Bible of Dreams

Goodnight New Azeroth...

I can already tell we are in for an interesting ride...

Farewell Old Azeroth

Last night in Azeroth -- what to do? Take a morotcycle ramble around the old world of course. So many memories. Like fighting the world dragon in Ashzara. And my first explorations of Darkshore on my baby druid, my first toon. Remembering the fear of running past Splintertree post as a baby druid (ahhh! they're after me!) So many friendly quest givers, so many scenic spots that took my breath away on first view, then became a part of my game world, familiar territory, for five years of playing.

Fought back some horde picking on a poor little old shadow priest. Killed the Winterfall Runners. Stopped to watch the antelope frolic in the Barrens. And woke up this morning to a message intercepted from an angry dragon. Things will never be the same.

Farewell old Azeroth, and hello to the New World (of Warcraft) Order.

Autoblogography

I snuck in just under the wire for this week's Blog Azeroth Shared topic: writing your blog's autobiography. The results can be seen in the shiny new About Me page now part of the site header. Thanks to Ophelie at Bossy Pally for suggesting the topic!

It's pretty funny that it took me over two years to finally get that written. I blame all the vanity pets in need of acquiring and profession lists that needed to be created for waylaying me. Wouldn't you?

Nothing more to see here. Logging back in to WoW to earn some more fabulously cheap and easy cooking achievements on my alts thanks to the Pilgrim's Bounty holiday.

Friday 5: Five Ways to Prepare for the Shattering

With patch 4.0.3a, a.k.a. "the shattering", on the PTR, with many speculating we'll see it on live servers as early as Tuesday, It's time to start thinking about what you need to do to get ready. And before you say "Blizz would never release a major patch like this before a holiday..." I must remind you that we'd never have thought they'd release a huge patch like 4.0.1 the week of Blizzcon either. And thus I bring you 5 steps for preparing for the patch:

1. Pick your new home city, portal there from Dalaran on Monday night, and wait. Why? 4.0.3a removes the Dalaran portals, replacing them with professions trainers. If you get stuck in Dal, it's the slow boat back to Azeroth for you. And don't forget to set your hearthstone. This doesn't apply, however, to your toons in the 71-80 range.
2. Get prepared to give your alts stuck in Northrend one last push before the expansion. With the 20% reduction in XP required to get through those levels going live with this patch, you'll be ready for Cataclysm in no time.
3. Park your 80 mage in front of where those portals used to be. For the first week or so you will get tips galore from helping unprepared and navigationally challenged folks get around.
4. Design your new gnome priest or undead hunter's look, and get ready for the reroll or the race change.
5. If you play a Druid, paladin, priest, or shaman, look at the new talent calculators now -- your talents are going to be reset and you'll need to redetermine how you wish to allocate your talent points.

BONUS: Get a chopper made now -- nothing says post-Apocalypse road trip through Azeroth like a motorcycle.

Doomsday Cult Infiltrates Orgrimmar

a screenshot gallery...

Anexxia, contemplating the dark loveliness of the Doomsday altar, after vanquishing those pesky cultists.

Gearing Up for Cataclysm: Cleaning out the Banks

With Cataclysm only a few short weeks away, it's tome for you to face up to the unholy mess that is your personal bank vault. And it's also time for Officers to evaluate the Guild bank vault. This guide to efficiently cleaning out your bank assumes you have a bank alt. If you don't have one already please go roll one now. Thank you.

Personal Banks

To get started cleaning out your personal bank, start by moving around all the items you have accumulated. I suggest grouping them like this:

Gear

1. Old gear with sentimental value (like me and my old tier sets and favorite weapons)
2. Off spec gear
3. Old gear you are keeping around for hit swapping purposes
4. Old gear you aren't using anymore and didn't get around to tossing out
5. BoE gear that is higher level than you are

Keep all those in bucket 1. Keep those in bucket 2 only if you have used your off spec in the past 3 weeks. Throw out category 3 items since you can reforge and will be getting all new gear in a month anyhow. Bucket 4 should have already been DEd or sold by the time you are reading this sentence. Send items in bucket 5 to your bank alt.

Consumables

1. Flasks, fish feasts, and buff foods for your current spec.
2. Speed pots, Wild Magic pots, health pots and mana pots.
3. Cooked mana/health non-buff food such as Sauteed Goby.
4. Fun consumables that turn yourself or other people into other things (i.e. savory deviate delight, etc.)
5. Level 75 vendor water/food.
6. Elixirs.

Keep items in categories 1-3. Keep items in category 4, in moderation, unless they are only usable in Dalaran. And no you really do not need 6 stacks of pygmy oil. You really don't. Minimize how much of each item you have on your character (max of 1 stack); send overflow to your bank alt. Throw out items in categories 5 and 6. You'll be getting far better ones soon, and are likely to use up your old flasks while leveling rather than using those elixirs anyhow.

BoAs

1. Vanity pets.
2. Alt gear and weapons

 Make sure you only have, across your account, 1 of each of the BoA vanity pets (Or two if you are contemplating a one character server move.) Delete the rest. Mail all remaining BoA vanity pet items and all BoA gear to your bank alt.

