Pokemon!

So I've like not played wow in 2-8 weeks except raiding. Oh, and I logged on to check if I had a battered hilt still for someone, but I don't know who it was so I never told them I have one. And! I logged on to make pants for someone cause I halfway made them weeks ago, and by god that didn't take long cause have you seen the cast bar on tailoring epics? No, of course not it's that fast. And a few minutes of fishing for Vortex. Otherwise I've been busy driving, shopping, driving, visiting friends, or playing Pokemon. Not that I've been playing Pokemon non-stop.

So there's been like nothing to post about wow. We killed Cho'gall at some point and haven't done much more than that. OH! I finally got power torrent after like 2 months of everyone else getting it cause everyone forgot about me and kept asking me to enchant their stupid chest or boots and what not. Though I got it by not turning in 9 shards to the gbank so no one knew they existed so I could buy the pattern and enchant my weapon myself. And omg our guild's other raid has like 3 heroic modes down or something but no one tells me the number or when we kill something so our website says zero not that I'm the, whatsit, webmaster or anything.

Oh and some guy thought I deleted his vent channel which was remade near instantly and the first time in 2 months I stayed overnight in vent he deleted mine so I come back the next day sitting in the lobby. I may have taken away his broadcast away for a few minutes and will probably do more to him tonight since I'm feeling pissed again. Oh! I'll make his channel a weird broadcast mode *evil laugh* (my hatred stems from the fact that he refuses to confront me about anything I do, maybe this time!)

There sure are lots of reasons to not log onto wow for me. No one to play with sucks too. I've got one main friend left who always does their heroic for the day and never wants to do another. Anyone else in guild I go with seem to always want to do achievements which I always tend to die during. ("but it's the way you are supposed to do the boss" 'or we could skip the boss' ... *dies*) and that's assuming they haven't already finished their one daily before 5:30pm or later! I could go do archaeology and go insane, or do dailies and hate myself as I'm camped at a graveyard that resses me every 30 seconds.

So I could do all of that or I could text my friends who can't play and play Pokemon and watch Adventure Time!

I'm good at depressing randomness

Internal Blizzard Policies

Most of this is not based on facts, just ideas.

Blizzard is a company and as such has policies and management dictating decisions. One policy I firmly believe in currently is that each expansion class spells are strictly limited in order to make classes feel equal. I've heard my guildies talk of BC spells being unequal, according to WoWWiki classes got 5-6 new spells. Some felt they deserved 6 when they only got 6 or some were completely useless; arguments ensued. Now in cataclysm every class got three spells.

Perfectly equal with every class getting exactly three new things. Which is why, although I think it would work amazingly, we won't be seeing a new druid healing spell, although making shrooms have a heal might work. Then again I could be completely wrong, Spirit Link Totem, grats shamans! Really, we both need fixing. I guess your new spell made it through the management levels faster ;) I'm hoping we get something similar since there are still issues.

I have also noticed a change in the way the game has been handled recently. I have an idea that this translates back to something within Blizzard that has changed. The change I've noticed relates to the distribution of patches. It's true I've never been through a previous expansion, so perhaps I am wrong. However, I have been through a lot of patches.

Previously patches were something I dreaded, and still do, full of bugs, addon updates, hours of unexpected downtime, and just eww. But since the release of 4.0 the patches have seemed smoother. This may just be coincidence and Blizzard might not be doing anything different. I at least think they are though. It seems patches on the PTR stay there longer. The bugs get worked out, and the patch goes live with a lot fewer issues overall. There are lots of hotfixes I attribute to it being an expansion, but there aren't many major bugs.

I've also been rather bad at predicting when patches will come out lately. I'm normally on target or off one week rarely, and I've been consistently off by two weeks. In fact I've given up predicting when they come out. The patches seem to be lacking in extended downtime or server crashes. There's been fewer server crashes and lag outs since 4.0 than the few patches before in wrath. Also, I believe, the expansion was playable. I've heard that didn't happen when wrath came out. I wasn't there though, so I can't say anything for sure.

What does this all add up to? I can't say for sure, but being in the software field, especially a tester, I think they could be focusing on quality. Before I'd say they were focusing on keeping people interested with new sh-ahem, stuff. I've felt that they didn't need to do that at all through all of wrath and maybe they caught on. Maybe they are focusing on quality now. Or maybe there's a new boss. Whatever the case, I'm glad that when a patch comes out I'm not hating the fact that I have to raid cause that's where peoples schedules line up.

incoming extended downtime to prove me wrong

BA Shared topic: When Good Guildies Go Bad

I've been looking at the shared topics over at Blog Azeroth for a while, and after my vacation I had an idea for a topic, but no title and wasn't sure if I wanted to write it anyways. Then I wrestled with myself for a while about posting this, but finally decided to even though it's late. Jack at The Casual Raider came up with the topic this week that relates and gives this a title, even if this might not be quite related.

