Catakizzums!

Oh boy it's Friday and the Cataclysm has come.

Isn't it great?

So, I haven't gotten to play crazy amount this week - December is just a really busy time for me (the 8th was my birfday :3). Right now I'm sitting very close to dinging 83, hopefully will be somewhere in 84 by the end of the weekend, we'll see. No huge rush and probably doing it all ass-backwards anyway!

My boyfriend and I finished Hyjal last night and moved into Vasj'ir, which means we're bigger than everyone else there and can shove them around. Hyjal was a very nice zone with a cool story, I'm not sure how I feel about Vasj'ir. It's neat, but there's so much color and clutter everywhere that I have a hard time concentrating :P

My long lost love

This post is so late in the day because I spent my free time making a loot list! OMG. I haven't had one of those since.... well T9's been wiped from my memory so maybe that's why I haven't had one in a while.

A loot list is a wunnerful thing. It's like having Christmas everyday - you know exactly what you want and you wrote it out and the heroics are never going to give it to you. Constant anticipation and constant disappointment.

All kidding aside, I like the loot list because it allows me to determine beforehand, using stat weights found on the appropriate blogs or elitist jerks and plugged into wowhead, whether or not something is an upgrade. It's time consuming but it keeps you from holding up the group or taking something you don't need later on.

It doesn't have to be a pretty list, just something you understand, I put mine in a notepad file. I also keep little files of my achievements, as well as one that tracked raid attendance for my 10 man while we were working on 'Glory of Whatever'. I love my little notepad files.

I went through and ranked all the pieces for each of my specs (being an OT is fun like that - TWICE the disappointment for the price of one!!!!), and have a section that separates everything by zone so I know exactly what I'm looking for in each one. I have no idea why I'm so excited about it, but I am.

(Picture Unrelated)

I wasn't expecting to be able to play my main this week, so I had started a worgen druid, who's only level 11 at the moment. She isn't hideous but she is hillarious. I'm torn between being disappointed with the poor level of work that went into her (one face type with the constant snarling that bear druids have hated forever, one hair color...), but I find the whole thing so goddamned funny that it's hard to be angry.

The best problem with her so far has been /lol has produced a sound I suspect is supposed to be /chicken.

Overall the quest design has been nice, and the zones have been put together well - though Gilneas does have you do a lot of running. Eep.

As an aside, I'm undecided how I feel about starting the comic thing again. What I did for this one took a lot less time than the old version, but it's still more intense than just the weekly doodle. Also it's hard to be funny enough to want to draw it.

We'll see I suppose.


Screenshots of the weeeeek

Still going doublebubble on these. I actually took close to 100 this week, had a rough time narrowing it down to just 14 :O

Hmm... #321 seems to be missing. I guess I'll find it later tonight :D

Amigad it's Friday and these Poptarts are awful

So I've been thinking of making this post for several weeks now but haven't been quite sure how to compose it. When it comes down to it, I think it's going to be quite long.

On top of that, I haven't posted screenshots in two weeks and I discovered that I was exactly 65 screenshots behind, so there are some extras this week to catch up (and will be double the usual for the rest of the month). So, yeah, monster post today.

Partners in Crime
Seeing as Cataclysm hits next Tuesday, this is a pretty relevant topic, but really applies to 'all the time'. WoW is a social game, by simple fact of being an MMO. Even when playing exclusively solo, you will find yourself interacting with other players. They may be brief interactions, yet there they are.

Sometimes it's a matter of mutual benefit (two people killing the same spawn take less time than each person individually), but others it's just fun to play with a friend.

Which is somewhat like saying water is wet, but I'd like take this to the next step for the more hardcore: Having a grinding buddy.



That Sounds Dirty
wink

But no seriously.

While a grinding buddy isn't a definite necessity, and of course everyone values time alone from time to time, a good partner in crime makes a looooong slog (like, oh, the Insane, perhaps?) that much more bearable.

Good qualities for your grinding buddy include:

- A shared goal - Even if it's a really heinous one, like all your reps ever to 999 exalted. Having someone to share the pain with is quite nice. Now, your goal can be 'shared' but doesn't have to be 'identical' to what your buddy wants.

- Shared gain - 'Shared gain' is actually more vague than it sounds. What I'm pointing at is that both parties should log off feeling like they've done something worthwhile. It doesn't have to be a tangible item. If you're helping a friend farm something without any interest in material gain, then you should end the night satisfied that your effort is appreciated. This is a responsibility for both (or 'everyone' if there's more than two of you) involved. If someone is resentful, you have done it wrong.