Reputation and Quest Items

1. BoE currency that can be turned in for quests or rep rewards (ex: Relics of Ulduar, Arcane Tomes, etc.)
2. BoE quest items.
3. BoP quest items.
4. BoP currency that can be turned in for reputation or items (Argent Dawn insignias, champions' writs)
5. Items needed for quests currently in your logs.
6. Quest items leftover from completed quests.

Mail all items in categories 1 and 2 to your bank alt. Keep items in category 3 such as Blood of Innocents from Scholomance, or the blue ring that allows you to summon Vael in UBRS if they have sentimental value for you. Throw out items in category 4 unless you are actively engaged in that reputation grind currently. Don't hang on to a half dozen slots of items you know in your heart you will never ever turn in. Especially if it's from BC times and earlier. Keep items in category 4 if you are really going to do the quest before Cataclysm hits. If not, toss them out along with all the items in category 5.

At this point, you should have 3-4 bags free on your main character (we all have a certain amount of gear, consumables, and toys we like to carry around with us), and hopefully well-organized bags in the bank with plenty of room for your Cataclysm goodies.

Toys and Other Fun Stuff

1. Irreplaceable or hard to replace items (the Timbermaw bear transforming rod, the piccolo of flaming-everyone-at-the-mailbox-wants-to-kill-you, etc.)
2. Wands
3. BoE and common items

Fun stuff has a tendency to be the downfall of many banks. A leather ball here, a stack of snowballs there, and pretty soon your inventory is full. But this game is ABOUT having fun, so keep all items in category #1. Try to trim down the  number in category 2 (I have a whole bag of Halloween wands, blossoming branches, and a Manabonk wand on more than 1 character. That's OK.) Mail items in category 3 to your bank alt or unsuspecting guildies, or throw them out.

Profession Materials

1. Items for use at my current profession level.
2. Items leftover from my profession leveling.
3. Excess items made while leveling my profession.

Keep a moderate amount of items in category 1 if you think there is a good chance you will need them. For example, if you are an enchanter, hang on to some materials. But if you are  a max level tailor for example, liquidate those extra materials. Send all items in categories 2 and 3 to your bank alt.

Bank Alt Vaults

Now that you have sent your bank alt a ton of stuff as part of the process tidying up your bags, it's time to get organized. Most personal bank vaults with which I've been acquainted (i.e. I've asked impertinent questions about this on twitter and in game) tend to top out at about 3 tabs and a full set of Frostweave bags. The tabs start to feel a little too steep after that, so it is not entirely uncommon for serious auctioneers to have a second bank vault for keeping their storehouse of goods at the ready. But I digress.

You'll want to evaluate each item as you unpack it form the mail as a keep or a sell.

Keep and Organize

• Profession materials that can apply to professions you might level in the future on alts
• BC and later reputation items that you will use on alts
• Consumables
• BoA items
• Rare quality or better gear for future alts

Sell

• Profession materials specific to the profession you've most recently leveled and that you do not intend to level again (i.e. engineering materials)
• Uncommon quality BoE gear and weapons
• Epic quality BoE gear and weapons
• Enchant scrolls and excess materials
• Epic gems
• Buff foods and scrolls

Keep Until Cataclysm Then Sell

• Your stockpiles of lowbie profession materials such as mageweave cloth and wool cloth and mithril ore
• Extra glyphs (prices are currently going lower than the herb cost on many glyphs)
• Excess reputation items you won't use
• Excess profession items such as fishing lures and raw food that you don't need
• BoE toys and fun items (there is often a mini surge on this sort of stuff around the holidays)

Guild Banks

I've seen guild banks that truly became the receptacles for all the junk the guildies couldn't sell. Guild banks that had so many and such strict rules that it was not uncommon to receive an item mailed back with a note about how it was not adequate for the guild bank and to please not place it there again. I like a happy medium between those two extremes.

First, you need to evaluate what items guildies actually contribute to -- and withdraw from-- the guild bank. If the all access tabs are stuffed to the gills with junk, and only the Officers-only extra special items ever leave the bank, consider not having as many slots open for general swapping. In addition to the tips for bank vaults above, guild banks will also want to take these thoughts into consideration:

• Make sure you have enough room to allow guildies to share recipes and profession materials, and group them together by profession.
• If you can afford it, consider having an entire tab for glyphs, and organize them by class, then by type.
• Buy as many bank tabs as the guild can afford. It's a lot easier to keep tabs organized if there is room to move things around and to add in more items.
• Organize gear by armor proficiency to make it easier for folks to see there is something they could use.
• Consider selling or raffling off those reputation items needed for crafting, and the epic BoEs that are gathering dust in the Officers tab. After Cataclysm, they are not likely to be requested-- or to be able to be sold for any significant value.
• Assign an officer to keep an eye on the bank and weed out any items in overabundance.

Oh Hai Deathy!

My little Blizzcon friend arrived today. He sounds a lot like DarthMurloc. And he seems to be on fire, seeting with molten rage.

This must make him the most adorably evil murloc, ever, yes?

I promise to love him. And pet him. And squeeze him. And call him Deathypoo.

What Will Cataclysm Bring for Me?

Like most everyone who plays WoW, I am excited about all the shiny new content and explorations that Cataclysm will bring for us.

But this time around, the expansion also brings up a lot of uncertainty for me. Because I am in a very different place -- in game and out -- than I was at the last turn-of-the-expansion.