I'm going to try from the other perspective. What I mean is that I've been doing some pretty bad raiding lately. So lets look at what happens when you are the good guildie gone bad. Lets start a few weeks ago where I changed up my entire UI and started healing in a new way. I was able to adapt pretty well, but the addons I'm using have some odd "features." It also condensed some of my addons, one in particular is decursive. The new raid frames I'm using shows debuffs I can dispell and is amazing.

What went wrong, however, is the nice Blackout debuff on Valiona and Theralion. The first week no one dared cleanse it so I took up the slack there. Then the second week rolled around and I kept cleansing it early. I had reasons each time, though none made any sense to me. I came to the conclusion that I was just too tired to be trying to cleanse that correctly. So the raid leader told me to stop doing it, so I did. Then people cleansed really slow and I felt horrible. I had wiped us 3 times by this point, and wiped us again when I missed where a flame breath was coming from.

That was probably one of my worst nights of raiding I've ever done. I think the cause of my failures was being tired after staying up late for whatever reasons with the raid leader and friends. This being the cause I've since taken measure to try and get more sleep. However, the situation during raid could have been handled a bit better to let me take a short break I think. The making me stop cleansing it may have been the fastest solution though.

I wish this was my last problem, but they continue. Our guild started 25s with a partnership a few weeks ago. It abruptly ended last Thursday with the last raid day being Tuesday. Tuesday I had planned not to raid. I had just got back from a 5 hours plane flight and hour drive home, but I was expected to come along for whatever reasons. The entire night I felt pretty useless with constantly low healing done. I don't know if anyone else noticed because I made the entire raid stop early in order to get some much needed sleep on my part. I missed any review of logs that was done.

If anyone did notice I'm sure they wouldn't tell me about it later. A huge problem in the guild in my opinion. I'm not sure if it happens to others, I try and let people know if there is a problem pointed out about them. However, if there is a problem with me, I rarely recieve any feedback about it. I've attempted to mention this to some people before, I figure I'll point them here when this gets posted to start addressing this.

As for my thoughts on what was wrong that night. The fact that I was up since 3:30am with little sleep in a raid I wasn't expecting to be in and still learning the class changes from the patch. Everything combined and made me appear to be a horrible healer. I know I was able to keep the tank I choose alive for fights where that mattered, which allowed us to progress. Me leaving early might have cut the raid short for everyone else as well, making me look like quite a b-word.

I haven't been very fun to be around lately as a whole. Due to these issues as well as others that have been irking me. I think I'll seek out bugging people about them. Communication on both sides is key to addressing raid problems. My guild could use some work in that area which hopefully I can start changing. I hope I can get some other problems addressed, and back on a schedule to help improve my playstyle. Raiding back in 10s will help me as well, since I've liked them better since I was introduced to 25s.

In Alabama...

There are Hardee's! Though I didn't get to eat breakfast at one :(

The speed limit goes to 70! Vroom vroom :D

The chai tea at Serda's Coffee Company is amazing! /swoon

The roads are huge! But traffic is worse =/

The toasted breads are soft and delicious! I hate the hard toasts up here, how do people eat it :(

There's seafood dishes for everything! Yummy omelets :)

The gas is cheaper! But no auto stop when filling (at the one place I went) O.o

There's the one girl I'll really miss. I hope I'll see her again in a few months! >.<

Vacation was fun, and slow. I was able to install wow on my laptop and help get us the fishing achievement when waiting for a certain someone to get off work. Hope everyone had good raids while I was gone. I'll post some more about more interesting stuff soon, and continue my rp thingy.

Altena: The Begining

A few weeks ago I heard of a very interesting item. I was hiding in my normal little dark corner of the new Dwarven District bar using mind vision to observe those outside as they went about their business. Just in case any of them were acting suspicious today. I was behind some plate wearer’s mind on one of the new drakes when I overheard one of the current guild members talking about a new rare item healers were after. They said it once belonged to Tyrande, the Night Elf priestess I had visited on a few occasions. A simple doll that was lost ages ago that holds unique properties. I caught the word archaeology before the man decided to fly away on his new dragon, perhaps to escape the strange sensation my spell was giving him. I normally wouldn’t have canceled my spell just to make him wonder what was happening, but I was intrigued.

