Bible of Dreams

My First Week with Mists of Pandaria...and I'm Loving it!

I know it's not officially been a week since launch, but frankly I'm having such a great time with the expansion I felt compelled to write about it now versus waiting another couple of days.

Jumping right in, despite having attained a few levels in the BETA, on my horde shadow priest, since the Jade Forest intro quest was bugged for me at that time, I didn't quest there at all. Which means all the content has felt fresh as a daisy which is exactly how you want to start of on a new leveling path.

I've been splitting my time between my elemental shaman on one server and my shadow priest on another server. I realize this is not maximum efficient usage of my limited game time, but it's been nice to get to spend time in both guilds and playing two characters I'm really enjoying.

I was not sure how WoW questing was going to stack up after having been such a fan of the immersive storytelling in SWTOR. I've been enjoying having the quest chains be broken up here and there with some immersive storytelling, and cu scenes, even though I can't make any choices or have a direct impact on the story. It's still a step in the right direction and is a nice change from the old school wall of text quests.

A few things I love:

• Watching peeps in guild chat, every few hours, earlier in the week, type out: "Socks! Noooooo!" 
• The pretty clothes for my cloth-wearers, and the nice looking mail for my shaman. Gone are the days of looking terrible, unless you are equipping the tailoring gear I am making...
• Even as DPS getting in to LFD in a reasonable amount of time. Or perhaps I am just having enough fun out and about questing that I don't notice the wait that much.
• Professions have been moderately expensive to level but not impossible. I have enchanting, inscription and jewelcrafting maxed, with tailoring and alchemy up-and-coming.

A few things that are bugging me:

• I need a toy chest for all the toys and trinkets that do things like summon a raccoon friend! They're taking up all my bag space!
• I want my farm to grow things faster! I have many things to grow for my Pandaren Cooking. Can't I buy some EZ-Grow mulch from the goblins? No?
• I made the tailoring set for my poor neglected horde shadow priest and she looks absolutely ridiculous. WTB a dress please!
• Every LFD run I have done has had at least 1 incident of the boss lockout. It's never resulted in the group not completing the boss so far mind you. But people need to keep up with the group and not ninja AFK! ;p
• I think I may need to purchase a new bank slot for the banker to hold on to all the cooking materials. I've cleared one tab for it, but I just don't think that will be enough...

What about you? How's your first week of the expansion going so far?

Too Many Pets?!?!?

So far, it's been pretty smooth sailing for me with the Mists of Pandaria launch. The ship quest line worked fine, as did questing w/Wrenz cross-server (since we both want to play our shadow priets atm.) Only one small issue cropped up for me last night, right after receiving Mr Fishy, a new companion pet. I went to learn him and was faced with the most horrible text I have ever seen:

Can't add companion to your account.
You have too many pets.

WTF?!?!?!?

510 pets is too many pets? But I don't see any duplicate pets I can cage and sell or give away. What is going on here?

Determined to figure this out, I went to the pet battle trainer to see if she could help. I learned pet battling and accepted her quest then opened my journal again. Still not seeing how man of each pet. So, I picked one I knew I had too many of, the blue dragonhawk, and searched for it. Sure enough, I got a list (by searching dragonhawk) that showed every individual occurrence of dragonhawk in my pet hournal.

I started right clicking on and choosing "put in cage" for each of the duplicates, to clean up my pet journal. The good news is since these are pets that are sold individually, they are able to be caged and sold (well, if anyone wants them.) Many other pets require that you set them free to get rid of your duplicates

And here is the happy ending to my story, my new friend, Mr Fishy!:

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Getting Settled In Guild Wars 2

I've been playing Guild Wars 2 daily since the headstart, and am starting to get my sea legs.

I've been making slow but expensive progress through my crafting professions. Cloth is still slow to come by but I am keeping my tailoring a bit ahead of my character leveling on the whole. Ditto for the artifice. The cooking is not so much at level, and outrageously expensive, but the diverse creations that come out of the discovery mechanism for it are so much fun to shoot for, especially now that we have the Good with Beer GW2 cooking helper tool.

I've also been making nice progress with my alt ranger -- she's already 22! It's fun to explore in search of new pets to add to her team, and I am amazed at how much she and her pet can take on together successfully.

And now that the auction house is up more reliably I have made a few sales. But It is curious to see how many people put items up for the same amount at which you can sell them to a vendor. Oh well, more salvage for the crafting collections...

And finally, our original guild has apparently been restored so all our 200+ members can see it and represent it, after it being in limbo and inaccessible for most of the time since the headstart weekend.

All that said, I'm taking a mini break from the game for a few weeks to give it time to continue to settle. You see, in addition to the issues I wrote about last time, my SO and I hit a nice big new bug: his class quest, which he and I had been doing together since we're both Asura in the 30s, bugged out. As in it told him his next step is a level 48 quest. As in, he is no longer able to get credit for completing the quests with me.

As you may expect, he creaeted a support account and put in a support ticket (I don't at all get why you need to make a new account for support btw). It was answered in a timely manner, but with a generic copy/paste reply about quests not completing that seemed to indicate the correspondent either did not read or did not udnerstand his ticket. Now, if the respondent didn't understand, they should have asked for clarifying details/more information. But they didn't -- they closed out the ticket. And they haven't replied on twitter to me about that (or anything I've asked themabout on twitter) either.

Yes, my SO could just scrap this character and start over as a workaround for the bug. But what if it hits again? And why should he have to scrap 30+ levels of playing and all that crafting, for a workaround that could possibly lead to this exact same outcome? ugh. NO THANK YOU! So perhaps by giving the game a timeout, the issue will eventuall be resolved by ArenaNet. If not, it's not like we didn't get some value from the game purchase-- just not as much as we'd expected to. And that's OK. Because I am a little tired of the grind of killing the same mobs over and over and over again. SO this break should do me good.

TTYL GW2.

It's the Little Things That Charm Me So...

No, I don't just mean the gnomes. Tho clearly, I have been charmed by the gnomes.

I'm talking about the small details that make some of the Cataclysm lowbie quests give you a grin. Like this Forsaken firefighting backpack apparatus. It's so functional and yet so stylish! I didn't want to turn in my quest and give it up, but I also wanted to progress through the Ironforge airport story, so in the end I did surrender it. Alas, I do not hitnk this one will be ready for Hallow's End and trying to get a similar Forsaken gas tank of her very own. But perhaps she'll go for one of the blue water tanks that @Rades wrote about obtaining.

For the record, this little gnome is a shadow priest. I plan to level her through some of the Cataclysm content I haven't run an alt through yet, aling with a heavy side of LFD. What's truly fun though is looking at every piece of gear she gets as a drop and thinking "Transmog y/n/murloc?" Good times.