- An understanding of effort given - While ideally, your buddy and you are able to give in equal time, this isn't always the case. This doesn't mean that you've found the wrong friend, rather that you need to come up with a plan that works for both parties. There may be unequal amounts of effort put in, and that's fine, so long as everyone involved understands as much.

- Have some goddamned fun - I'm not even sure why this needs to be said but it's something that people need to be constantly told. Quite similar to the old joke of 'Doctor it hurts when I do this' 'So stop doing it', if you aren't having fun playing your goddamned game, stop. If you're angry and sick and tired of what you're doing, step back and do something else.

Why the Above is Important
What the entire list boils down to is a mutual respect for each other's time. You want to enjoy your game, and make sure your friend does too. It's such a simple, easy concept, yet finding people that grasp it can be quite difficult.

If you want to share a goal with someone, be honest about it. Don't say 'Come reroll to raid with us' when you mean 'Come waste time in guild chat and never expect an invite'. I've had WoW-friendships destroyed over this. Unfortunately, these past occurrences made me decide I'm never moving off my server to 'play with friends' again, because without fail 'play with friends' has always meant 'oh but I didn't mean it' some time after the character is level 67 (and while I'm not laden with regret, I am constantly annoyed over the loss of time that I could have spent with people who do respect the effort I put in).

And so, but then
Beyond butthurt whining, how does this apply to me?

Well, my boyfriend was my grinding buddy long before he was my boyfriend. Take from that what you will. wink

We have our hands in many soups at the moment, so here's some basic application of the above.

- The Insane - Is a slow, slow thing. Even though 25% of it was removed in 4.0.3! He's also closing in on finals week, so hasn't been able to play that much.

I've completed grinding out all the lockboxes for Ravenholdt rep (my Real-ID status, in response to whispering to me about how ~*~awesome~*~ the world is post-shattering, has been 'Wow, LBRS looks exactly the same!). But I still make a short, daily trip back every day on my rogue so I can send him lockboxes. It's not a huge amount of time, and compared to what one needs it seems a rather pitiful amount, but it's progress, anyway.

I've had him sit stealthed and occasionally hit a space bar nearby while I grind out Steamwheedle rep for both of us. It's a little depressing on my own - when he's able to help it's about 4000 rep an hour for Booty Bay compared to my pitiful 1.5k alone, but it's still better to work on it slowly than not at all, and in a manner where he can study while I work is fine by me.

I'm slowly accumulating Darkmoon cards on the side. This is a bit tougher because the inscription vendor in Dalaran changed, so he doesn't accept Northrend ink for lower ones anymore. He only accepts Cata ink. Which doesn't exist yet. What this meant is farming herbs is currently not worth the amount of cards I get out. In Cata it will be, but not now. So I stalk the auction house constantly and pick up cards for the both of us, using the money the guild bank has accumulated from selling excess materials we've had all expansion.

- Thundarfurry - His rogue accidentally a binding. There was only one thing for it - put the damn sword together. He's able to farm for the second binding on his own. To keep me occupied in the time that he can't be on, I was sent on a quest to make 100 arcanite bars (in other news, transmute spec still hasn't procced enough to justify the 5 primal mights that went into it at the beginning of BC). The guild bank is now full of thorium that I haven't been able to sell (like, had to finally buy the last tab amounts of full).

We're also doing weekly BWL runs for ingots (4 so far zomg).

- For Cataclysm - I actually have to wait a week before I make my journey to 85, because he has to focus on finals, and I'd rather not dash off ahead. I'll still play, most likely try out a Worgen while I wait. And, of course, farm goblin rep (with my Real-ID message set to 'Wow, Grizzly Hills looks exactly the same, too!' the whole time). I don't mind waiting, as a week really doesn't matter that much (several guildies are also holding back for finals, so it's very likely I'll have a pool of people to drag around in instances and heroics anyway).

I also found out I still have two paid weeks of vacation left this year, so indeed, a lot of time to catch up :D

- RARF - Between the $20 deal for vanilla through lk and RAF, it seemed worthwhile to start a second account (my stupid character slots are full anyway! grr!). Right now it's a lot of sitting on one's hands until finals are over, but we were able to play a pair of night elf mages over Thanksgiving and discover that RAF combined with the new questing is pretty damned ridiculous. Like, 4 levels gained in Wailing Caverns ridiculous.

We hit 20 and set foot in Darkshore and I felt a bit guilty. It does feel a bit stupid to be 5+ levels over the quests, but you still want to do them because it's 'new'. We talked about it a bit and decided that at least some of our other characters would probably level together, but not in a party, to slow things down a bit.