I had heard of the new trainer who could teach you skills in Archaeology, but I had not had a reason to visit him or even suspect him of anything suspicious yet. I figured he had been in this city too long to go without me observing him for a little bit, and I knew he couldn’t hide from me for long. After a quick check in trade district for him, I went to the keep to check the library. I found him right away, teaching some new archaeology students about “digging” or something. It looked like a small class and it was about to be over. I approached him as his students wandered away and requested the skills to start “digging” or whatever it was you had to do. He taught me the basics quickly and I left not wanting to stay too long and I’m sure he was relieved.

With a map of dig sites in hand and a new Archaeology “digging tool” I set off on my Blue Drake to find some Night Elf ruins. However, it was not that easy. The first few places I came to were fossil and dwarf. Then a troll and I began to wonder if I’d ever see a Night Elf fragment. Then I came to that little grove in Duskwood that contained one of the entrances to the Emerald Dream I’ve heard about. I got my first few fragments and was content to continue searching.

I soon moved over to Kalimdor, the current home of the Night Elves, and was able to find many more dig sites on my map that contained Night Elf fragments. I obtained many pieces and soon it was time to return to the Harrison Jones fellow and get a new map and techniques. He seemed just as busy as before, but seeing my interest he stopped and taught me a few new tricks so I could get back out and keep practicing my new skill.

I returned to Kalimdor and soon decided to try sorting through some of fragments of the Dwarves and fossils I had found. I discovered a few artifacts in the pieces I had gathered. A Bodacious Door Knocker made me smile, and the Imprint of a Kracken Tentacle found far inland suggested many things. None of which I’m sure of, but do these creatures even still exist? It seemed rather frightening to think about what could be lurking below the waters when traveling over the ocean. I’m not sure about taking the boats anymore, I’m glad The portal to Mt. Hyjal exists for an alternate route to Kalimdor now.

I shall need to visit Harrison Jones again soon as I continue my search. I find myself spending very little time in Stormwind now, which I guess it is a good thing to get out more often.

PS. Going on vacation, be back in a week or if I feel like posting from my phone O.O ~Sakaki
pps. good luck with your raids <3

Three 10s make 25

Since the expansion came out my guild has been focusing on 10 man raiding. I've always enjoyed this more. 25 just seemed an odd number to me. I was used to the 40 or 15s of vanilla even though those make even less sense looking back at them. I'd still like there to be a 40 man raid come around again, just something for fun and not 3 days long. The guild has been running two 10 mans for a while now, with some minor attendance issues, including the blizzard knocking out my 10's tank last week and us barely raiding.

But tonight, we are joining up with another guild on our server to combine our two guilds three 10 man raids into one 25. I can't say I'm thrilled, but all the reasons make sense. Also, I'll always like helping people and will pretty much always come along. With the new patch coming out today, along with the new dual guild 25 being attempted I can hardly imagine it will go smoothly. My last dual guild raid was in vanilla, and there was a little issue involving a belt, an enchanting pattern, and me. While it is the only claim to fame I have, I hate telling it, and for some reason continue to do so.

Luckily the only loots I'm obsessed over drop outside of raids and I think I've matured a bit since then, and well defined loot rules should hopefully make tension from drops not as much of an issue as they used to be. So I'm hopeful the raid goes well and the only issues we have stem from addons and instance servers. Not the players or guilds.

My Priest

Before I go posting a bunch of random things that are unrelated to druids entirely I'd like to introduce my priest. I made a priest towards the end of Trial of the Crusader in order to experience another healing class' play style. I choose discipline due to our raids needs if I ever brought her, and just how neat bubbles are. She leveled fast as a healer, and I had fun. She gained a few RP elements when she was doing the beginning Wrath quests. I found the lovely buff from whisper gulch ore fragments and kept it with me. Then I got the nice haunted buff from the Wrath launch events from a friend. Suddenly I know what kind of RP I wanted to do with her!

I've always loved the Old Gods, they were part of the story I keep coming back for. I even went looking for them back in vanilla, similar when I ran around looking for Ashbringer, but those are another story. The priest then should be like me and be fascinated with them, but even go further! So I figure she's going insane, so what better character to have level only doing archaeology looking for yummy items for me ^.~

With Kae's posts where her characters interact with each other I really like that dynamic. However, how would my druid react to my priest? I can't tell yet, it's been driving me insane trying to figure it out. Inc H.P. Lovecraft inspired posts about doing Archaeology.

PS. Thanks Keredria and DBM :D