What is a little thing that's recently charmed YOU in Azeroth?

BA Shared Topic: What spell would I most want?

This week's blog Azeroth shared topic asks: "What spell would you most want?" It was inspired by the fact that in the upcoming Mist of Pandaria expansion, Druids will be getting a new spell called Symbiosis, which will allow them to "trade" a spell with another player, based on the player’s class and combat role and the Druid’s specialization.

This one was a no brainer for me-- I'll be crossing my fingers that I always have a shadow priest in my party so I can borrow their Mind Sear. Now, its tooltip doesn't make it sound like all that: "Causes an explosion of shadow magic around the target, causing 152 to 163 (+ 15% of SpellPower) Shadow damage every 1 sec for 5 sec to all enemies within 10 yards around the target." But what it DOESN'T MENTION is that you do, in fact, create a shadowy purple explosion of damage in a large circle around your intended victim. Purpley bolts of doom for everyone!

When I play my boomkin, it's always the mind sear button I try to reach for, from the many hours of shadow priesting and the joy that spell has brought me in so many dungeons and raids and city leader strikes. If my druid had it in her arsenal, it would be her go-to AOE spell. And her targets would never see it coming...

What about you? What spell would you seek out?

Guild Wars 2 Headstart Hiccups

 

As comes to a surprise to no one, I've spent the better part of the last 3 days playing in the Guild Wars 2 Headstart. Above you can see my Asura Elementalist, who is only level 15. This is due not to my lacking game time or playing too many other alts. Rather, it's a direct result of some of the hiccups the game has had since Friday night's soft launch to prepurchasers such as myself.

I was online and ready to go at 9 PT on Friday when ArenaNet brought up the servers, which impressed the heck out of me. Earlier in the week we'd heard servers might be up as early as then but I don't think anyone was expecting them to be ready to go at exactly that hour. Over Vent, I was hearing issues from a number of players regarding login troubles and guild invites not being received (or being received but they could not see themselves in the guild roster. I was happy to not have any of those issues, and to snag most of the names I wanted on my home server.

My intention had been to play until midnight with Wrenz, but the grouping/phase/overflow issues we started having almost immediately, including one that kept Wrenz from being able to move his Asura out of the initial instanced quest, and coupled with game crashing lag in the overflow KO'd that plan. Instead I set up my alts, put a few small items up  in the trading post and logged out after about an hour, planning to get in some serious crafting and exploring time over the weekend. At this point, I was just super happy that we got our characters rolled on our server before it filled up, which happened by about 9:40.

 When I logged back in on Saturday morning, I was disappointed to find that we'd ended up with a playing experience that had reverted to the issues we'd had in the first BETA weekend, rather than the smooth playing that had set the tone for the last two BETA weekend events. Specific issues that kept cropping up include:

• Mail not reaching its recipient. Happening both if the player was online and mail was sent from the contacts window or from typing in the person's name in the mail window.
• Trading post not available. This led to full bank and bags and my scavenging a vast number of items I would have otherwise sold on the trading post, such as blue quality gear and weapons. It also put me at a bit of an impasse with my professions, since at one point everything needed vials of blood, which I would have purchased on the trading post. Luckily for me, last night twitter came to the rescue in the form of one of my tweeps sending me a stack of blood (thanks Scott!)
• Join in not working. This is supposed to allow you to get into the same phase/server as your party member. But I kept having it not work, or worse yet-- not show up as an option. This meant Wrenz and I, although in the same guild and on the same server and playing in the same Asura lands often could not actually play togther (or see each other in the game world tho our little dots were right next to each other on the mini map.
• Game not sure what character I was playing. By this I mean to other players, and to my guild roster, last night, it thought I was on my level 8 Norn ranger, in Hobrek. Over the weekend it kept thinking I was on a level 2. Not only did this prevent folks from thinking I was available to play with in the area I was in, it was on these occasions that I was not able to be grouped up with. Similarly, the game kept thinking Wrenz was on his level 2 human, instead of his Asura, which is quite likely one of the causes of our grouping bugs.
• Buggy overflow server. By midday Saturday it started to feel like there was more than overflow for the Asura starting lands on our server, since I could be in overflow playing with Wrenz, walk a few yards away then POOF! No longer be able to see him in game and vice versa without either of us having gotten a message that we'd been moved, and no ability to Join in to get back in the same phase.
• Gathering tools gone missing. Perhaps one of the oddest bugs was last night logging in to find my elementalist was unable to gather wood due to not having any tools equipped. Having just bought her a stack of lumber axes the night before, and still having plenty mining picks, I was unsure as to what had happened with the 88+ she logged out with. I went and bought more and moved on, but it was a bit of a pain since it cost time to go to a vendor, as well as cash to travel there, the latter being in much shorter than usual supply due to the lack of the trading post.

After we got past the debilitating lag of the first night, the game was beautiful and playable...in a solo fashion. But not so much from a crafting perspective. And certainly not from the perspective of wanting to experience the first blush of this new MMO with my SO. I am bummed for the folks who got swept up in GW2 fever that prepurchased and had not had the chance to play one of the flawless BETA weekends. I've seen a number of them having already thrown up their hands and gone back to SWTOR/WoW/TSW.

Inevitably, one of you is starting to formulate your reply, along the lines of "haven't you ever been in a launch noob. you have too high of expectations." Well let me save you the trouble of typing that (it won't be unscreened if you do): I had the pleasure of playing in SWTOR's headstart this past Winter and it had absolutely none of these issues. Other than Windows barfing on my Mac keyboard a bit, it was every bit as smooth as I could have hoped.

This weekend's GW2 headstart, on the other hand, was pretty frustrating, and was more akin to some of the game breaking WoW patches and expansions (hello Burning Crusade and HFP lag of doom and rolling restarts!) of many years past. I am hoping that GW2 gets over these small hurdles quickly. The Guild Wars fans who have been waiting years for this game will put up with these issues as minor annoyances, but those who are new to the franchise might not.

Overall, I still have high hopes for this game. My Asura elementalist is adorable and I am enjoying my Norn ranger. Once I am able to fully take advantage of the trading post and get my economy mini game going, I know I'll be back on track to being the raving fan I expected to be. See you in game...

PS as always comments are screened. Rest assured constructive comments will be unscreened as soon as possible.

My Shadow Priests' Patch 5.0 Talents and Changes in Playstyle

Now that I have my glyph choices squared away, I thought it was time to share the direction I'm heading with talents for my shadow priests* since we're about to have Patch 5.0 land upon all of us, bringing us into this new talent world order.

It quite honestly feels odd, after years of playing, to have so few talents to choose from. Luckily, that marries well to the limited amount of time I've had to screw around in the BETA to see which ones I'd most like to have in the live game.

