Archive for September, 2008

It’s been… oy. I’ve been delightfully not at work since last Friday. Granted, I’ve still been doing work stuff, but at least half of my time has been occupied playing WoW. Friday night was the usual mixed-guild Kara run that’s become a nice tradition, with my mage picking up a couple of last items to play around with. Saturday was the very odd (and off) ZA run. At least we ended that laughing, even if we were disappointed in our performance. Sunday morning started with a ZF run given by another guildie for his wife and I, which I was thrilled to be able to take my baby lock on. Sunday evening was another Kara run, this time on Siana (mmm badges). Today? More leveling the lock, more dailies on various toons, and more cleaning of the house.

…hey, where did that come from? I know I didn’t put that on the list of things to do!

Anyway, the lockette is now a grand level of… 44. I’m about halfway through it on the way to 45. With any luck, I can get to 50 before the weekend and see about an Sunken Temple run on her. ::plotplotplot::

A spell idea from a really lousy run:

Russian Roulette - A healer spell that when cast, will raise all of the targeted class, but will randomly pick another class and kill it.

Between that, the ASCII stick figures in compromising positions getting sent to wrong channels, the raid warning of “Uptown Girl”, the “CRAPSHOCK!” yell (determined to be an expansion spell, PvP only, with rank 2 being the worst debuff), yeah, we weren’t the most focused. ::still giggling over the insanity::

So far, the get up and do dailies before work plan seems to be going well. If nothing else, it’s helping me actually get out of bed. This morning, I groaned when the alarm clock went off, shut it off, and lay back down. Two minutes later, my brain whispered “Daiiiiily quests. Moneyyyyyyy. Easyyyyy. No one’s on the Isleeeeeee.” That got me out of bed and moving. With that, I’m pushing 600g on the hunter (most broke hunter evah), and over 1200g on my banker, thanks to selling epic gems. My god, I might have money when the xpac comes out, yey! ::grin::

The lockette is still working her way up in levels. I came close to hitting 40 last night, but jsut couldn’t do it. I’m around 10-15% to dinging, if not less, but I was amazingly tired last night. Well, that and distracted by the boyfriend playing more Force Unleashed. And Mythbusters. And Bones. Damned TV. So today at lunch it’s get in a little more time on the lock. I might just find some mobs and chew my way through them to ding 40 and go train, rather than find a quest I can do quickly. We’ll see how out of it I am when I log in.

So when I got home last night, I was lugging a new UPS unit with me. I’d gotten a phone call from the boyfriend saying that when he got home, the cat’s were practically clawing their way out the door and the UPS we had was making this awful loud beeping noise. Since it had been making some odd, really really odd noises for about a week, I sighed and said I’d go get a new one when I got off work.

Along the way to the store for the UPS unit, I stopped by Gamestop and had this conversation with the girl at the counter:

Me: “Hi, I need to place a preorder.”
Her: “Sure! What did you need to preorder? ::typitytypity::”
Me: “World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King, Collector’s Edition.”
Her: “Certainly! Now then can I…”
Me: “That’s two copies I need.”
Her: “…::blink:: Um, okay. Two?”
Me: “Yep, two.”
Her: “Um….okay. Can I get your name?”
::exchange of personal info for computer::
Her: “Okay and how much would you like to put down to reserve this?”
Me: “All of it.”
Her: “…um… they’re $75 each. ::gives me panicked look::”
Me: “I know. ::patiently waiting for her to stop staring at me with her jaw on the floor::”
Her: “Oh um… ::blink:: okay. ::rings it up:: Here you go and have a, um, nice day?”
Me: “Thanks! ::bounces out with the reciept::”
Her: “…bye?”

I seriously broke a Gamestop employee cos I wanted to fully prepay for two collector’s editions of WotLK. /facepalm My take was this: I have the money right now. It’s in my budget. Everything’s okay with that. In two months, who knows. I’d rather have this done NOW than worry later. Thank you!

Once I got home with the preorders, the UPS, and supper (mm Chik-fil-a), the boyfriend and I installed the UPS, then settled down to watch TV for a while. Well, he did. I argued with my computer, since it was having issues with wanting to start some programs. Once the shows we wanted to see were over (and I’d fixed the last computer problem AND baked a pie while I was at it) (yes, I was insanely multitasking), it was off to WoW for me and into Star Wars: Force Unleashed for the boyfriend. There was much cackling from him and explosions from the TV, so I’m assuming all is well since I won’t be able to touch it til he’s good and done with it, dammit.