That Was Then

I was secure in the knowledge that although I no longer wanted to druid heal, I would definitely be playing my druid main, as per usual. I was enjoying being a lazy guild member without any responsibilities, and crossing my fingers my casual guild would work out for raiding in the expansion, even if it was just at a slower pace, given our good times in Kara. My hours at work allowed me to have a regular raiding schedule, as I rarely had to stay late unexpectedly. All my characters were on the same server were I'd started out playing WoW, except for the shadow priest horde alt I rarely popped onto, as she was stranded on a friend's server with nothing to do.

This is Now

Now I have three 80s Alliance-side (Boomkin, Shadow Priest, Mage) with a warlock at 70. Horde-side, on a separate server, I have four 80s (Shadow Priest, Boomkin, Shaman, Mage) with a warlock at 72. Horde-side, I'm an officer in a large guild that completed all of WotLK's raiding content, including a number of 10-man ICC hard modes. Heck, I even got to kill Algalon! Alliance-side, I've found myself a great friendly guild that had been doing some casual raiding, and enjoy the camaraderie and conversation (inclusive of G and on Vent and on Twitter.)

This Monday, I headed back in to work after five glorious weeks of time off. And despite heading in bright and early each day, I am not getting home until 6:30 each night due to the workload. This has meant no raiding anywhere, no NaNoWriMo writing time. And no blog time. In other words: MEH.

So What's Next?

With Cataclysm only a month away, I'm not sure how things are going to pan out. How much can I get done with only a few short hours to play each night after work? We still need to eat dinner and have outside of game time after all. Even if I concentrate only on my two primary characters at first (Alliance Boomkin and Horde Shadow Priest), I'll still need to sort out daily quests for the others (cooking/fishing/professions).

Having just taken all this time off, I won't really get to have a big chunk of time to play until my time off around the holidays, at the end of December. So in all likelihood, I'll be leveling the slowest I've ever leveled. And will have my attention split between two toons I love, instead of being able to focus my energies on just one of them. This will be an adjustment for sure.

Both guilds are planning to kick the raiding tires in Q1 2011. So at least with that I do feel I'll have time to level up and gear up. Then work in the alts as time allows. But as it stands, I don't really know yet what my availability will look like as far as raiding goes. Or how I am going to feel about these characters at 85, having not gotten into BETA to try things out for myself.

So like everyone else who didn't get a sneak peek via BETA, I'll just have to play it by ear and hope that I do like how things turn out int he end for my ladies. Que sera sera, whatever will be will be. I'm just hoping that somehow I'll find a way to give both of my favorite toons the attention they deserve.

My Week in WoW

Last week's WoW time was somewhat curtailed by the livestream of Blizzcon taking up most of my attention (and it rocked to share thoughts and reactions to the panels real-time via twitter; not as good as being there but still pretty darn fun.). But I made up for it this week:

• My Alliance warlock, seen here watching the circling bats at Telredor, dinged 66 today. I am a terribly slow leveler, so her progress over the past 2 weeks has been phenomenal.
• My bank alt gave in and bought her 4th guild bank slot. Now, I have to do a sweep and make sure I am not hanging on to much in the way of pre-Cata Azeroth quest items. Somehow I don't think I am going to need those red, green, yellow and blue Un'Goro crystals again...
• The purchase of the slot was due in part to the mass creation of Jewelcrafting items for the lock as she moves towards 450 JC (she's presently at 328 jewelcrafting.)
• I've not managed to obtain the Headless Horseman's Mount on my Horde Shadow Priest, despite her daily attempt at it. This is fair and all, since my 3 Alliance ladies got it, mind you. I am also awash in hallowed helms and sinsiter squashlings on some toons. WTB BOA hoiday pets!
• I didn't follow-up on trying to attain my goal of guesting on a podcast, but I did do some audience-sitting for a few post-Blizzcon podcast recordings. 
• I was thoroughly charmed by the Blood Elf Druid song,  (from the Plants vs. Zombies composer who brought us the new sunflower pet's voice.)

Blogs You Should Read

Although it wasn't an incredibly busy week around the blogosphere, there were some good reads:

• Twisted Faith wrote a post that debunks the offhand Blizzcon comment that so riled me up: "Shadow priests have been known to be bursty" (hint: no we haven't and no we're not.)
• Cynwise posted a A Pre-Cataclysm Warlock Guide, but hurry as this manual will self-destruct in 5 weeks.
• Twitter was abuzz with Blizzcon pickup lines, and Tastes Like Battle Chicken compiled some of her favorites.
• This is a bit more than a week old but it's so handy I had to share it: Windsoar's list of buffs and debuffs by class.

 

Slowly But Surely Leveling my Warlock

The first time I logged in and played my then level 43 warlock after the patch,  My blueberry died. A couple of times. And then I died three times in short succession. I'm pretty sure I hadn't died three times in getting to that level. And thus, I nerd raged.

And then I logged off in a huff.

But as this character is intended to be my Alliance jewelcrafter (my former Alliance shaman who is a maxed out JC now resides as a troll shaman on another server), I took a dee breath and went back to her this past week. And this time, things just clicked.

• I love having an extra bag open to collect things instead of being crammed full of soul shards.
• My demons' names are now operating as intended so they stop startling me.
• The blueberry has stopped dying and now adequately protects me as intended.
• I never get low on health or mana, except after we get dismounted when running through Zeth'Gor, but even then we both live and /cackle at those silly orcs who tried to stop us.
• I love having shard-free soulstones and healthstones.