Tier 1, Level 15

Despite how tempting it would be to have a tentacle monster forest at my beck and call to root down my enemies (i.e. Void Tendrils), I went with the Psyfiend here. It's fabulous fun to have a shrieking little friend causing my enemies to flee in terror. What's not to love?

Tier 2, Level 30

Since this is my leveling build, I've gone with Phantasm. It allows you to remove damaging effects and disencumber yourself by hitting fade. The other real possibility in this tree, Angelic Feather, will go in my second build, to be invoked if I have a raid situation that needs the extra speed for allies.

Tier 3, Level 45

Given how much I love my shadowfiend, turning her into an exquisitely evil and more frequently deployable mana regen machine by choosing Mindbender was a no brainer for me.It will be interesting to see if Shadow Word: Insanity ends up being more DPS or not (that all being relative depending upon one's ability to watch DoTs and CDs and react accordingly).

Tier 4, Level 60

This tier is all about self-preservation. Since I am tired of having way too many rarely-used "oh shit" spells crowding up my bars, I went with Angelic Bulwark which will passively try to save me from anything terrible I stumble into by shielding me and regenning health.

Tier 5, Level 75

My first look at Twist of Fate was initially due to it being an old friend name and icon-wise. But it stayed in my talent tree due to it being a nice passive DPS boost on low health targets. I'll pop Power Infusion into my second shadow build, which is intended to be more suitable for raiding, as the increased haste and mana regen on demand could definitely come in handy.

Tier 6, Level 90

Since I haven't gotten to 90 in the BETA (and frankly, I don't want to ruin all the surprises or get burnt out playing at max level before Live launches), I haven't yet gotten a chance to play with these talents yet. But they seem to be pretty interchangeable from their descriptions and what I've read from other BETA-goers. I thnk I'll go with Divine Star on my leveling build and Cascade (with its higher mana cost) to my raiding build.

Changes to Shadow Priest Playstyle Along with the Patch

Give up any latent thoughts you may have of trying to keep your old rotation in the new frontier of 5.0 and beyond. It simply won't be possible. Here's why:

• Mind Flay no longer refreshes Shadow Word: Pain. You have to manually keep an eye on it and refresh as needed.
• Devouring Plague now requires shadow orbs instead of mana. Ideally, you'll want to wait for all 3 orbs to be present to get the most plague for your buck.
• You build up shadow orbs through damaging targets with Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death. The latter can generate 2 orbs if it is the killing blow on your target.

What this means for your rotation is you'll now need to keep a closer eye on your Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word Pain (my favorite DoT timer for helping with that in the past has been Need to Know) and refresh them at the last possible moment. You'll want to use Mind Blast every time it is off cooldown, Devouring Plague every time you have 3 orbs available, and fill in with Mind Flay when nothing else is up. And don't forget to deploy your Mindbender/Shadowfiend early and often. When dealing with a group of 4 or fewer mobs, you'll want to DoT with VT and SW:P and DPS down the main target, using plain old Mind Sear instead of DoTs for groups of 4 or more.

I have long loved using my Devouring Plague and being a DoT machine. But I am OK with the changes in my rotation that are coming with this patch. I'll blame that easy going stance on having been a long-time boomkin as well. Adapting to all of their changes over the years, and feeling in a way I can't quite put my finger on that this new shadow priest playstyle is more cosmicly linked to boomkininess, is giving me a purple calmness. I'm looking forward to trying out the new talents and abilities in the next few weeks on my shadow priest ladies.

See you in game!

* That's not a typo. I have a gnome and a Forsaken shdow priest at max level tyvm.

Mists of Pandaria Shadow Priest Glyphs

Believe it or not, Mists of Pandaria finally delivers upon the promise of making minor glyphs...fun! That's right, no more removing a reagent or adding some other utility function -- you now get to pick your minor glyphs based upon what looks fun to you, not what makes the most sense for your pocketbook and bag space. But I am getting a little ahead of myself here.

First of all, there are no more Prime glyph slots. Just a total of 6 glyphs, split between major and minor. For major glyphs, shadowpriests can choose from these spec-specific glyphs:

• Glyph of Mind Spike -- 50% reduction in cast time of your next Mind Blast for 6 sec (stacks up to 2x)
• Glyph of Mind Blast -- 4 sec stun on target when Mindflay critically hits
• Glyph of Dark Binding -- can cast Prayer of Mending, Renew and Leap of Faith without leaving shadowform
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Death -- can cast SW:D at any time, but only does 25% damage on targets above 20% health, and casting SW:D now damages you for the amount it would for damaging a target above 20% health
• Glyph of Psychic Horror -- reduces cooldown by 10 sec
• Glyph of Mind Flay -- no longer slows target; instead every time it does damage your movement speed is increased 15%, stacking up to 3x
• Glyph of Vampiric Embrace -- converts an additional 50% of the damage you do into healing but reduces the duration by 5 sec

For leveling, I've chosen to go with Glyph of Dark Binding, Glyph of Mind Flay and Glyph of Mind Blast. I have to say I am not super enamored with the Mind Flay so if I find need for dispersion at 90, I may swap to that instead. I will also swap out the dark binding for Mind Spike at 90. If none of the above shadow specific glyphs appeal to you, you can choose from a glyph that buffs one of your utility spells. See Wowhead's full list of Priest Glyphs for details.

Minor glyphs of interest include:

• Glyph of Shadow -- makes your shadowform less transparent
• Glyph of Dark Archangel -- applying Devouring Plague to a target transforms you into an archangel form for 8 sec
• Glyph of Shackle Undead -- changes the appearance of your shackle undead (see Wowhead's screenshot)
• Glyph of Shadowy Friends -- extends your shadowform to your non combat pets
• Glyph of Confession -- teaches you the ability Confession which compels a friendly target to share a secret
• Glyph of the Heavens -- your levitate targets appear to be riding on a cloud for the duration of the spell
• Glyph of Shadow Ravens --  your shadow orbs now appear as shadow ravens

I will give you one guess as to which glyph I will equip first...Of course I have always wanted little shadowy friends! And then there's the shadow ravens! How many times did I remark here and on twitter how shadow priests needed shadow ravens? TOO MANY TIMES! It's like playtime for Anexxia with those two combined. Though I should not that the shadow ravens do not have as much visible time as I would like. And some of my noncombat pets are not as awesome in shadowform as regular form. Hmmmph. So, I am most likely looking at Glyph of Confession, Glyph of Shadow Ravens and glyph of dark archangel, with bouts of Glyph oh Shadowy friends.

What's interesting to me, is none of these feel yet like "must take" glyphs, unlike previous go rounds with glyphs. It will be interesting to see if that is born out once the game hits live.