I got WoW up and going and logged in for all of 45 minutes at the most. I’m currently swearing my way through STV (damn I hate that zone), and got up to needing to kill Sin’Dall, the Tiger Mastery “boss”. I’d seen it the other day as I’d been wandering around, and I knew about where it was. Once I got to his hill, though, I was faced with 2 Alliance and 2 Horde doing a spit/slap standoff. I sighed and sat to one side, then got a whisper from the Alliance asking if I was looking for Sin’Dall. Once I said yes, I got an invite to group. Huzzah! People that don’t try to solo tag mobs but go with a group! We spread out around the edges of the hill, all facing in. I’d set the voidwalker to Stay and Aggressive. It’s won me a lot of “GAH! TAG IT!” fights before on Sia, so I figured I’d give it a shot. But something even better happened: Sin’Dall spawned down the hill on it’s patrol route. Apparently the Horde forgot about that. One voidwalker went zoomzoom down the hill, followed by a gnome leaping off the edge instacasting and giggling, followed by two night elves yelping “Woot! Hot damn! WTG Gnome!” Horde was upset. I giggled.

The main point of me being logged in last night came on the turn-in and I was able to ding 39. After that it was logout time and listen to the boyfriend continue to giggle while he exploded stormtroopers as I sat in bed reading. This morning, I actually logged into Sia and did dailies. ::gasp:: I think I might make that my wake-up routine now: wake up, shower, log onto the hunter and do dailies, get dressed, go to work. Hmm… this could work… >.>

The gnome lock dinged 38 yesterday, in spite of a massive headache. But even better, I managed to get her halfway to 39. This morning before work, I managed to sneak in a little more time and got her within 5% of 39. I might just be running the two blocks to the apartment at lunch today to 1. eat lunch and 2. get that ding 39 in. (Oh yeah, I want it.)

This past weekend I actually got to take Siana to a guild ZA run we’ve started up. Two weekends ago, we tried out trying to get all 4 timers. No luck, but we did get the next to last boss down. This past weekend, we got the last boss down. Both of those were my first time seeing that happen. Yey!

Tonight when I get home, what’s planned is going to Gamestop, setting in two preorders for the CE of Lich King, then coming home and leveling the lockette. With luck, I can get her to 40 tonight! /crossing paws

Must… get… 70!

Yep, it was announced all over the place that Lich King has a release date: November 13th. I’d comment on it’s readiness but I’m still half-asleep and anything I’d say would be snarks against the state of the beta server I’m on being unplayable and thus unable to be tested. >.>

But that creates a problem: what do I do now? I mean, sure, I want more badges for gear for my mage. I have a lock to get up to 70 (she’s 37.7 right now, tyvm). Then there’s other alts that I’m not as concerned with. There’s farming for money, which I’m going to need badly come expansion. So I have a little list of things to do, and I’m not sure when/how I’m going to get them done.
1. finish getting warlock to 70 (to hell with gear, she’ll get better as soon as she makes it to Northrend)
2. run Kara a few dozen more times for badges for the mage for gear (just a few more, I swear!)
3. run ZA on Siana and see if the one or two things that might be an upgrade actually drop
4. Actually DO dailies, instead of whining about them (i love the money but hate the repetition)
5. see if I can actually beta test anything without the servers falling apart every two steps

It doesn’t seem like much, but when you have to budget your time, it gets to be so much more. :/ We’ll see how far I get. ::sigh::

Beta, you are a cruel, cruel mistress. You taunt us, teasing us with promises of new content to test, new skills to try, and unlimited 1 copper respecs. You show us pictures of new lands, filled with new animals to tame for our very own. Whispering into our ears of shiny new loot to be gotten, new lore to see, and new dragons to meet. And right when you know you have us in the palm of your hands, quivering in anticipation of weekends with free time to explore and destroy new environments, then… then you laugh in our faces as you deny us, leaving nothing behind but shattered hearts, dreams, and “World Server Down” notices.

/grump. I’m on to you, biatch!

(Soliloquy brought to you by the letters G, D, I and T, along with the Representatives of Bloggers Needing Therapy from Crashing Servers.)

Wait a sec… ANOTHER POST?! Frack, call the cops, she’s gone MAD!

Yep, another post. I went ahead and wandered into the beta tonight. I couldn’t help it. New shiny content was calling to me. I played around with the Death Knight a little bit more, but I have to admit my heart’s not in it. Maybe someday, but right now, I’m just playing it to give feedback and see the pretty pretty lore. And the lore is pretty, there’s no doubt about that.

Right as I was starting to get hungry and thinking supper might be a good idea, I logged to the character list (it’s habit, those last few things to toss onto the AH before fulling logging for the night, even tho I have no banker right now). Oooo there’s my mains! Woot! One fast name change for my hunter later (oh look I changed it to Nightravyn, how original for me), and I was zipping around in Stormwind, heading for the new Stormwind docks.

My god, the docks are huge. Huge and awesome. The boats that take you to Northrend are another boat style, just like the separation between the Kalimdor and Eastern boats. Quite frankly, sometimes after a long day of questing/raiding/instances/etc., the brains a bit too fogged and seeing a giant boat that looks like something out of Final Fantasy Meets Giant Walrus might just prod the brain to say “Hmm, I don’t think this is going to Darnassus. Lemme get off now.”