There are a few differences I am still getting used to though:

• What am I supposed to do with those 3 soul shards staying charged up on my portrait all the time? So far not really ever using them.
• I am not loving having a 30min cooldown for applying a 15 min soulstone. Now I keep a stone handy and soulstone myself only if I think I am in danger of death.

Somehow, yesterday, I plowed through from 55 to 60. The motivator of having flying to visit all the candy buckets of Outlands spurred me on. And once the servers are up, I'll be back at it. Gotta get to 65 to train up the jewelcrafting after all! That leaves a month to get her to 75 which is the required minimum level, I think, for learning the Cataclysm recipes. That part is the longshot in all this. I'll be back at work on November 1 which means significantly less playtime. And Northrend questing always takes me forever and a day -- I have quest fatigue from running seven 80s through them all.

But I am hopeful that she will be the little warlock who could. Wish me luck!

Starcaller Anexxia

My last major achievement of Wrath of the Lich King. I never really put it on my to hope for list. I was afraid of being disappointed. Especially after all the Sunday afternoons spent watching people run into fire on Mimiron Firefighter attempts...

:)

But tonight, I got to see Algalon for the first time. And after 40 minutes of working on him, we defeated him. And that makes me Starcaller Anexxia. And I am nearly teary eyed over it. Because it feels good to hit up that one last thing as the days tick down on this expansion.

Thank you Emtox for perservering on this, even in the face of flaking and no shows. This meant a lot.

Friday Five: Patch 4.0.1 Edition

Ah yes, the Patch she has arrived. And thus I bring you today's 5:

1. Least Surprising Post-Patch Nerf: Shadow Word: Death.
   Remember how I wasn't convinced that spamming the heck out of SW:D was really going to be a viable tactic? Blizz agreed that they'd never intended SW:D to be the shadow priest's highest DPS spell, and quietly beat it down with the nerf bat within about 24 hours.
2. My Favorite Spell Change: One Telescoping Button for Portals and Teleports.
   Whenever my mage sphere mod would break, the loss of 1-button access to my portals and teleports is what I usually missed most. Thank you Blizz for finally giving us 1-touch access to portals and teleports instead of forcing us to eat up another row of buttons/cast bars with them.
3. My favorite UI Change: The Much Improved Companion Pets Tab.
   When you have 100+ pets, it can be hard to remember which little white cage has which pet inside. Or where exactly some of the pets are filed. The magnificent changes to the companion pet UI solve that -- they now spell out the names of the pets in each tab and give you an animated preview of them when selected.
4. Most Fun Class I Play Now: Boomkin.
   Pew pew pew! /boomkin happy dance. They've already started in on the nerfs (insect swarm was the first spell hit), but having one day wherein my Alliance druid handily out DPS'd my much better geared shadow priest was a giggle.
5. Most Bizarre Patch Bug: Amazing Appearing Tabards.
   Not just on your login screen -- but in game as well. Characters that have never donned a tabard and don't have one equipped in game are still showing up as wearing one. Weird, and apparently fixed by equipping a tabard, but a bug nonetheless. Less annoying than the launcher screen BOOM! Significantly less annoying than enchanting items and seeing "Item not yet modified" on my screen when in fact the item has been enchanted.

Which patch changes are you enjoying thus far?

My Shadow Priest's Planned Patch Day Build and Glyphs

 

Since I've been able to do some playing around on the PTR, I have my plans solidified for my talents and glyphs when the patch comes out in the next week or so. These choices are for being raid-ready at 80. I'll certainly change things up for my off-spec and for leveling when the expansion drops on December 7.

Glyphs

As of the patch, you'll get three glyphs each for your prime, major and minor glyph slots.

Prime

• Dispersion
  Reduces the cooldown on Dispersion by 45 sec.
• Shadow Word: Pain
  Increases the periodic damage of your Shadow Word: Pain by 10%.
• Mind Flay
  Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.

I know that Blizz wants us to move SW:Death back into our rotation, but until I actually see in action that I am using it enough to warrant its glyph, I'm choosing SW:P over it. In BC, when it was part of my rotation, I still don't think it got enough use that I would pick decreasing its cooldown over something else. And if you are spamming it trying to get those juicy big crits at the 25% and under health levels, well you'd better have a healer keeping an eye on you unless you enjoy floor hugging.

Major

• Spirit Tap
  When you kill a target with your Shadow Word: Death and yield experience or honor, you instantly receive 12% of your total mana over 12 sec.
• Psychic Scream
  Targets of your Psychic Scream spell now tremble in place instead of fleeing in fear, but the cooldown of Psychic Scream is increased by 3 sec.
• Fade
  Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 9 sec.

Despite not thinking I'll be using SW:D a ton, the Spirit Tap glyph seems like a good buy (especially since there aren't a ton of other glyphs in this range that I am dying to use.) The psychic Scream glyph rocks for providing PvE priests the ability to use Fear in a raid setting without sending off its targets to go find new friends. Huzzah! And given my love for using my Fade button, that glyph is also a no-brainer.