Getting Started with Guild Wars 2

 

...a.k.a. Tips and Tricks for Players New to Guild Wars, With Other MMO Baggage

I resemble that above aside. Having played World of Warcraft for years, then becoming completely immersed in SWTOR, I have a lot of game mechanics and world logic baggage that I carried with me into Tyria -- but you don't have to! I've compiled the below as a guide to all the things you'll need to know and keep in mind as you start your adventures. And I hope to see some additions or questions from you in the comments...

Character Creation

• Be mindful in answering your alignment questions. The way in which you answer the questions that come up after you've chosen your profession and customized your character will determine key parts of your story. If you end up playing more than one character of the same race, be sure to mix up your answers to provide some variation in your story.
• Spend some time playing with dye color combinations for your starter gear set. These combinations will automatically be applied to new pieces of gear you equip as you go along (though you can go in and change the colors later.)

Your First Steps Into the World

• Build up your weapon skills, one at a time, before venturing out too far into the world. Unlike other games, your weapon skills will vary by weapon type, and are learned via using the weapon in combat. You'll want to use your first weapon until you learn all the skills associated with it, then swap to your next available weapon once you have it. Note that each time you swap in a previously unused weapon type, you will start with only 1 weapon skill unlocked and have to grind out the remaining skills. The good news is you can do this on lower level mobs. The very best place is in the instanced starter zone.  Very low health mobs that die in 3 hits, and actually give quite a bit of XP.  You can even have a friend mail that toon all the starter weapons if you want to unlock them all.
• You can buy inexpensive starter weapons from vendors or in the auction house. To preview the skills that accompany each weapon type, to help you decide which weapon you may want to  try out next, go to your Hero tab (h) and choose the skills and traits tab, then weapon skills.
• Get accustomed to dodging attacks in addition to standing your ground to fight mobs. Unlike many other MMOs where you primarily stand your ground and fight, it's very helpful to actively try to move yourself out of the way of attacks, lest you be smashed into the ground like a bug. You can double-tap a movement key (WASD) to dodge out of the way, or you can keybind your dodge. And also be sure to use line-of-sight and kiting to your advantage to avoid for taking on more damage than you can survive.
• Check your email often. You can pick up mail wherever you are in the world by clicking on your mail icon in your top navbar. After completing quests, you may receive a mail with some cash from an NPC you assisted. Be sure to click the "take all" button in your mail window to recover the items or gold attached to your mail messages.
• Spend your karma points on item upgrades versus stockpiling karma. You'll find karma vendors while you are out questing-- be sure to take a look at what they have for sale, and spend your karma points with them to keep upgrading your gear as you go along.

Transportation and Navigation

• Unlock every waypoint you see on your map (marked with a blue square). Waypoints are your primary mode of transportation around the map.
• If you die, you'll need to rez at your nearest waypoint. Most unfortunately, this will cost you some of your gold. If you are very lucky, and you die in the midst of an event, you may be rezzed by a friendly player, but don't count on it!
• Maps have multiple levels. If you can't seem to find the point you are looking for, check out other map layers to find your way to the point of interest. This especially holds true in the often multi-leveled cities.
• Look for hearts on your map to figure out where to quest next. Hearts indicate there is a quest you can undertake in a specific area. To uncover hearts in a new unexplored area, talk to a scout (marked with binoculars on your map.) Upon completing a quest, you will receive some amount of gold and XP.
• Look for orange skulls or other icons with an orange circle around them. These indicate areas with dynamic events that are currently in progress. You will get karma for completing these activities, with your reward (gold, XP, karma) depending upon your amount of effort on the task/boss kill relative to the other players taking part in it. Sometimes an additional dynamic event will spawn after the completion of another dynamic event so it can pay to stick around for a minute afterwards to see if there is a part two in which you can participate.
• Look for overlapping red triangles for points with a pretty view of the area. These triangles indicate a vista point. Upon reaching the point, often through some jumping or tree climbing, you will be rewarded with a cinematic and a nice place in which to take a screenshot.
• Instant waypoint travel via party chat. When out in the world with a group, you can shift-click on a waypoint to link it in chat.  You party members can double-click that link to travel directly to the waypoint.  Very handy for corralling a large group. (ty Manglehaft!)

Crafting, Gathering and Auctioneering

• No one can steal "your" gathering node. All players in the area with the appropriate gathering item (mining axe, logging axe, harvesting sickle) can tap a node. No more trading off with your party mates or seething in nerd rage over other players tapping a node while you're fighting the beasts that are guarding it!
• The gathering tools are consumables that must be equipped, not permanent. Make sure to buy more from your friendly junk vendors whenever you are running low. And keep an eye on what you are harvesting-- as you move into higher level areas, you will need a better quality tool to gather successfully.
• Gathering gives a significant XP boost. Our friend @zerena_hoofs accidently tested this in the last bwe; she didn’t buy tools, and by level 11 was two levels behind everyone else, the only variable being her not gathering. (thanks to Manglehaft for this reminder.)
• Always keep salvage kits in your bags. Available for purchase from various city merchants, these kits are used to break down armor and weapons into crafting materials. This is a great way to cear out your bag slots of old or unsaleable gear you pick up, and generating crafting materials for your use or for sale in the Black Lion Trading Company auction house.
• Right click on crafting materials to deposit them in your bank. Unrefined crafting materials can be deposited to your bank from anywhere you are in the world by right clicking and choosing "Deposit collectible." There is an option on the top right of the bag menu that allows you to “deposit all collectables” in two clicks (thanks Manglehaft and Psynister for the deposit all tip!)
• You can sell and purchase items from the auctionhouse from anywhere in the world. However, to pick up the proceeds of an auction house sale, or an item you have purchased, you need to go to an auctioneer and pick it up from the pickup window.
• You must be standing next to a crafting station to craft items. The crafting station window will also provide access to your bank so you can easily pull out items you need. If you run out of crafting materials for an item you are trying to make, you can right click on that item to search for it in the auction house. You will however have to go pick it up at the aucitoneer.
• Keep your bags partially empty while crafting. Your crafted items have to go somewhere! You can either salvage them to recover some of the materials after you've made the item for a skill-up, or you can right click and sell them in the auciton house.
• Pick your price for buying and selling. When looking to purchase an item, you can either buy a listed item or put in a bid for X amount of those items at your desired price. Similarly, if you have an item you'd like to sell, you can either meet or beat the list price for others of those items on the auction house, or if there are outstanding orders for those items at a specific price, you can choose to sell immediately to that buyer.
• When pricing an item for sale, keep in mind that the auction house takes a 15% cut.

