad by taking him into The Emerald Dream “Alysra’s decision might not have been the wisest, Cassandri“).

I also loved Salome’s greeting when you first meet her to hand in Fact-Finding Mission:

What, Omnuron calls this a ‘fact-finding mission?’ Bah! Facts are best found on corpses. Let’s do some damage.

Salome understands us gamers, that’s for sure! Unfortunately I found the Sethria’s Roost quests near impossible to complete. There were about 10 Horde and I squished into a little 30×30 yard area waiting for mobs and armor scraps to spawn.

As usual, I love any quest in which I get to go out into the field and save fallen heroes (or Trapped Mammoth Calf as the case was in Borean Tundra). And, as usual, it was a little bit painful to then head right back out to pick up arrows and simply step over any near-death Wardens that happened to get in your way (nobody is that heartless!).

Absolutely the worst quests by far were the ridiculous flying+jousting quests in the second Flamegate. I suck at anything that requires that much three dimensional coordination. Spamming a button to simulate beating your wings might be an accurate interpretation of what it’s like to fly as a bird but it really just felt like I was trying to space jump with too much gravity pulling me down.

Seriously, whoever came up with that quest chain sucks. Might have sounded good in theory but it’s really not fun at all. No wonder they give you a pet and an achievement to compensate you for your troubles at the end.

I was quite surprised when you were asked to make a moral choice in A Bird in Hand: to kill the misguided leader of the harpies or let her go free. The cynical part of me was convinced that, whatever I chose to do, the game response to either choice would be identical. I still dithered over my choice for a good few seconds anyway. I’ll let you guess what my decision was

I thought A Prayer and a Wing was one of the most ridiculous quests I’ve ever been asked to complete: let’s try and bring our All Things Flying Goddess back to life and then get her to fight for our cause. And the best way to do that is to summon and kill the guy she’s been with for the last 10 000 years! (Of course it’s all okay because he’s gone “mad”).

A few quests tripped me up.

The most embarrassing one was failing – and dying in the middle of a no danger zone – the Twilight Hammer IQ test. I never noticed that my action keys had been replaced so I could use 1 for a “yes” response and 2 for a “no” response. Instead I fumbled around for a bit and typed out “/say yes?”. I died pretty quickly. The punishment for not hitting the right 1 or 2 key is pretty severe.

When I came back for a repeat I was really getting into the swing of it. My question set went something like this:

1. Is fire hot?
2. Do rocks float in water?
3. Is fire hot?
4. Do dogs bark?
5. Is fire hot?
6. Do liars speak the truth?
7. Is fire hot?
8. Is fire hot?

… and by this point I was seriously hoping that they were trying to recondition my brain to think that fire was, in fact, not hot and give me a follow up quest to /hug the fire elemental that I had run away from in my earlier training sessions.

Alas the correct answer to the question “Is fire hot?” remained “yes”.

I also fumbled my way through my Graduation Speech and to this day I have no idea how you’re meant to know what to say. I think I leaned heavily on “Incite”. I did love how Cassandri(damus) was able to spout absolute nonsense for a good 5 minutes and nobody seemed to notice. I also really loved the tooltip on “Pander”:

These people are insane. You need to play along with it.

The blissful moment right before I charged in...

I failed spectacularly in the epic fight (Cassandri, Cenarius, Malfurion the Good Brother and that Shaman guy) against Ragnaros. You see, I stood side by side with Cenarius as Ragnaros started mouthing off and Cenarius never told me he was tanking. Yep, a second later and Ragnoros becomes attackable and I’ve proximity pulled him.

Ragnaros lifts his mace thingy. Cassandri has died.

I never even saw it coming.

Since it looked like the quest was going to fail only after a good long while I abandoned it, recovered my body, flew back to pick it up again, and then reentered the gate into the Sulfuron Spire. Except when I re-entered Cenarius and Rag were going at it and Cenarius was already on half health. I stepped up, hoping that I could get the quest completed anyway.

I dodged the lava waves, I killed the adds attacking my teammates when the UI warnings came up and told me to do so. I hesitantly dropped Shadowform and threw some Greater Heals on Cenarius when the warning came up to heal Cenarius (what, they’re customising quests so hybrids have to heal now?). Anyway, between the DPSing and healing and form switching and lava dodging it wasn’t long before I was out of mana and out of options. I was a bit peeved, a bit confused and very surprised when I successfully completed the quest anyway.

I’m still not sure if I was meant to heal Cenarius or not. Can’t the game detect that I’m a Shadow Priest?

__________

ps. Perhaps juggling your mana is fun for healers. But it really isn’t fun as a Damage Dealer. It really isn’t. Using spells as though they are Shadow Priest mana pots instead of potential damage boosts sucks. That is also not fun.

Afraid to leave Nordrassil?

It appears everyone around me has been mad keen for the Cataclysm release. Guildies are trying to level to 85 as quickly as possible, workmates took time off for the launch, my other half was determined to get realm first herbalist (which he did by the way) and my brother is aiming to make as much cash as he possibly could off the auction house.

And then there is Cass and I. Cass didn’t even bother to get a copy of Cataclysm on launch day and I only got it because my other half picked it up and installed it for me on his lunch break.

When Wrath of the Lich King was launched we did things very differently. We lined up at the midnight launch at EB Games, installed the game and started questing that very night. We took time off work, had our talent trees worked out; gear sorted and a loose plan of how we were handling the leveling process. When we woke up after a couple of hours sleep the next morning we were already past the main leveling pack (after a dangerous trek north of Howling Fjord, cutting across Grizzly Hills and into Dragonblight) and a group of us were both questing and dungeon-ing the entire way to 80.