Minor

• Fortitude
  Reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Fortitude spell by 50%.
• Levitate
  Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent.
• Shadow Protection
  Increases the duration of your Shadow Protection spell by 10 min.

Nothing to see here. Pick your favorite boring old minor glyphs. These are the ones I've used since the dawn of inscription.

Talents

I've used MMO Champion's talent calculator to show my build. Basically, you go through the Shadow tree, minus the stun for Mind Blast and the psychic horro and sience points, then put your remaining points into Discipline.

(NOTE: Now that you get your talent points every other level, you can't spend that next point in Discipline until you hit 81.)

Rotation

I'm not set on my rotation at this point. And from all the nerding back and forth on SP.com, I don't know that anyone else is yet either. But this is what I am looking at:

SW:P > DP > VT > SW:D > MB> MF

Then wait for the MB and SW:D CDs to be back up, and refreshing DoTs as needed. Toss out your shadowfiend whenever the CD is available, starting when you are down 25% mana or thereabouts. If it's a short fight, you may want to lead with it for pure DPS boost.

Reforging

The current talk is that mastery becomes better than crit and haste only at the point that you have 1400 of each of them. Which I, not having any heroic gear, certainly do not have. So at this point, I won't be worrying about it, other than as a way to manage my hit rating. Basically, 40% of the following stats on a piece of gear may be reforged into any stat not currently present on that piece of gear:

• Critical Strike Rating
• Dodge Rating
• Expertise Rating
• Haste Rating
• Hit Rating
• Mastery Rating
• Parry Rating
• Spirit

Overall it's looking like our 4.0.1 gear stat priority would be: Intellect > Haste > Crit > Spirit > Mastery (at hit cap) or  Hit > Intellect > Haste > Crit > Spirit > Mastery (until hit cap)

For Further Patch Related Reading

• Who Can Dispell What at World of Matticus
• MMO Champion's Priest Cataclysm Page
• MMO Champion's New and Removed Glyphs page
• WoWWiki's crowd control page

 

Friday Five: Five Things You Probably Don't Know About my Shadow Priest

1. Anexxia was born in January 2007. She is seen here with her co-conspirator Archturus, a disc priest with whom she duo'd a number of instances at level. I didn't start playing her in earnest until October of that year. After only a few months, I was hooked on shadowy spellcasting.
2. By December 2007, it became clear that the friend whose server I rolled on didn't have the most inviting/friendly guild, and wouldn't be a place I could see myself join. The guild ended up dissolving and my friend ended up quitting WoW, hence why I rolled my Alliance shadow priest in December 2007.
3. Anexxia was moved to Bronzebeard in December 2008 to join Daughters of the Horde, a guild with whom I'd become acquainted through Livejournal. I slowly leveled her up to 80, while still raiding Naxx on my Alliance druid, but by mid-Spring, toe dipping her bony toes into raiding in Naxx 10s and 25, she had usurped the druid's position as my main.
4. Despite the fact that many folks pronounce her name Onyxia, her name was, in fact, one I made up from scratch, playing off the idea that she was an auxiliary character I had created to explore the horde-side of the game and as a break from my progression raiding guild.
5. No, she doesn't heal. Yes, she has an offspec that the armory notes is holy. However, truth be told, she has used it approximately once. When a bunch of us were running around Northrend visiting elders. On a lark, the peeps asked me to heal. I lasted through a partial instance before one of our group members volunteered to go get his healer. *cough* Yes, I am sure I could learn how to heal if I put my mind to it. But I LOVE LOVE LOVE shadow priesting and thus am not inclined *to* put my mind to it. And that's OK. You can have me heal on my shaman, and I plan to learn how to druid heal again in Cataclysm, but for me, priesting is all about the shadowform, baby.

Two Months Until Cataclysm -- So Now What?

It's nice to finally have a release date in hand so I can start figuring out what I want to -- and have time to -- accomplish in game before the world changes. December 7 gives me two full months before I have to start thinking about leveling my primary toons and their professions and the alts' professions...

I'm sure that having a concrete date two months away is going to make some folks angsty. After all, if you don't have an army of alts and killed the Lich King months ago and have already been feeling like you were stuck in a holding pattern, I can see how it would seem like way too long to wait. Had I not rediscovered the joys of playing my Alliance characters, I would likely be in the cursing the release date under my breath camp.

But luckily for me, I have plenty to do and to look forward to between now and then:

• Level warlock to 80 (she's only 40 now)
• Level warlock's JC
• Level a new shaman and their corresponding profession(s)
• Farm rare pets
• Obtain remaining old world cooking recipes
• Work on fishing up the elusive mister pinchy and the turtle mount
• Complete world explorer for the druid
• Hallow's End fun and festivities
• Pilgrim's Bounty (a.k.a. the cooking leveling holiday)
• Find more places like the Horizon Scout that I always meant to get around to seeing and go there

So, now that we have a date in hand, what's your plan of attack?

Make a WoW Wish Come True

Spread some cheer by making a WoW card

When I saw the story about this little guy who is 9 years old and undergoing his 4th heart surgery, and saw that he really wanted cards for the wall of his recovery room, AND he was a WoW fan, I had to spread the word. And get out the glue stick.

I made him a postcard featuring the screenie you see here. All it takes is a little elbow grease and some imagination. And I know you guys have plenty of both. And you could always buy a card at the story if you're out of art supplies.