Miscellany

• You can not mail items to yourself. To send an alt an item, you will either need to deposit it in the bank (your bank is account-wide not character specific) or mail it to a friend with whom you are questing.
• You can not trade items with others. Instead you have to mail it to them. It's usually pretty fast, but still not the instant gratification of opening a trade window.
• You're visible to folks who have you friends listed, regardless of which character you're on. This is nice for not having to keep track of altoholic friends. However, note that when you message someone in game, they'll just see the name of whatever character you're on, not your area.net name, and may in fact have no idea who you are. Luckily, if you want some alone gaming time, you can make yourself show as invisible, as though you are not online, on the login screen.
• Shift+click to link an item in chat.
• No one can steal your quest mob/loot. As long as you do some damage to a mob, you will attain credit for the kill, and have your own loot assigned. Note that if you are in a party, your party may still have to roll against each other for loot.
• Turn on auto loot. Go to general options + interactions and check the auto loot button.

How the Mists of Pandaria BETA Renewed my Interest in WoW

I've been on a World of Warcraft hiatus this year. No one was surprised to see it coming, including me, given my responses to my own 2011Year in WoW review. But I kept an eye out for BETA information of interest, and still read BETA related posts that came across my twitter feed. At about the time pet battles were implemented into the BETA, my interest in the changes, and the new content, reached a fever pitch and I happily was given a BETA key (thank you again @Krizhek!) with which to play and see if my love for WoW would be rekindled. And it was.

Of course, my love for my shadow priest Anexxia confounds the empirical evidence on this mind you. She's my favorite MMO character of all time. And I missed her. So she does give me somewhat purple-tinted glasses for the expansion.

That said, however, poking around and exploring all the new areas, and fishing up the many fish that reside there, learning Pandaren cooking, and even getting started with my own Tiller's kitchen garden got me really revved up about playing WoW again. So much so that I reactivated my live account to start looking around for some new active guilds in which to play. Because I want to be ready to go when the pre-expansion activities hit.

I think the key to what grabbed me in the expansion, in addition to missing playing my shadow priest, is how so many of the little things I enjoyed doing (fishing, cooking, collecting mini pets) now are such a bigger part to the game (or better integrated with each other in the case of the cooking/fishing/gardening.) I am not sure that I will even roll a monk at all, but I will definitely have a blast making my way through all of the new scenery in Pandaria.

What about you-- are you planning to play once the expansion hits?

Getting Ready for Guild Wars 2: Required Reading

Now that we've entered the final countdown to Guild Wars 2's release, it's time to start thinking through your plans for launch (and headstart.) And I've found a few great resources to help you get started...

Planning Your Cash Shop Spend

• Psynister's Gem Store Conversions Spreadsheet. Hot off the twitter presses this morning, @psynister has created a Google docs spreadsheet showing the gem store stock and prices in gems (and translated into cash) for the various perks and cosmetic options we can purchase when the game goes live.
• Guild Wars 2 Mini Pets list. A great place to start making your wish list of mini pets.

Picking Your Profession

• Guild Wars 2 Hub's Profession Guides. Nice overview of each profession's playstyle, list of weapons you can use, and tips for each class.  
• GW2DB Skills list. Now, if you want to start getting into the nitty gritty of the skills available to your profession with each weapon, you'll want to spend some time poking around Zam's database. Here's the elementalist skills list as an example.

Crafting

• The official wiki is your best source for accurate and comprehensive crafting information. You can get an overview of crafting and then dive in to detailed crafting materials information.
• IGN's GW2 Wiki has a nice crafting section, including recommendations for which professions are best suited to which crafting skills.

And after today's stress test, I'll be back soon with my getting started guide...

I'm a Boomkin Biker Babe, Don't 'ya Know It!

Badass Boomkin Biker babe

In perhaps one of my most significant BETA findings to date, I've discovered that my boomkin is now able to ride her mounts whilst in Boomkin form!

That's right -- your eyes are not deceiving you.

And it's not limited to ground mounts either. Here I am on my Headless Horseman's Mount:

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

xo Anexxia

Why Hello There, Shadow Priesty Lady...

I wasn't expecting to be posting a screenshot of my shadow priest exploring in the new Pandaren lands. But here we are. All thanks to my twitter buddies Psynister, who was helping me think of a way in, and Krizhek (tytyty!)who was so kind as to give me a BETA key.

Welcome back, Anexxia, I really missed you.

And stay tuned to hear about all the shadow priest changes, pet battles, Pandaren Cooking and more.

xoxo

Getting Together a Guild Wars 2 Blog Roll

Hot on the heels of my Guild Wars 2 twitter list, I've started getting my Guild Wars 2 blogroll together as well.Here's what I have so far...

Official Sites

• Guild Wars 2 official forums
• Guild Wars 2 official news page
• Guild Wars 2 official wiki
• Guild Wars 2 posts on the arena.net blog

Individual Bloggers

• Attached to Keyboard
• Distilled Willpower
• Eternal Alchemy
• GrissleCast
• Hunters Insight
• Jexx's Sightings

Fansites

• Crossing Tyria
  Substantial forums and a front page keeping you up-to-date on Guild Wars 2 fansites' news
• Dragon Season
  This fansite has an international audience, featuring content in Greek as well as English
• GuildMag
  This fansite supports a podcast and a magazine, and is hosting a blog carnival on the topic of 5 years of waiting for GW2
• Guild Wars 2 Guru
  Solid GW2 fansite from curse.com
• Guild Wars 2 Hub
  A nice community section, and a number of guides worth checking out
• Guild Wars 2 Journal.
  Forums, general and class-specific guides and a healthy news page are primary draws
• Guild Wars 2 Junkies
  Fansite with news and video from the folks that also bring you Forcejunkies and Riftjunkies
• Guild Wars 2 Life
  Part of the mmorpglife site, with a number of guides including locations for obtaining crafting materials
• Guildwars2 Live
  Livestreaming is a focus here, with a busy public calendar of upcoming streaming events
• Guild Wars 2 Skills Build Editor
  ALthough the bulk of this site is in Russian, the build editor tool is in English and is well wroth checking out.
• Guild Wars 2 Wikia site
• Guildwars Insider
  Not only do they support forums, a podcast and a good selection of posts on lore, they also have a turntable.fm station
• GW2DB
  Guild Wars 2 database site created by curse.com with entries for recipes, items, achievements, maps, guild upgrades, and talent calculators
• GWOnline.net
  In addition to news and forums, there is a significant video library fueld by community members' contributions
• IGN's Guild Wars 2 Wiki
  A nice user-friendly and easy-to-browse framework for a community-sourced wiki, but still has a number of pages needing to be fleshed out.
• Talk Tyria
  This community-focused fansite has a diverse group of contributors, covering everything from lore to professions
• Team Legacy
  Focusing on PvP, strong content (and feeds) for video guides and PvP action
• The Tyrian Order
  In addition to forums and live streaming, a professions codex and a visual encyclopedia in their "database hub" make this site worth a visit

Let me know other individual bloggers and fansites I should add!