Even if I had planned things in a similar fashion for Cataclysm I think I would have been thwarted for a number of reasons. First off, this expansion was released at 6pm AEST right when workers were coming home and peak playtime for Oceanic servers. Secondly, the expansion came out a little later in the calendar year meaning the teenagers were running amok – damn those school holidays – with literally nothing better to do than fill up the servers and cause havoc.

When WoTLK was released if you weren’t at work you could easily get on with perhaps a 2 minute wait time during the day. The real queues started approximately 3:30pm when the school kids were arriving home. Cataclysm is released and when I get home at 6:30pm, I’m in for a good 2 hour wait for server access. Apparently the queues are no better during the day this time round with at least a queue of 2000 waiting to get in.

Since I know that I won’t be able to raid, at least until I’ve settled into a routine with bub, I was very keen to level at my own pace and relax. I have been in a questing mood and was looking forward to doing all the quests in the new areas, actually taking the time to read the quest information and seeing exactly Blizzard had designed for us. This didn’t really go to plan when I quickly realised after arriving at Mt Hyjal that for every 1 Alliance player questing, there were 100 Horde. Quests that took me 5 minutes on the Beta… I couldn’t even find a spawned mob for to kill! I gave up and walked away to make some dinner hoping it would quiet down after an hour break.

I came back and while still busy I could go through the quests with less hassles. I did occasional get ganked for absolutely no reason other than I happened to be on my own: a poor lonely Alliance player in the middle of a Horde playground. The biggest problem being: if one Horde decided to go you, another 10 within the vicinity would decide to lend a helping hand as well. 277 gear and healing spec still just doesn’t cut it against that many opposing players.

All in all things was going well until it was time for me to go Into the Maw. There were no more than 10 alliance players in here and the second last quest objective, Cindermaul, was being camped out by at least 200 Horde players. I tried being patient. The Alliance tried sticking together but it was all for naught. At a 2 minute res timer I gave up and hearthed to Nordrassil ready to call it quits for the night. I was only about 60% into level 80 and my mood was not improved when I turned around and found out that my other half was only just trailing behind me in XP from doing Archaeology and hadn’t experienced a single run in with my mortal enemy: the Horde teenager.

Things got better at Nordrassil where I picked up a quest that took me straight to the final leveling hub for the Hyjal area. While there were still quite a few players around, I had made it past the main leveling pack and did this zone without any problems at all. I even ended the night on a high note by getting a neat little vanity pet from the flying jousting quests. I will happily admit I really sucked at flying and jousting all in one!

I’ve decided based on my experiences that doing leveling the casual way is just like raiding the casual way – horribly inefficient and for the main part much more frustrating. I’m starting to think that if raiding is going to be out of the question for me in this expansion, that a move to a PVE server is looking more and more likely. Or alternatively I might just give in and go Horde and join the teenage crowd. You all know the saying, if you can’t beat em, join em!

Lil Ragnaros, Singing Sunflower, Moonkin Hatchling and Mr Grubb

I had pretty much decided to completely close the doors on WoW. I hadn’t logged in for over a month, strange pregnancy hormones have me thinking about babies and nurseries  pretty much every waking second of my day and I had no idea how far off the Cataclysm launch was let alone bothering to pre order a copy.

Yesterday this changed.

My new cubicle neighbor at work is a WoW player. I know this because I overheard him begging to have time off work for the Cataclysm launch (his boss has just started playing the game as well so he clearly felt quite comfortable telling her his reasons for wanting time off).  After chatting to him for a bit about his WoW history and healing priest, I was inspired to have a look at my reader and see if anything exciting had happened in Azeroth over the last 5 weeks.

And that’s when it happened. I discovered the Moonkin Hatchling had been released in the Blizzard store. 

I wanted it… I wanted it bad. The thing is, I couldn’t very well justify purchasing a pet (even if half the money was going to a great cause) if I had no intention of opening up WoW ever again.

I then discovered that there were other vanity pets now available through quests: the Singing Sunflower looked particularly cool and Mr Grubbs… well let’s just say I’ve always had a fondness for mini ugly things, to me they are nothing short of adorable.

I had to log in… the lure of the vanity pet was just too strong.

Sadly I didn’t get my Sunflower last night. Between being constantly ganked by idiot horde teenagers who have most likely just finished school and clearly had way too much time on their hands, and a server shutdown I didn’t quite finish the final phase which rewards the pet.  I’m sure tonight this can be remedied and I’ll move onto Mr Grubbs.

On the personal front for those who have been asking and are interested.

Pregnancy. I really don’t particularly like it and can’t say I’m someone who has “blossomed” while with child. In fact I would say that I pretty much feel like a beached whale or perhaps a hippopotamus depending on if I’m waddling around or lying down.

I am also unfortunately one of 8% of pregnant women who have gestational diabetes for their final trimester. This is incredibly annoying seeing I’ve never craved chocolate or fruit juice so much in my life. Thankfully I ate fairly well to begin with and have been able to manage things without really changing my diet at all (sans the fruit juice and chocolate obviously). I am also anemic, another fairly common third trimester symptom simply rectified with a daily iron supplement. This all means that I’ve been moved into a “high risk” category of pregnancy and now see both my normal obstetrician and an endocrinologist fortnightly on alternating weeks.

Because I’m managing it well I get to deal with all the unpleasant parts like the fortnightly blood tests, the 4 times a day finger pricking but I sadly don’t get to have a 3^rd trimester ultrasound to see my little girl again. Talk about unfair!

I’ve also discovered that somewhere around week 28, some hormone must have been released that now makes me find pastel pink adorable and cry at everything from TV commercials as well as episodes of Glee and The Zoo.

In any case, sometime within the next 5 – 6 weeks (dependent on if I’m induced because of the diabetes) my little girl will arrive and I’m sure it will all be worth it!