I came to the conclusion that even through the bit of buyer's remorse with RAF, it's still not the end of the world. He gets a free month and a rocket, and I wanted the second account anyway. He also wants the night elf mage to level fast, to replace the draenai one he deleted to make room for it - and I generally can't stand leveling mages so having it go extremely fast is great.

The point was also made that, as soon as we hit 60 (which will be fast!), we can sit down and quest normally. All is well.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter that the quests are blowing by. The quests will always be there and they're not usually memorable. What is worth remembering is the fun we've had doing them - which we can do if they're 5 levels below or 5 levels above us. We'll remember that I died to standing in a green cloud of 'What is this' and then ran the opposite direction from my corpse because I followed the gold arrow pointing out a quest instead of the red on pointing at my corpse within viewing distance of the graveyard. Ah, and we'll cherish it.


Screenshots

Most of these were taken from a laptop on vacation which can't handle some of the new graphics.... but they're still pretty on the inside ;_;

Well, it's Friday again. About time, too!

Are we there yet?
Well, mmo-champion is predicting the shattering to take place either next week or the week after. And all I can think is about damn time. WotLK was a rather annoying expansion for me. Love my guild to death and have enjoyed poking around at this and that, but the raid and heroic instance design was just killing me :/

I'm sure there's someone out there who thinks WotLK was the best expansion ever and I regret to inform them that we can't be friends.

The elemental invasion has really been a let down. I wasn't a great fan of the zombie invasion for 3.0 because it was a great excuse for players to harass other players (especially low-levels and potential newbies - how fun it must be to have your first WoW experience, being corpse camped by your own faction!) and claim it wasn't their fault that 'Arthas' was ruining the game.

It seems like we're at the other end of the spectrum. I'm annoyed by the very idea that it happens at distinct times (roughly the top of the hour, every 2-3 hours). I like that people are given the chance to evacuate and not participate. I'm annoyed that I only have enough time to hit up one, perhaps two of the instances after the event (maybe I did it wrong). I'm annoyed that the guy I'm supposed to turn the kill quests in to is apparently in a different phase of Ironforge and in mine he's evacuated, so I can see his exclamation mark on the map but can't see him!

I'M ALSO REALLY ANNOYED THAT THE MAILBOXES DISAPPEAR. WHAT. WHY ARE THE ELEMENTALS STEALING MY MAILBOX.

So here's hoping that things are more interesting once Deathwing begins his reign of destruction! (An aside, threads on mmo-champ are claiming he's actively destroying random zones in the Beta as well as the PTR, which suggests he may be randomly destroying things until he's brought down in his raid :O)

This is a very cruel thing to do to someone
Blizzard has apparently changed the security protocols that monitor logins to Battle.net. How do I know? I got an email that my account had been locked yesterday :P Of course, the email being rather vague, once I'd verified it is authentic I went OH JESUS NO, MY PURPLES!, thinking I'd been hacked. But after checking the armory to see all my characters, even the enchanter, were still wearing their clothes, things turned confusing.

I called the support line, and got a girl with a simply adorable voice that unlocked it for me an helped piece together what was going on.

The new system appears to determine what is a normal pattern of behavior for you. If you suddenly log in from an IP address it hasn't learned to be associated with your account, it considers it suspicious and locks the account. What's annoying is there's no real way to 'teach' it aside from this trial and error game.

Making me spaz out and think I'd got hacked is very mean >:|

Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast
Well, work on the Insane plugs on, slowly. I did the math last night and guesstimated that I need to go through LBRS pickpocketing at least 33 more times. After that I'll probably move on to flying around Northrend on my pally and picking herbs for Darkmoon cards. I realized that it would actually be sort of cool to pass those cards on to characters leveling in Cataclysm (I'm probably getting a second account, because no more character slots). It'd be awesome if I could sell them though.

Sreenshots pewpew

Again and Again

This has been a pretty light week!... And I was so enamored with photoshop last night that I forgot to upload my screenshots again. Ohwell, something to do tonight :D

THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY
Ok so. I guess the big news is Insane in the Membrane is being 'fixed' so that it's completable in Cataclysm, and it just won't require Shen'dralar anymore. Which is a considerable nerf to the title.

This kind of surprised everyone. I certainly wasn't expecting it. It does feel a bit cheap to essentially skip 25% of the whole achievement. Those who did it the 'right' way will have at least an additional feat in the future, but I'm hoping that there will be an analogous feat in Cataclysm that can the the 'new' crazy bunch of rep to get. It's probably difficult to put in, as you essentially you have to create a faction that no one cares about, doesn't really benefit raiding, which is probably hard to justify in terms of development time. But here's hoping.