My Recent Adventures in Guild Wars 2

I've spent this past weekend doing some additional exploration of the beautiful world of Guild Wars 2. This was my third and final BETA weekend participation. Now I just have to sit and wait impatiently for the game to launch next month. Very impatiently. I'm still enjoying SWTOR, but I've become charmed by GW2 and want to spend some time exploring all its new places.

I was excited that they gave us the ability to play Asura this time, as I had been looking forward to play the adorable wee creatures. I am, after all, a huge fan of the gnomes in World of Warcraft. The other big addition to this BETA weekend was the addition of the scenic vistas, most of which are accessible via platform jumping or scaling up vine-wrapped architectural supports.

I am not terribly good at figuring out the datacrons in odd places in SWTOR, but so far, I have been able to get to all the scenic vistas I've spotted on my map in GW2. Granted, I've not gotten past level 13 due to all my race and class jumping around so perhaps they ratchet the difficulties up a few notches as you get to higher levels. In addition to a small amount of XP, accessing a vista rewards you with a cutscene that is a sweeping view of the area your character can see from their vantage point.

 My first weekend of playing I spent the bulk of my time on the Charr Mesmer you see above. Although fundamentally I don't think Mesmer is the right class for me (as weapon swapping and dodging out of the way of damage is not something that comes naturally to me), I am a big fan of the beautiful Charr and will definitely be playing at least one of them through to the end of their story.

 I recall being a little frustrated while playing the first two weekends with the difficulty in keeping my professions leveled up in synch with my character's level. This was due in part to not having had much luck selling items in the auction house. This weekend on the other hand, I was able to offload many items in the auction house, and thus could afford to purchase the supplies I needed to level up artifice and tailoring on one character to 25 skill. While this didn't quite mean that I was keeping up with my ability to make gear at my own level, I did still craft a piece or two for myself to wear, so overall I'm good with its progress. Additionally, it seems as though the quest rewards have possibly gone up a little bit. I am just not finding myself as cash strapped as I did in the earlier BETA weekends. And that is a very good thing!

I briefly played around with a Sylvari Ranger and was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed a ranger class for a change. I can't say that I've had the best luck in the past with them, but in the name of trying out all my ranged options, I had rolled one this weekend. I like that GW2 makes it easier to manage your pet's health -- when they need healing they limp up to you so you can take care of them -- no searching through a monster-infested bog to see where Mr. Whiskers expired!

I'm not sure I can say that the Sylvari grew on me (no pun intended.) It was nivec that Wrenz and I chose different options on character creation, so we were able to see two of the forms the character story can go depending upon some of the alignments chosen. But overall the plant people are just not sucking me in to their story. Perhaps they just take a little bit longer to charm you than the Asura and Charr.

Rather than starting a new blog to capture my Guild Wars 2 adventures, I think I'll just work them in here. And once the World of Warcraft Mists od Pandaria expansion launches and I pop into that for a while, you'll see that here as well. Hope to see you in game!

P.S. leave me your GW2 player name so I can add you to my friends list!

Gone Fishing...

Farewell, and thanks for all the fish!

I've been putting off the inevitable. But this morning, I took the plunge, and canceled my World of Warcraft subscription, almost 6 years to the day I started playing.

I haven't logged in since Christmas Day, when I logged in to pick up a few gifts for my alts under the Winter Veil tree. MIA were the many folks who've made the game fun for me. And thus I quickly logged off and went back to playing that other MMO.

I have 6 years of memories-- both amazingly awesome and incredibly disappointing-- behind me with this game. I don't think I can say the same for any previous game or online distraction.

And then there are those of you who are actually reading this post. The amazing online blogging and twitter community that has sprung up around this game over the years has been a prime motivator and instigator of so much of the fun I've had in game. I won't miss you guys b/c I am taking you along with me via twitter and the other blog.

:)

I may be back for the next expansion, becuase I really am excited about my 150 vanity pets becoming Pokemon.

In the interim, I will still write about MMO guild management topics here when the mood moves me to do so.

But for now, I'm shifting out of the purple shadow form and hanging up my Boomkin dancing shoes for a bit.

Catch you on the flipside...

My 2011 World of Warcraft Year in Review

As evidenced by the increasingly irregular posts to Bible of Dreams, 2011 was not the best year of my almost 6 years of playing WoW. But still, I bring you, my annual year in review meme...(see also 2010's edition)

What were you most excited about in the past year?

I managed to find time to level up some goblin ladies and found myself enjoying every minute of it. Well, other than a few really jerky LFD groups. Overall though, had a blast and highly recommend you roll one as they are just too darn adorable to miss out on. I also logged in to make the most of the various holiday activities and bosses, other than Winter Veil.

 What was the best thing you bought?

Buying myself and Wrenz each a Vial of the Sands was definitely my most well spent G of the year. A big Bank of Azeroth balance is nice and all, but being able to turn into a huge shadowy dragon, grab a friend in my claws and fly off-- that's priceless!

What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

I would like to have a new reason to log in and play. Right now, I am really not terribly motivated to do so. There have been little pockets of excitement like logging in to transmog my favorite ladies into the gear I most loved, but honestly, other than that and a few other things I've blogged about this past year, I haven't been super motivated above and beyond logging in to hang out and chat w/some of the folks I love playing with across my collection of servers.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Hitting the 125 pet mark for Anexxia and Psychocandy, with a little help from my friends. Thank you. :)

What was your biggest failure?

I tried to lobby Blizzard to add a tuxedo kitten to the assortment of vanity pets in game, but they didn't bite. Even though I served up the most adorable cat model for them, my much loved and missed kitty.

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Waiting around to see if I was going to actually be invited to a raid group.

What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2011 that you'd never done before?

I stopped raiding. And it was really really weird. I've been raiding consistently on one or two characters ever since my first character dinged 58 and we needed another healer for our MC raid alliance raid. Raiding didn't work out for me, despite being in both horde and alliance guilds that were raiding. As became all to clear to me once I gave up the ghost of raiding being a possibility, I didn't find myself having as much fun in Azeroth on an ongoing basis without it, and thus, spent significantly less time there.

What was your favorite new place that you visited?

The new Dark Moon Island. And of course, SWTOR, but shhh that's not in Azeroth.

What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

I honestly can't pick one specific WoW blog this year, because I simply loved too many different posts from too many folks, thanks to the amazing WoW twitter community and folks like MMO Melting Pot and the WoW Insider Daily Quest that are always sharing links to posts that merit immediate reading/commenting. I will say I was really sad about so many of my fave peeps hanging up their WoW blogging hats, especially Reflections from the Pond.

Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2011.