There’s some boat changes: It’s now Stormwind <-->Auberdine, not Auberdine <--> Menethil. I’m okay with that actually. To actually GET to Northrend, tho, it’s take the other boat in Stormwind to the Borean Tundra. It felt like 90% of the Alliance was there. I wandered around a bit, looked into places, checked out the Frozen Tundra outside the gates, then hearthed back to Shatt to try out the other entrance into Northrend: Howling Fjord. To get to HF, you can either hop a turtle in the Borean Tundra (yeah I learned that after I left, but that’s okay), or take what USED to be the Menethil <--> Auberdine boat and is now Menethil <--> HF.

The two boatrides are pretty danged similar. Northern lights, sweeping skies, lots of icebergs. But going into HF, and it’s Alliance base of Valgarde, seemed a bit more… well, it seemed more epic-y to me. You had a sense of you’re going someplace where Very Bad Things are going on. It felt more rustic to me, whereas Valiance Keep, the Alliance base for Borean Tundra felt more… settled I guess. And then there’s the boat actually gliding into port in Valgarde: slipping in between high high cliffs, boats over your head burning, and then rounding the corner to see this massive keep and a huge waterfall, all with (to me) a Lord of the Rings movie feeling, but not so much that you were distracted. Just a nod to it, that’s all. I sat there going “Wooooooooowwwwwww” at the screen. These are VERY nicely detailed textures and amazing models, and whoever set the boat’s path in place did it perfectly. It shows the harbor off in the best way possible.

So tomorrow I have a day off. I’ll be getting up early and playing around and doing more exploring. With betas, I’m fearless: I’ll stick my nose in just about anywhere. It doesn’t matter. It’s not money I’m REALLY losing from all those repairs. And the little bit that I did play around with in fighting with an admittedly “yeah whatever” spec for both me and Mirya, we did quite nicely. Do have have hard numbers? Hell no. We’ll see what happens upon release. As it was, you could spot me and Mir in a sea of brown and grey rhinos and devilsaurs. That blue splotch in all that mess? Yeah, that was me.

So yeah as I said in the earlier post (my god, woman, two posts in ONE DAY?! ARE YOU MAD?!), I’m in beta, and since my mains are in the process of being copied, I rolled a Death Knight to see the area and the server. It was a rather amusing experience, seeing as how I’m half asleep at the time (woke up early to patch and log in).

“Ooo pretty screen. Hello frozen undead dragon thin::yawwwwn::gie.”

::typitytypity Enter:: “Frack, no mains. Ah well.” ::createcreate::

Boyfriend: “Huh, DK?”

“Yep! I wanna see what it’s like. I’m still prolly gonna leave the DKing up to you tho.” ::Enter, loading screen, in-game movie::

“Woot I can move again. Hmm…” ::looks around:: “Eh whatever, oh, quest giver.” ::click then sigh over slooooooow teeeeeext, then accept fast and turn to walk off.

“Um… wait a sec…” ::goes back to quest giver and looks… way…. up::

“GAH!”

Boyfriend now looking over my shoulder: “What is yer problem? And why is yer toon backing up?”

“Arthas. Big. Big. Big. Arthas. GAH! Pleasedon’teatmeohmyfrickengawd.”

Boyfriend: ::point and laugh at me::

“…” ::smacks forehead:: “He’s friendly. You dork.” ::sigh:: “At least I’m awake now.”

Conclusion: I’m the worst Death Knight ever.

First, I apologize for the long time between posts. I’m still trying to get this whole juggling act of new store + WoW + home handled. The store is coming along swimmingly and we’ve gotten mostly rave reviews. How do you know your store’s doing well? You get complaints that you don’t have everything, just most stuff. ::grin::

And then there’s the fact there wasn’t too much to chat about from my end. I’ve essentially stopped doing 25-man raids. I was getting way too much stress and didn’t like yelling at my computer screen 4 nights of the week. Instead, I’m focusing on 10-man raids in Kara and ZA with my guild and another friend’s guild two nights a week. As a result, I’m spending far more time laughing my ass off and teasing friends. Am I somewhat disappointed that I’m not seeing current “end-game” content? Sure. But I’m having fun and that’s what counts.

And then there’s my lock. She’s coming along swimmingly, and was level 35 when I logged Saturday night. However, she’s still level 35. I kinda got distracted. >.>

Yep, I bought Spore on Sunday. The Boyfriend and I have been merrily creating and giggling our way through everything. Well, him more so than me. I got in a good two days then work ate me alive for a while. But I did log into my lock last night to try and get her some levels. She’s almost 36 now and looking forward to being played more again.

But WILL I? Yep I’m one of the lucky people in the latest round of beta invites. I’m still waiting on my main to be copied over to the test servers but I did play around with a death knight this morning before work. It was… interesting. I kinda want to finish the starting DK quests just to see how they go, with the story and the lore, but not too sure if I’ll ever roll a DK to keep. So tonight I get to log in, see if my mains are switched over, and if not, back to leveling the lock. I think. I kinda want to try out the DK stuff in the morning when hardly anyone is on. We’ll see what happens. ::grin::