To celebrate, my grinding partner (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID) and I hit up separate instances of LBRS and pickpocketed about 75 lockboxes between us. And now the guild bank is full 9.9

Durids!
As a personal reminder to myself, the Inconspicuous Bear put out an incomplete Gearing and Professions list for bear tanking at 85. While not finished, they're extremely helpful for putting together a plan!

Killin' Time
The guild as a whole has been somewhat counting down the minutes until Cataclysm hit, so over the last week raids of various sizes and seriousness have been put together to knock out achievements. I put together a group last friday that finished up 10 man T7, as well as Onyxia achievements for several people. In the name of arbitrary points!

More officially, the 25 man finally pushed several Glory to the Raider 25 ICC achievements to completion, so a large number of us got our Frosty Drakes. I have now broken and rebroken my mount macro several times trying to stuff him in, and somehow managed to put my sea turtle into the mix >:|

We also had a bit of a fiasco with our latest Shadowmourne box, where the quest bugged out and the GMs, for whatever reason, would only reward the wielder with one of the four items he was supposed to get. He chose the mount, which I had won the roll for. Which is freaking ossim, but it still really sucks that everyone else got screwed out of their items :/

Justicurr
Ugh. Well. I think a large part of my problem is I'm doing this either alone or with the boyfriend, and really, 1-2 people will find it very hard to change the course of battle. It's not impossible, it's just sometimes more than I care to try. I mean how many times can you stand watching your entire team dick off in the middle while the horde kills you with the flag without being a little angry.

Honor weekends turn out to be both better and worse, because you can physically see the rep bar move with each cap.... but there are so many premade teams you get paired against.

I did figure out, at some point, that I need 300 WSG and Arathi victories each, and then I'll be done, but that's some pretty depressing criteria.

I suppose really I need to make my own premade. Bah!

FACK YOU FISH
A little under 9,000 fish successfully caught later, my 9 alts are now all sitting pretty at 325 cooking skill. If nothing else, between this and the Candy Buckets of DOOM, I was able to run around the world one last time before it completly changed. Azshara in particular, while being so very useless, is very pretty, so you goblins had better take good care of it ;_;

I've been having a love affair with the new water.

Anyway, two weeks of screenshots.

The Non-Raid Leader

I haven't had a lot of time to myself, so no pretty drawings, but I'll remember to add in weekly screenshots (2-3 weeks worth? lol) today or tomorrow.

THIS IS MADNESS

The Insane feat of strength, based off a comment made by staff during Blizzcon, seems to be going away with Cataclysm. Speficially, Shen'dralar and Bloodsail reps will no longer be attainable, though if you had the reps previously, they appear to stay in tact. In terms of Bloodsail, this doesn't matter too much. As said previously, two people working for four hours in Booty Bay can get the appropriate rep.

Shen'dralar is significantly more frustrating by nature of their rep gains, which is from very rare objects that typically take a person several months to gather. What's even more fun is the NPC that originally accepted these items has been confirmed on beta to be in the exact same place, just with the quest disabled.

More or less, it appears an achievement with individual steps that take months to complete, seems to have gotten a 'one month sort of but not really warning because we still don't have a clear statement two weeks after someone mentioned it in passing'.

Most of the community is theorizing that other reps will still count toward the feat (similar to how you can still get Hand of A'dal or Champion of the Naruu after 2.4, so long as you'd met certain goals before that point). Nothing is certain because Blizzard has yet to clarify exactly what's happening, so really, if you need one last rep, now is the time to do it.

I'm a little miffed that this happened like, a week after I decided to try for it, but overall I've not wasted that much time if I quit cold turkey, turn around, and sell my rep items for 5000g a piece. :/

Hallow's End
Was another non-event. I was surprised to find that my primary alt, the paladin, already had it completed. Two others, the priest and dk, simply needed a hallowed helm (...which they actually had in their banks but FOR WHATEVER REASON I GUESS DOESN'T COUNT). The other six needed more or less everything.

Actually, the constant trick-or-treating every hour did not bother me. What did was going to all the candy buckets. The travel time involved sincerely felt like I was spending more time watching my character, rather than controlling it. Cataclysm will help with flying mounts in the old world, so similar achievements won't be as bad. But good freaking lord I never want to fly from Ratchet to Cenarian Hold again.

Overall it took a total of five days to get everything complete.

I am not a raid leader
Last year, at....almost exactly this time, actually, there was a series of events in our ten man groups that can really be best described as 'Some of you are assholes'.