:)

Send your cards to:

Ethan Millerick
c/o Ronald McDonald House
520 Sand Hill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304

xo Anexxia

P.S. a big *moonkinhug* to those of you who have been spreading the word on twitter and via your WoW blogs. This warms my heart.

Friday Five: 5 WoW Things That Have Recently Made Me Happy

1. I got my druid her classic raider achievement. Her vanilla WoW guild fell apart right about C'thun, and I never went back to do it until now. AS a bonus, there was some moonkin dancing. RAWR.
2. It's starting to feel like Cataclysm is really on the horizon, now that Patch 4.0.1 is on the PTRs. And for the first time in ages, I got the PTR to download and work properly. Huzzah!
3. My Alliance shadow priest dinged 80 a bit over a week ago. I've been hitting up the randoms with her, and gotten a whole slew of achievements, and some reasonably good gear. Hooray!
4. Warcraft Pets has the scoop on some new pets for Cataclysm, including, an armadillo! WANT!
5. I logged some time on the PTR's heroic dummies on Anexxia, and found that PTR shadow priest DPS is on par with Live. i.e. They haven't broken anything. And that's without the logs picking up any of the alleged damage from my shadowy apparitions. I do have one QQ tho -- why is it that some of my shadowy apparitions are not shadowy? I deman Truth in advertising! Needs more shadow!

What's made you happy in WoW recently?

Are You Checking Out Patch 4.0.1 on the PTR?

Thanks to our easily exciteable kittens, I was up bright and early Sunday morning, and decided to give the PTRs a spin. They just went live this weekend with the 4.0.1 build that introduces the many UI and talent changes they've been working on for Cataclysm.

I uploaded a request to copy over a couple of my characters to the PTRs, but since the estimated wait was 4 days, rolled myself this baby druid to check things out.

The first thing I was struck with, other than the proliferation of little white tiger cats running around, was that I came into the world with Wrath on my bar, and had enough mana to use it like crazy. I admit I pinched myself to see if I'd fallen asleep and entered dreamland. But no, Blizz is actually making it possible for those of us who like to level our characters up as casters to be able to do so without a bottomleess bag full of beverages.

Huzzah!

I should note that I chose to go in while I was just ad the "available" stage of my PTR download, which means it had a ways to go before being completed. Overall, in the lowbie area, this had little affect on my playing, though I could tell at least once when I was getting a just in time download. The opening cinematic started with a long black screen and stuttered midway through, presumably also due to my choosing to play before the download was complete. Pretty minor issues though, which makes me hopeful they've found a good way for breaking up the patch files so the least-likely to encounter data files are the last to download, and thus speeding up the patching process for everyone.

It was moderately annoying, however, that after crashing out on the PTR, and relaunching, I was confronted with needing several additional hours of downloading before being able to play again. That was a bummer and put a crimp in my leveling explorations.

Some of the best UI changes are around the management of spells. The above window shows my druid trainer's menu clearly showing my next trainable spell and its cost. No more clicking on a spell name in a long list to see when it will be available. Including its icon is a nice touch for those of us who are visual learners.

Similarly, I will never hustle myself back to the trainer to train some spell I couldn't care less about -- when you advance a level, you get both a tell and a big splash across your screen that tells you that a new spell is now available to you:

At level five, I ran myself up to Dolanaar and checked my mail to retrieve my BOA pets (only two of whom showed up-- eeep!)  Which brings me to the many changes with the talent and spellbook interfaces.

When playing a new class, such as me playing my baby warlock, you can feel clueless as to when some of your signature abilities are trainable. Well no longer -- your spellbook can tell you. Your spellbook used to be a rarely visited place, sought out when pulling out a rarely used spell for a boss mechanic. But now, it shows you all the spells you have to look forward to training -- and notes at wht level you attain them.

You'll notice a few more tabs on your spellbook now -- companions and pets are no longer a part of the character interface -- they are subtabs of your spellbook, and have also gotten an overhaul.

No more peering at page after page of 12 tiny icons and trying to remember which speckled egg summons which companion pet. Now your pet UI clearly states the pet name next to its icon and pops up a picture of it in action if you select it from the menu. Necessary change on Blizzard's part? Certainly not. But does it make me happy with my 100+ pets on two toons? You bet it does!

 Last night, I was able to get on and briefly play around with my shadow priest and my boomkin, and respec them. I think I actually giggled when my eclipse proc made my nature spell buttons sparkly. It felt really weird to be confronted with the new talent UI though. I was not prepared.

I'm a cuddly and adorable Forsaken shadow priest! Who're you calling a sinister shadow magic user? *cough*

Ahem.

It was weird to start at this screen then be shown only one tree until I'd met my 31-point quota. I spent those points, then moved over to the discipline tree, easily filling in my remaining 5 talents. It didn't really feel like I made many choices, mind you. Mainly "Silence, y/n/murloc", and "less dmg to self? y/n" The boomkin tree was more problematic, and made me feel as though I sometimes was forced to choose talents I didn't really care 
to get down the tree to the stuff I wanted.

Overall though, no great dramas with the new talents. I can't wait to try things out on more than just target dummies.
 


I leave you with this beautiful scene, of a Darnassus without water, where boats float in mid air. Saefe travels!

