Okay so the title’s cheesy. Give me a break, it’s early in the morning and I went to bed way too damned late.

Yesterday I was humming and smiling for most of the day. The Diablo 3 announcement made me squee to little fangirl pieces, the info released on it (finally! Pick a class AND sex! TY!), and while the two classes that have been released are lovely, dammit I want my ranged bow shooter. That’s what I played in Diablo 1 and 2, and I want her back, dang it!

I didn’t want to pull up Diablo 2 and play with it (tempted! So tempted!), so I hopped into WoW and started mucking about with my priest. She’s pretty low level at this point, and I spent some time in Darkshire clearing out old quests for her, ones that were grey and green. I have NO idea why I did that tho, since I really want to get her a kitty mount instead of the elephant. So I should have been wandering around in elflands instead. But at least I got a ton of quests killed off, lots of xp, a few upgrades, and dinged 2 levels. ::happy purr::

We tried to get a Heroic Ramparts run going, since I’m -this- close to being exalted on Siana, but alas, it was not to be. That’s okay, cos I needed to eat supper, then log into my mage for Kara fun. And oh my god was it ever fun. Several people that have been off in ::gasp:: another MMO ::gah!:: wandered back last night for a Kara run. A couple of friends of ours in another guild came as well. And Aerye got to go for her second full Kara clear and once again get phat lewts. And me? I was still humming and bouncing.

See, a couple of days ago, I managed to finish the last of the Frozen Shadowweave set. So there I was, all decked out, gemmed, and happy to be going pewpew with friends. My mage is finally getting to the point that I don’t think of her as being -too- much of a gimp. Granted, the green-level pants have GOT to go, but she’s still tons better now! So in we run, slaughter tons of mobs, tell even more bad/naughty jokes (had to stop the raid a couple of times cos the Hunter Class Lead and I were being baaaaaad in tells to each other), and manage to down mobs that eat mana and are immune to magic damage with two pally tanks, only a Hunter that was non-magic damage. And to my delight, the Curator smiled on me last night. My mage walked off with the Staff of Infinite Mysteries. The Boyfriend was there on his boomkin enchanter and had me immediately hand it over to him to enchant Major Spellpower onto it. Yey better pewpew! ::pets new shiny staff::

Somewhere after all of the staff stroking jokes (oh yeah we were baaaaaad last night) and before we killed Prince, Grasp of the Dead dropped. Yeah, it’s not great, but it’s still better than the gloves I’d worn before that. After that, we got Prince down, and Aerye walked off with his axe and the Tier 4 helm piece. She was asking if I wanted it, since she already got the axe, then was informed by the Hunter Class Lead and myself that we would both drive cross country out to California to beat the crap out of her if she didn’t take the helm NOW. A quiet “yes ma’ams” later and Aerye got the token. ::grin:: I was the only other person that could have used the token last night, and since I have Uni-Mind Headdress on my mage at the moment, I’m okay.

So Aerye got loot, my mage got loot, a friend of ours that hadn’t been to Kara before (was his first raid after being gone from WoW for over a year) got lots of loot, others got loot they’d been waiting to have drop for a while and I lost count of the number of times I fell over laughing (or lost the ability to breathe). All in all, I consider it an excellent run, even if it wasn’t the fastest run ever. ::grin::

After I logged, I finally did fire up Diablo 2 and ran around in there. Once I got to the point I was falling over at the keyboard, I shut it off and went to bed. Now I’m up and watching the Diablo 3 Denizens live feed from WWI. ::sigh:: Man I hope they have a bow-wielder. /drool

I just have to say this…

OMGWTFBBQKITTENZ

DIABLO 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/faints in joy

(Seriously, when this is released, I’ll not be playing WoW for at least 3 weeks. ::happy happy joy joy::)

I got an invite to SSC fun last night with the guild that The Boyfriend and I had run TK with Wednesday night. They were up to Leo, which they haven’t managed to get down as of yet. Sadly, last night they weren’t able to get him down last night either, even with some insanely close calls. The last attempt was with him at 3k health left. That one just made everyone cry. After we were done, the other hunter in the group and I hung out for a while talking hunter macros. I showed her what I had and I think she has some plots now for some of her own.

A couple of days previously, I’d talked to some of my friends in WoW and asked if I could use their shadowcloth cooldowns. They were gracious enough to say sure, and I sent off the mats. My mage is still frost spec (and happily so), and in desperate need of the Frozen Shadowweave set. After I got their shadowweave back, I found I had enough cloth to make the last piece of the set: the robe. So as of last night (or early this morning, I kinda lost track), my mage is now decked out in all her Frozen Shadowweave goodness. /cheer

(Now if I can just get her a better weapon, get rid of the green pants, and get some new shiny trinkets…)

Today? Here’s hoping that I can get into some Heroic Ramparts or Heroic BLood Furnace runs on Sia. I need Exalted on her with Honor Hold and had some volunteers to help get it for her. ::grin:: The rest of the weekend? Who knows.