My guild's policy only really cares about our official 25 mans, held three days a week in the most 'recent' content. So 10s and alts and anything else is free for all, and while the officers often take part, they don't enforce any rules. You can probably see why this is good, and why it's not, really it just is what it is.

So, I came to the conclusion that my solution to the Ulduar issue was to take my ball and go home - aka make the raid myself and tell the assholes to suck it.

When ICC came out, the primary target of my scorn built a raid group with a severe focus on progression that would meet early in the raid week. I made a group that would meet weekends and 'do whatever', with the solitary rule that he couldn't come (because I have the emotional maturity of a 4 year old).

In terms of actual raid leading, I'm actually pretty bad. Very bad. I'll send out 13 invites thinking only 9 people logged on. I'd say 'it made sense at the time' but I've done it more than once.

I have to delegate a lot. My boyfriend, who came as an alt, was handed assist and masterloot so he could handle marking and THE ACTUALLY NOT THAT CONFUSING loot window. I also had to main tank, meaning I had to focus more on what I did than the group.

The group of people I got were actually very good at taking care of themselves. Like, I cannot praise them enough. When it came time to try Professor Putricide, I gave them an order of who to try to drop disease on, told them to be vocal on vent about where they're moving, and then ignored them every attempt while I danced with Putricide. And they did it perfectly.

On the subject of loot, the group was generous to a fault with each other. I had no rules about main spec or off spec, and the few times I was asked said simply 'Roll however you think will best help the 25 man group's progression'. There were several conversations that went 'you take it' 'no you take it'. There was not one loot dispute, despite the fact that we ran /roll the entire way.

I know I lucked out with my group, and I think a lot of it is because the guild as a whole maintains a very outgoing atmosphere - Most of us refer to each other by first name rather than character name (though I'm still 'Amy' because I frankly prefer it). One officer in particular makes very sure that no form of hate speech is tolerated.

Now, this wasn't all rainbows and unicorns. My offtank was constantly abusive to random raid members. I can't even remember why, it was just arguments about petty shit. After five weeks of trying, through several channels, to get him to calm down, I was very frazzeled. Then, when his girlfriend slept through invite time and thus, did not get an invite, he threw a tantrum. And I had it. I put him on ignore and never invited him back. I replaced him within ten minutes, the end.

Several of my raid members were initially pleased with my choice. As time wore on and the offtank started leaving me messages in the one place that not only could I not ignore him beyond not responding, but everyone else could see it - the guild forums - many of those same people would approach me and say they 'felt bad' for how he was being treated.

I don't really understand why, mind you. This wasn't a case of 'oh he said something once and now I hate him', this was a pattern of abusive behavior that would. not. stop. I even talked an officer into asking him to calm down two weeks before I permanently threw him out, and that didn't stop him. He tried to stop the raid when he realized he wouldn't get his way.

Some other time I'll debate with myself over why people will willingly put up with this shit, and why I become the bad guy for not wanting to.

Aside from the offtank, the only other reprimands I passed out were for two separate people who were asked not to use 'gay' as a pejorative. I'm not sure either apologized, but neither did it again, and that's good enough for me.


Now this whole thing was going somewhere.

I'm not a very good raid leader. I have to ask my members to police themselves, and was blessed with a group of people who did. Very well. But they weren't always happy with me. I had several people who complained I was being too mean with the offtank. I had people who thought I wasn't being strict enough with gear/alt/flask/foods. I had people who complained that the group comp was bad. I was constantly questioned about doing X instead of Y.

But they kept logging on every week.

And now that we can't run a 10 man icc without locking ourselves out of 25, they're asking me to organize things. I still run a TK raid every week with a freeroll on Ashes of A'lar - our newest guild recruit asked if he could come 'just to see the fight', and was shocked when I said he was free to roll as well. Several people have asked to do a ten man to finish off T7 achievements, and when I made a post asking who could come when, I got several more requests to do T9 and Onyxia as well. Two weeks ago the gentleman running our Herald of the Titans group was running late, and I logged on to find a note saying I was now in charge.

WTF.

I don't think I have great leadership. At all. I think what I have that these people are following is that I'm ok with being held accountable for decisions. I don't mean that they were unable to admit mistakes, I mean accountable for everything, even shit out of my control.

When 9 people log on for a 10 man, it's not my fault the group comp sucks. Half the group would want an achievement, half would want the hard mode, and I got to be the tiebreaker. The offtank was the one abusing people, but once he was out of sight, I was the one who got the flak for removing him. I had to call several raids because people were burning out after an hour of attempts. All stuff that does not make me popular.

This is what makes raid leading not fun. This is why most people really don't want to do it. It baffles the hell out of me. I can't really come to a conclusion about it beyond that.