Friday Five: Echo Isles Screenshots Edition

This post contains screenshots that detail the Echo Isles liberation through the Zalazane's Fall quest line. Do not read on if you do not wish to see spoilers.

Operation: Gnomeregan. A story in pictures of one gnome's participation

(spoilers abound. turn back all ye who wish to not be spoiled!)

Pirate's Day, Harvest Festival, and Brewfest -- Oh My!

For most of us, September is devoid of holidays other than Labor Day (a day upon which many of us labor.) But not so in Azeroth-- it's the kickoff of the prime holiday season:

• Harvest Festival
  September 16 - September 22
• Pirates' Day
  September 19
•  Brewfest
  September 20 - October 5

It's nice to have them all bunched together in the midst of the pre-expansion doldrums. Inevitably, the holidays bring the recently MIA back online and provide great opportunities to get the guild together to do something that all can participate in regardless of level and gear.

Harvest Festival

Not just an excuse to sit down at the enemy's table and eat their pie, this holiday is the single best way to power level an alt's neglected cooking skills. The bountiful tables outside the major citites make a good place to hold a guild party, especially if you are PvP inclined. Tons of achievements are attainable, including one of my favorites, wherein you get the Turkinator buff and run around like mad, shooting turkeys. Mwahahaha. *cough* But I digress.

No, wait, as Moober reminded me this really is a holiday just about sitting down at a table and eating strange conjured foods. Oh well. We still have Pilgrim's Bounty to look forward to for the above. Need moar coffee.

Pirate's Day

Last yer, my horde guild had a small dance party on top of the Booty Bay inn, to hang with the pirates, yo. I think my favorite part of the event is the long-duration pirate outfit it gives you. Last year, this was basically an ahicevement in search of a holiday. Too soon to know if Blizz has anything up their sleeve, given the Cataclysmic changes incoming.

Brewfest

Who doesn't love a holiday that features pink elekks and tossing pints of ale at Dark Iron dwarves? And a chance at the sexy mounts you see in the above screenshot? It should be easier than ever this year to get your shots at Coren Direbrew, thanks to the holiday bosses being in LFD. And it also means you won't have that same stingy guildie taking everything that drops, unlike two years ago *i'mlookingatyouyoungpaladin*.

What did your guild do last year? And what are you planning to do for the holidays this year? I'd love to swap ideas. And expect to see some more on these holidays here as we get closer to them.

Friday Five: Five Blog Posts You Should be Reading This Week

In no particular order, here are five blogs I read each week (or however often they update) that you should have on your blog roll too:

• An Interesting Thing Happened in the UC Sewers
  Tessy over at Reflections from the Pond did Wrathgate again recently, and had a run in with a perfect stranger who jumped down her throat for not assisting Varian with his assault on the Undercity. And yes a big motivator for linking this post was 1) I want more frequent posts from Tessy! and 2) the video link is a must watch. Mwahaha.
• The Walls of Wintergrasp and Terrain Exploits
  It's been a while since I've seen Cyn this worked up, or writing this much on a hot PvP topic. A must read. After all it kept him from our ZA fun run, so you know he was consumed with writerly inspiration.
• Why the BETA will be Better Than the Release
  Larisa at Pink Pigtail Inn makes a good case for why playing the BETA might in fact be more personally rewarding for some players than playing the live release.
• Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: A Call to Blizzard for a Better UI
  I liked Jaded Alt's article (at her new digs!) on her UI wishlist. Given the many changes to UI that Blizz has implemented over the past  5 years, we just may see some of them eventually.
• Mages Making Money
  Mana Obscura's post got me motivated to clean out my banks and work on acquiring some more Gs in my bank to fund the inevitable expansion gold sinks.
• Sticks and Orcs and Mary Sues
  I've really been enjoying Oddcraft's warchief election posts. Here's the latest -- Thrall vs. Basic Campfire vs. Richard Knaak.

This week was too much work and too little warcraft and reading these posts on my BBerry as I traveled too and from work gave me a nice Warcraft fix. And for that, bloggers, I thank you.

xo

Three Reasons Why Guilds That Raid Need Class Officers

If only these guys had had class leader mentors, perhaps things would have turned out differently for them...

 In my vanilla WoW raiding days, our 40-man raids had specific numbers of raid spots designated for specific classes fulfilling specific roles. The class raid leaders (who were not always the same as the class officers) managed their invitee and standby lists, and kept tabs on how everyone was performing. My druids and I sat in our own Vent channel (only raid officers and the RL could talk to each other and over the whole raid), and had our own chat channel. We built comraderie while also having a solid sounding board for trouble shooting how our class and role should be handling any given encounter.

Fast Forward to Burning Crusade with its smaller raids. All of a sudden, many guilds, including mine, decided there really wasn't a need for class officers any more, since raid sizes were so much smaller, and we didn't always have multiples of each class/role. The emphasis moved to having raid leaders and then folks in charge of each functional area (tanking, healing, DPS) at the most. And thus, for many guilds, the class officer died out comleteely.

Given that Cataclysm may well sound the death knell for many guilds running 25-man raids, I can see how a call for a return to class officers may sound like craziness. But hear me out. There are some very solid reasons to consider having them -- even if they aren't max rank officers.