Tonight I did something that I haven’t done for a while: a 25-man raid. Oh god it felt good. The working with a large group of other people to take out part of an instance. The “oh crap!” moments follow by the “oh damn we’re good!” butt-out-of-the-fire moments. The silliness in chat and Ventrilo. The group the boyfriend and I went with is a group he was introduced to by some friends of ours. They raid with this other guild on occasion and they seemed to be amenable to having guests along for the ride. Seeing as how they’re about at the point (or slightly behind) our guild was at before all The Mess happened, this seemed like a good fit.

So I finally got a sign-in name for their raid calendar, signed up for Tempest Keep tonight, signed into WoW, then promptly went to Ironforge, closed my eyes, hit the “relearn talents” button an respec’d Beast Master. Why? Well my old guild was fine with me using a Markman spec. I did decent damage with it, knew my role, etc. But taking Siana out to a new raid group? Yeahhh I wanted to show to the best of my abilities on the damage charts as well as “okay yeah she knows where to step and where not to.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d be going, since there were more than 25 people signed up by the time that raid time came around. Eventually tho, I got a whisper asking if I was ready for a raid invite. 30 minutes later, I was up to my ankles in dying or dead Blood Elves and DAMN it felt good! Oh wow, have I missed this. Kara was good, don’t get me wrong. But those 25 man raids…. ::happy sigh::

At the end of the evening, The Boyfriend and I had helped the other guild get their first Void Reaver kill, and while he took the #2 spot on the tank lists, I took #3 on damage done and #5 on DPS. Not too bad for someone that had respec’d all of 3 hours previously and was holding back, trying to make sure I was following the raid correctly. ::pleased purr::

Did they do things differently than our guild did? Oh yeah. Some of it was good, some of it was just different. They’re enough like what I’m used to that I have no problems dealing with them. So tomorrow, it’s (hopefully) back to SSC for the first time in a while for me and seeing if we can help them get their first Leo kill. Whee!

I’ve been back from training since Friday night. This weekend, I happily dropped myself into WoW and got my fix of killing mobs. A friend needed assistance on getting some group quests done, I had a mage that had some of those quests, and by the time it was all done, 5 of us had all piled together to rampage across Netherstorm. There was giggling and chaos involved. Oh yeah, good times.

Saturday night was Kara, which I was REALLY looking forward to. I’d asked to take my mage, since she could actually still use some gear from there. But the big bouncing for me was Aerye going on the run. I was massively looking forward to her seeing everything. She’d been on one run previously but only part way. This time, it was to be a full clear.

So that’s how a mage ended up in the hunter private channel with Aerye and the other hunter on the run. I think it was his 3rd time there. I gave tons of advice to them, and they did great. Well except for when the mobs looked at them and said “mm yum ::nomnomnom::”. Heehee. Aerye got phat lewt and badges, my mage got badges and a sparkly offhand, so everything was dandy.

Yesterday, I took time off to play with the PS3 and the cats’ brains, what little brains they have. Today? Errands, with hopefully a side of killing things in WoW. God I hope so. Yeah, can you tell I’m not quite as depressed anymore?

Yeah, I know. I announce “I’m back!” then promptly not post anymore. What can I say? We’re still in the midst of unpacking and getting set up in a new town/state, and now I’m off for training for the new job. But there’s been another reason I’ve been kinda quiet, and it’s not one that I’m fond of.

See, I joined the guild I’m in just over a year and a half ago. It was a move made with my boyfriend and another friend of ours from our original guild. Most of the people in our original guild had wandered off from WoW or just weren’t interested in what we were interested in: raiding. The Boyfriend knew a guild that ran his raid group that was prepping for the switch from “classic” WoW to TBC WoW by taking in new members that they knew and liked to run the 25 man raids. I liked them, they liked us, and since our old guild was more or less dying, we announced we were leaving to go raid with the new guild. Everyone (mostly) understood and we went off to play with the new guild.

Cut to about 4 months ago. Raiding’s starting to get a bit shaky, with everyone winding down on end-of-school, new jobs, losing jobs, new babies, etc. You know: Life. Then the burnout started to show: burnout from raiding and from WoW itself. So raiding got more or less postponed. Again, totally understandable.