Watch your back. The dwarves say this to me all the time. I should have heeded them! Also, actions speak louder than words. I have never heard as much malarkey from folks as I have this year. If you don't walk that talk, don't bother flapping your jaws about it! ;p

What was your Year in WoW like? Share a link to your year-in-review in the comments!

PS Haven't written yours yet? Steal my list of Qs and link back to this post!

1) What were you most excited about in the past year?

2) What was the best thing you bought?

3) What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

4) What was your biggest achievement of the year?

5) What was your biggest failure?

6) What do you wish you'd done less of?

7) What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2011 that you'd never done before?

8) What was your favorite new place that you visited?

9) What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

10) Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2011.

Darkmoon Island: Fun for All Levels

I spent some time tooling around on Darkmoon Island this past Sunday, running errands for some carnies and fishing up a storm. the fishing is what netted me the Sea Pony vanity pet you see in the screenshot above. It too fewer than 50 casts off the coast (both in and outside of wreckage pools) to catch this guy. I obtained my second sea pony, on my Forsaken shadow priest, in a scant 12 casts. But in contrast, my gnomey shadow priest fished the coast off and on for several hours (while I baked cookies) and never saw a sea pony land in her bags.

The sea pony fishing wasn't the only excuse to bust out my mad professional skills on the island however-- there are quests you can complete for all flavors of professions, netting you some rep with the Faire, plus prize tickets and cash or XP depending upon your level. Some of the professional quests will require that you bring some supplies with you (or head out the portal to your staging area at the end of the dock to go grab some.) Thus I started bringing my stack of flour with me on all my chefs, and blue dye/red dye/simple thread on my tailors.

One of the more silly but fun aspects were the many new World event achievements the Faire brought with it, including the "I was Promised a Pony" achievement. As seen below, there are some ponies you can abscond with and ride around the island on for a bit. And who doesn't like ponies?? EVERYBODY likes ponies. But I digress.

The Faire also hands out some quests that involve incenting you to grind mobs complete Battlegrounds and Dugneons back on the continents. Thus, even though there is a little bit of a grind involved if you plan to save up your tickets to purchase some of the fabulous prizes (which include mounts and vanity pets, heirlooms, and replica tier gear) they actively aim to make it feel less grindy than Firelands for instance. Somehow I doubt I will return to the Faire to play the games very often, or complete the in game challenges to rack up the tickets for even one pet, but it was a nice day's excursion to bring out my favorite toons to go see.

 

Transmogrification: Validation for a Game Lifetime of Being a Pack Rat!

As recently noted, transmogrification was the #1 thing I was looking forward to in Patch 4.3 which dropped this week. Thus it should come as no surprise that when I finally logged in to WoW, post-SWTOR BETA weekend, that the first activity on my agenda (and my only activity thus far) was to get my transmogrifitcations in order.

My first order of business was my druid, Candy. At one point, all of her bank bags, plus two of her personal bags were stuffed full of old gear and vanity pets. Eventually, our pets went into the Companion tab, which meant she was able to hoard even more gear and tabards. I considered her full set of Tier 1, and the T2 recolored set from BC heroics, but settled on her full set of T2. In addition to loving its look, it was a minor miracle to have collected all 8 pieces at level (only 1 other druid on our team also got all 8 pieces, my friend El.). My vanilla WoW raiding days were definitely the high point for my druid, so I love that she is now able to forever memorialize that moment in time.

Next up: my gnome shaodw priest Snake. She was born a Draenei at the dawn of the Burning Crusade. And as soon as she hit max level, she was tapped by her friends and family guild to start coming to the weekly Karazhan raids. Everyone wanted her OP replenishment and healing powers. I still remember the night the Staff of Infinite Mysteries dropped for her. I couldn't stop grinning for a solid hour. It totally made the outfit. "...the Menagerie is for guests only..."

My beloved shadow priest Anexxia, however, did not have a similar happy transmogrification story to share. Her bank is somehow a mess of mismatched helms and shoulders, one dress, and a few other misc bits. But most importantly, her halo is missing. That's right-- my most favorite piece of her gear, which I have posed with in numerous costumes/dress up screenies-- POOF! To say that this deflated my transmogrification high would be accurate. I poked around, and settled on an outfit, but I am not happy with it. I wanted the halo. I've put in a ticket asking to have the item restored, but given my recent track record with GM requests, I won't hold my breath.

How about you -- how has your transmogrification been going?

Friday Five: Five Things I am Most Looking Forward to in Patch 4.3

Like many World of Warcraft players, I am ready for something new to do in game. And since I am no longer raiding, I've had to look to a number of other small things to keep me engaged, including looking ahead to what patch 4.3 will bring us. Here are the five that I'm most excited about:

1. Transmogrification. First and foremost I am thrilled I will get to wear my halo and wings always, and be my most angelic shadowy self all the time, not just for Hallow's End costume contests! Still undecided on felhunter on a stick or bat wing staff...
2. Northrend/Outlands leveling streamlinging. Yes I do still have a few newish alts I am pushing through the levels. I'm happy to hear that questgivers have been moved into Outland and Northrend dungeons, in addition to many of the group quests now being soloable, and a 33% decrease in XP needed to move through those areas on the way to level 80.
3. Holiday pets will no longer be soulbound. No more deleting duplicate pets your alt keeps winning while your poor main, the pet collector, never is able to beat the RNG...
4. New Darkmoon Fair pets. When am I not excited about more pets?
5. Bag Search. A search field has been added to allow players to search bag, bank, guild bank, and Void Storage inventories for specific items. This is a huge help for those messier than average guild banks that are out there.

What are YOU most looking forward to in Patch 4.3?

What Can a Guardian Cub Buy You?

Now that the 24-hour cooldowns have passed and the Guardian Cubs have started popping up on auction houses all around Azeroth, ranging from $9500-$20,000 G, I have to ask: does this RMT transaction really amount to much given the current state of the WoW economy? What can you actually *buy* for 10k-20k G anyhow? In my opinion, not much that matters.

Sure, you can upgrade to the fastest flying speed, or buy epic flying for another alt, or finally build yourself a mechanohog. But other than a few bits and bobs in the forms of random raid BOEs, there really isn't a whole heck of a lot you can purchase with G in game that matters.

When I asked on twitter last night what those folks who'd purchased the cub for resale planned to do with their profits, no one replied with any big plans. Perhaps some were going to sell a couple of cubs to save up for something like the Spire of Scarlet Pain, or perhaps others might intend to blow their proceeds on purchasing other vanity pets for their pet collectors, but I suspect that many folks were just going to stash the cash away in their WoW bank accounts, and use it for the more mundane every day expenses that eat through your saving (i.e. repairs and enchants and gems etc.)

To me at least, it feels like the Real Money Transactions (RMT) tree fell in the Azeroth woods but no one heard it fall.