1. No one is an expert on every class and role.
   That's right, mister hotshot raid leader, I am talking to you. It's infuriating when you are told to do something your class shouldn't (or worse yet can not) do. Or to watch the RL keep handing the dispells/decurses to the same class over and over again, while two or three more who could do it, stand by, not saying a peep. Class leaders know what their folks can (and should) be doing, and can feed the RL that information discretely. In a free-for-all situation, the raid leader doesn't always know whose advice to follow.
2. Sometimes, players need tips on how to improve.
   I'm the type of person who goes out and finds great resources on the classes I'm playing and tries to maximize what I do and how I do it. Not everyone does this. And further, you can't expect them to. But you can ask your Officers to provide coaching and feedback in these cases. And feedback comes across as a lot more genune and useful when it's coming from someone who also excels in their class and role. No offense, but if a melee player starts telling me how to play my spellcasters, if they are lucky, I tune them out. If I've had it already, they'll get an earful.
3. No one wants unsolicited advice.
   That's right, no one. Yeah, maybe you've gotten a helpful hint or two from someone that you didn't ask for that really helped, but most of the time, it's annoying. The unsolicited advice typically comes across as someone 1) thinking you suck and 2) trying to tell you they know better than you as to how to play. Having class leader officers tells the guild: these are our experts, and they are your go to resource for help, and are expected to know how to maximize their class in raids. This takes a lot of the sting out of the advice. 

If you are pursuing 25-man raids, and have several dozen active players, why not ask them if they'd like to have class leads or class officers? Those who are nominated by their peers will feel appreciated for being called out for excellence, and your quieter members of the guild will feel empowered to approach them for advice. Even if implemented in a more honorary than powerful role, class leaders have the ability to build a sense of community amongst players, while recognizing some of your best players for doing a great job, which may even help with guild retention.

Friday Five: Five Things You May Not Know About My Boomkin

1. Psychocandy was born at the start of January 2006. She was my very first WoW character, and my main up until Spring of last year.
2. Did I mention that I actually leveled her as a healer? Yes,  I did that becasue I wanted to ensure I understood the healing role and would be ready to jump into main healing 5 mans and raids once she hit 60.
3. I'd already had the raiding bug from the moment I rolled her, thanks to watching my SO raid ZG every week for several months. This is how my level 58 self ended up in Molten Core, healing.
4. I wasn't a maxed out restoration druid though. Up until Patch 3.0 I had a hybrid build of my own design (not the somewhat more common Dreamstate druid build.) I was never ever a tree. I was a crazy regrowth spamming caster lady. And I kicked everyone's butt in the healing department. :)
5. With Patch 3.0 I went Boomkin. I'd flirted with it earlier in BC, and after the changes to restoration healing made tree pretty much mandatory for performing well, it seemed like a good idea to make that swap. And once you start boomkin dancing, it's hard to go back...

BONUS: My character's name is Psychocandy. You may call her Candy for short. No, you may not call her Psycho. She's named after a song. Go listen to it.

Next time: Anexxia gets the trip down memory lane.

On the Importance of Learning to Say "I'm sorry."

(unrelated screenshot is unrelated. my poor bank alt is cowering in fear at the Defias plaguing Elwynn, not at Cyn's driving. Honest.)

In my 4 and a half years of playing WoW, I've had a few run-ins with folks who clearly stepped over the line of common courtesy into the territory of "oh no you didn't just say that to/about me>.<"

The things said are irrelevant. Because everyone has a bad day now and then. Or says something they don't mean and immediately regret. It's what happens after you are horribly rude or offensive that matters.

The mature thing to do is to own your behavior. Take responsibility for having behaved like an ass. And simply say, "I'm sorry."

You may or may not have noticed something very important above. It's that I didn't say "I'm sorry, but..." Or "I'm sorry you were offended." That is, in fact, a very important period. If you have upset someone else, they do not want to hear your myriad justifications as to why. Your rationalizations are irrelevant. Your childhood traumas not a valid excuse.

If you want an example of how not to apologize, just look at that woman who tossed a poor friendly kitty into a recycle bin. She is a textbook example of someone "apologizing" and in fact digging themselves into a bigger hole.

Of course, in the World of Warcraft, no one is going to make you apologize if you don't want to do so. You can totally choose to piss someone off and continue on merrily as though nothing happened. But here's the whole truth of the matter: especially if your offense happened publicly, that person isn't going to forget about it.

Oh yes, I know, it's "humiliating" to apologize.  It puts you in a less powerful position than the person being apologized to. Or it makes you feel bad. Tough luck! How do you think you made the other person feel? Suck it up already -- it costs you nothing but a moment of misplaced pride to do the right thing and apologize. And it can sour your relationship with someone else permanently to be too proud to admit you messed up and to ask for forgiveness.

I've been on both ends of this spectrum. I've lost my temper and been an ass. And immediately, publicly apologized to those who bore witness to it, and to the person I put in a bad position. I've also been the wronged person, who had someone else sat from raids when they refused to apologize, and as soon as they did -- through gritted teeth-- gave them a second chance. No, we didn't become BFFs, but we did in fact become more friendly than we had been before the incident of unbridled rudeness.

I'm starting to feel old fashioned in my wanting folks to have personal accountability, be civil, and own their behavior. Don't folks teach their children any manners these days?

Hey kids! Get off my lawn! And if that ball comes into my yard, I'm keeping it!