We now have something that’s made me want to not log into WoW cos, well, it hurts. A bunch of the core group all decided to try out Age of Conan. While I’m sure it’s a lovely game, I have two problems with it:
1. I’m on a Mac. Yes, I have Boot Camp, but still, come on.
2. I’ve never had any urge to explore the Conan universe. At all. Ever. (Really big problem. Movies were okay, but play there? Nooooo thank you.)

Add in a budget that’s really tight at the moment and yeah, trying AoC is towards the bottom of the list of things I’m interested in. Way at the bottom.

So a lot of the core group left for the new shiny that is AoC, more of the raiders went to a raiding guild or two, and we’re left with a gutted guild. The Boyfriend is now Guild Leader, and we’re both depressed over the whole thing. Yes there are still people in the guild that are happy where they are. Yes, we still have people playing. Are they the ones that we’ve grown used to playing with? Having the fun and insanity with? No.

Yes, guilds burn down like this all the time. It’s pretty common actually. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though. What hurts the most is this all happened pretty much in days. AoC came out, core group left, raid group left, and then the weekend came around and we surveyed what was left and winced. There’s hurt feelings, anger, rolled eyes, and every other emotion possible from just about everyone. I hate crap like this, so I’ve avoided logging in. Add in a move and new job and yes, things have gotten more than a bit disjointed on our side of life.

Am I moving to another guild? Who knows. I know I’m not right now. Do I want to keep raiding? Yep. Do I have any urge to log in these days? Yep, cos a friend of mine came back to WoW just in time to see an implosion. I love playing with him, and that’s giving me some much needed fun in my WoW-life right now. I have at least two if not three guilds on the server that I feel reasonable comfortable offering my “need a warm dps body?” services to. But it’s still not -our- guild and -our- friends. Will they come back with the expansion? Some will. Some won’t. We’ll see.

Breaking up is hard, whether it’s a face-to-face relationship or one born in pixels. It’s the ones that blindside you, the phone calls, text messages or board postings of “I don’t think we should see each other anymore” that hurt the most. So for now, or this week at least, I’m going to be quiet again while I try to absorb this latest kick in the teeth from WoW and try to concentrate on a new job in my “real” life.

“…how can I help you today?”

That’s right! I R BACK! /dies

Moving sucks, no matter what. I still have stuff in boxes all over the place and the computer equipment is also in complete disarray. BUT… I have internet again, and managed to indulge in a nice wallow in WoW.

The guild is in disarray as well, with some of the guild going to try Age of Conan (which while I’m sure is a lovely game, that universe has never held much appeal for me), while others have moved on to other guilds. Such is the life cycle of guilds and games. But that didn’t matter too much today. Today, I got to rampage around on my mage, finish out more Netherstorm quests I never did on her, and then help a friend out that’s recently returned to WoW do some group quests in Hellfire and Zangermarsh. All in all, a good time.

Later on tonight, I’ll be logging back into WoW to see if a second friend that had contacted me logs in like he was talking about. I’m hoping so, as it’s been ages since I’ve had a chance to commit mayhem with him. That’s one of the things that I honestly love about MMOs: the friends that you meet and keep over the years, no matter what games you all go to or what happens in everyone’s lives. I’ve had friends from just about every background you can think of, one that passed away way too soon, and a bunch of weddings and babies to welcome. And that’s something I’ll always treasure.

“Your call is very important to us, so please remain on the line…”
::music::

(also known as I’m moving this week and next, so please bear with me. )

For those that were wondering what the flooring and other crap I’ve done to the house looks like (you know, that stuff that’s partially responsible for keeping me from playing WoW), well, here ya go.

Yeah I know, took forever. But now those that wanted to see can see. For everyone else, I’ll be WoWing this weekend and be all chatty over that come Monday.

Friday night, the guild met up and went into TK for the 3rd (or is it 4th?) time. We haven’t officially raided 25 man content in over a month. We were there to kick some serious ass.

I don’t think the poor (ha!) mobs leading the way to Void Reaver ever knew what hit them. The guild was there for blood and phat lewts. There was a lot of good-natured ribbing, a lot of really bad jokes, and a LOT of laughter: just the way we like to have raids go.

Then we got to Void Reaver. He’s still borked up with his globe attacks and the non-announcements by addons. There was a bit of adjustment to that, then the guild started chewing away on him. We had one more shot before things would respawn in bad places (we took more time than we liked. there were too many jokes involving “balls” and “face” and we were all being too damned silly) and then…. Boom. Dead Void Reaver.

So the guild went to TK, we saw VR, and all I got was some shoulders. Such a nice WoW birthday present, even if it was 3 days prior to my actual birthday! (Yes, my birthday’s today, like Fimlys posted earlier on his blog. Sing away. ::grin:: )