I'm a Face-Melting Shadow Priest But I Still Love the Whimsy and the Adorableness in WoW

Recently, on twitter, pretty much from the moment Blizzard announced them as the new expansion's focus and new race at Blizzcon, there has been much backlash against the Pandaren. I've seen many comparisons to Ewok and gnomes (because apparently many many people feel sickened and/or threatened by gnomey awesomeness) and assertions of how their "silliness" as a class equates to Blizzard having jumped the shark and ruined the World of Warcraft.

All I can say to that is: BALONEY!

Personally, I am equally at home with my love of vanity pets and gnomes and kittens and being a face melting shadow priest! I challenge anyone who has played with me to honestly say "Oh that Anexxia is such a carebear gnome lover and kitten scratcher that it gets in the way of her being a good player; she really needs to L2play."

The entire style of WoW, to me, is somewhat cartooney, versus hyper realistic. It's not meant to be a very serious representation of modern life. I don't want to play a character that looks just like me in real life-- I play me in real life every day. Having a little fun with appearances doesn't change my ability to play in any way. Yes, sometimes we are going about very serious business, such as very important raid boss killing, but at the end of the day, we are playig a game, with a goal of having fun. And having a dancing gnome shadow priest in your raid is fun! Not as fun as a dancing boomkin perhaps, but FUN all the same!

You know what else is fun? Bouncing along as you run. I bounce on my night elf. I bounce on my Forsaken. I bounce on my gnomes. And the bounciness is contagious. Before you know it, you have other folks bouncing along in synchronization with you! And suddenly that long run back from that wipe isn't quite as annoying.

Frankly, it always puzzles me how much anti-gnome sentiment I'd hear while playing my beloved gnomey casters. Now, Pandaren have taken up the mantle of most heckled and despised race. I don't particularly like the hunchbacked, ever-sniffing worgen, but I don't go on Internet tirades about how they ruined Wow and are ridiculous insults to my gaming self. I just simply don't play one. Hopefully the anti-Pandaren uproar will die down and folks will find something else to deride. If not, at least all you pandas will have a nice thick furry skin to deflect the criticism. And hopefully you'll have an awesome beer-powered dance to dance those cares away with...

PS a big thank you to Cyn for suggesting I actually post about this.

Friday Five: Five Hallow's End Faves

Those of us not at Blizzcon at the moment are thankful to have Hallow's End activities to keep us busy. And pleasantly, there are even a few *new* features and activities in which to take part. And thus, today's Friday Five, Five Hallow's End Faves.

1. Creepy Crate. Don't let its clumpity clump clumping behind you fool you-- there's a shadow priest trapped in there! Park yourself next to a critter and you'll see what I mean. Those are SHADOW ORBS you see before you...
2. Feline Familiar. A cute kitty with glowing green eyes and a witches hat, who pops out onto a broom to follow you as you fly around and about. My only compliant here, is the kitty doesn't really have as wide a range of animations/activities as some of our other pets. But it is adorable so I'll live with it.
3. Stink Bomb Runs. The fun of PvP without all that pesky danger! You hop on the back of a witch's broom (as per above, which I did while posing as one of those humans' ghostly ancestors) and are whisked away to your enemy faction's city where you are able to merrily toss stink bombs wherever you'd like. Now that's fun!
4. Tons of Guild Rep via the candy buckets. Due to having a number of high level characters, I've yet to max out my guild rep on any of them. I slapped on my Renowned Guild Tabard, got myself a wickerman buff, and then set off to collect enough tricky treats from candy buckets to buy the Feline Familiar, and earned a ton of guild rep along the way.
5. Hallow's End Vendors. Pet and toy vendors, wand vendors and mask vendors. Not only do tricky treats finally have a use, those folks who have been perpetually a few masks short of an achievement can take care of that at their leisure, no longer dependent upon RNG.

What's been your favorite Hallow's End change?

Oh Hai There Creepy Crate!

Hallow's End is upon us once more!

Hasten ye to Orgrimarr and Stormwind to embark upon a new adventure, which will eventually result in this creepy crate following you home. He will clatter behind you all clickety clackety, occasionally popping up an eye-- or a tongue-- for a quick look around. Get him too close to a critter and ZAP! purpley lightning will wrap around them and suck them into the crate.

Watch out tho-- I haven't found a way to get rid of the foul stench from his green gaseous emissions...

 

BREAKING NEWS: There seems to be a shadow priest lurking within the creepy crate! the shadow orbs do not lie!

 

Friday Five: Five Good Criteria for Choosing New Guild Officers

All too often I've been in guilds who seem to choose guild officers based exclusively on longevity of membership within the guild. Which is how you end up with the worst druid I've ever played with as the Druid class leader and the raid healer leader in a former guild. Luckily, there are a number of better indicators that a guild member might have what it takes to make a good officer in your guild:

1. One of your top performers in raids. These are the folks you want to give a shot at being a class or role leader, or helping to define raid strats. Yes, it could just be dumb luck, or the stars aligned against everyone else in the raid that has propelled them to the top, but more often, it's due to their taking the time to optimize what they're doing, often by poking around on blogs and forums and synthesizing a number of opinions and ideas until arriving at their own witch's brew of excellence. These are people you want to have as part of your leadership team.
2. One of your most friendly gchatters. Every guild has that member that says hello and makes newcomers feel welcome. In my past WoW life, that was Lady D. She made all our new recruits feel at home, while also being sure to give a warm welcome back to folks who hadn't logged in for a while. As a result, she was often the guild member people who were having a rough time confided in. You want your officer team to reflect the needs and concerns of your entire membership, which makes having at least one outgoing, friendly officer key.
3. The maintainer of your guild website or wiki or whatever medium you've chosen for your out of game community. It's not a cakewalk to administer an active forum, or to keep a complex guild website updated with the latest news and widgets. This guild member often gets little public recognition for what amounts to a part-time job behind the scenes keeping things going. But they are in fact, demonstrating daily how committed they are to the guild. This is the sort of participation that merits an officer slot.
4. The most prolific sharer of WoW-related news. This member has a direct link from MMO Champion to their brain, and spits out WoWhead links in their sleep. Or at least it seems that way. They are the first to interpret what all the Patch Notes really mean, and are often the instigators of lively (yet respectful) debate around those topics. These are the sort of folks that truly help keep a community going, and that should be a primary goal for your officer team.
5. The altaholic. Now, at first glance, the altaholic might not look like an obvious candidate for leadership. Some might see the full selection of character slots on a realm as a sign of being flighty and unable to focus their energies n completing a task. However, I see the altaholic as someone who has a true passion for exploring all the nooks and crannies and perspectives available to them in the game. And that sort of passion can be inspiring-- both to their fellow guildies, and to the leadership team.

What are some of the other guildie traits that you've found to make great officers?