So yesterday, I dinged 60 on my lockette, and merrily taunted the bloggers’ chat room with it. There was much cheering and Breana cackled at me as always. I was giddy. Not only had I finally hit 58 and gotten to Outlands over the weekend, but I’d managed to claw my way to 60 and was prepping for the insanity that is the warlock mount quest.

Let me jsut go ahead and say this now: I’d rather give someone 600 gold and get a mount in return than put up with this crap again.

That’s right, I dissed the lock mount quest. I have reason, though. Every time I’ve ever helped someone out with it, something’s gone horribly wrong. I should have remembered that this time. I should have remembered that it would most likely by multiplied since there were two of us trying to do it this time. It ended up with the other lock and I scrabbling to get to Dire Maul (it ended up being easier for me to summon her), a healer patiently waiting and gently teasing us, The Boyfriend sighing at us locks and teasing us, one horribly patient shammy DPS waiting for a summon, and a time deadline. The Boyfriend and the shammy DPS were both scheduled for a Headless Horseman run at 7pm server. It was 6:45 server when we all finally got in the zone. But between the server lag (and deaths from server lag) and the time pressure, I was semi-freaking out. I don’t know why I got so worked up over the whole thing, but I did. The person who was running the HH run was sweet and held their group waiting for us.

The rooms were finally all cleared and we stood in the circle to start the summon. Everyone was ready and eager to kill things. Then it hit me and I whispered my lock friend, “Um, did you buy the mats from the goblin before we left?” “Erm, no?”

I hadn’t either. I’d just wasted 3 people’s time for 45 minutes when two of them had things they were committed to. So I apologized over and over for 5 minutes, thanking everyone for coming and watching them hearth out before I hearthed. The other lock was also apologizing for the screwup with me. Then I logged and did something girly: I went to the couch and cried. Yeah I’m woman enough to admit I got so upset over the whole clusterf*ck that I went and cried on the couch. Not cos I didn’t get the mount. Nah, that I could handle. It was me wasting people’s TIME that made me upset. I hate it when my time is wasted in-game, and I LOATHE doing it to others, apparently to the point of making myself sob. Personal humiliation FTL.

But from the looks of it, no one’s too upset with us, cos I posted this morning, asking if we can have Mount Attempt #2, with more epic and less fail. The shammy DPS has volunteered again, and I’m pretty sure The Boyfriend is in to tank again. There’s one healer that said if she’s online, she’ll help, plus another two healers in guild and in our Friday night Kara group guild that would most likely offer help as well. But it still doesn’t quite salve the sting in my head of “YOU BORKED IT UP!”

As it stands tho, I’m hoping that tonight I can take a victory lap around Honor Hold on my Epic Flaming Pony of AWESOME. Because when the servers come up in a little under an hour, my lock butt is going to be online and buying those mats from the vendor and moving towards Dire Maul. Like hell am I going to let this happen again…

Damn that was a busy weekend. When last we left the warlockette, she was 15% into 57 and whimpering about quests and wanting to get to Outlands where all the cool kids are. Saturday brought one Scholo run and a lot of giggling. At one point, I looked over to The Boyfriend and asked, “What’s a really appropriate way for a warlock to ding?”

“I don’t know. What?”

::smile at him and click the mouse, which accepts the quest reward and makes the lockette ding 58:: “By trick or treating.”

Yep, the lockette dinged from racing around and trick or treating. All that yummy xp, and then I went and finished getting all the Azeroth ones to get the achievement. The Hallow’s End theme just kept coming, as she finally stepped through the Dark Portal…

Somewhere along the line, she ended up with a pumpkin on her head. Between the trick or treating ding and the portal crossing with the pumpkin, it all seemed highly appropriate to be playing the lockette this weekend!

Siana and the mage got in on some of the event action, though. Both of them went and got the Headless Horseman quests and killed him over and over. No mount drop, and only one Squashling was seen. I did manage to get the cloth pumpkin helm and one broom, but other than that, nothing that made me go “Wooo!” on them. The main thing was still playing with new specs and seeing how those ran. The Hunter spec I’m pretty happy with. The mage? Oh she’s so getting changed. I’m not happy with hers at all. I’ll do some investigating and see what I can find for her spec change again. Bleh, I hate respecing. :/

The rest of the weekend? Friday night was the Kara run. Rampant silliness and since we were finished so early (wow that went fast), I asked nicely if I could get help taming a core hound. Our hunter class lead had already gone off that evening and gotten one (she’d forgotten I was going to be in Kara, oops!), and named it “LootMe”. The Kara group cheered and we all went to Molten Core. After a little wiggling, reading and “oh crap, kill it. ><", I finally got a core hound of my own. Meet... Fwuffy.

Yes, I said Fwuffy. Back in another game, The Boyfriend and I had a friend who was a druid. He was in wolf form so much, I jokingly told him for Christmas he was getting a collar with the tag “Fwuffy” on it mailed to him. He thought it was a great idea. I never did it, but Fwuffy lives… sorta… again.

After we got done getting Fwuffy, the rest of the raid asked “Hey, that Jenkins title, anyone want to do it?” Everyone thought it was a GRAND idea and we all plowed into the whelp room. We did it twice, since we had one person that had to sit out. It didn’t matter. Everyone giggled too much AOEing everything in sight when the tanks called for the kill. So Siana is now Siana Jenkins. Silly, but it amused me.

The ZA run happened Saturday night, even with the amazing vanishing instances and horrendous lag. I can see why they took the bear mount out. It was the first time we beat all the timers, and we had 14 minutes to spare. o.O There was a lot of giggling and cackling from various people as they tried out new specs. Me? I found that the worry and fear I’d had over Siana is completely gone. Trashed. Destroyed.

Yesterday was more lock leveling, including a run through both sides of Strath, and Siana and the mage hitting up the Headless Horseman again. Today, it’s a short list to work on: finish getting the lockette to 60 (she’s 59.75, sooooo close), get prereqs done, then see if I can get some guildies to help me and another friend get matching epic flaming ponies of dooooooom. If the mage continues being uncomfortable for me to play, even with yet another new spec, I’ll be setting her to one side and trying to figure out if it’s Siana or the lockette that I want to level to 80 first. I’m really enjoying the lockette (shush Breana), but Siana’s my first and my main.

For now. >.>

First things first: Matt, you know how to make a Night Elf blush. Rowr.

Last night, I braved the server wonkiness (well, once it came up, I braved it) and added a new addon to my pile: Livestock. I’ve really enjoyed this, since we have 5 billion mounts and critter pets now at our fingertips (and not stuffed in the bank). It did what it said it would do and did it well. Even better, it was not giving me the addon dance headache. You know the dance: hop online, take two steps, have a addon yell what’s wrong NOW, hop offline, lather, rinse, repeat. -.- Ahhh patch week… /sigh

And like I’d said yesterday, I was thinking about respec’ing Siana back to BM. I love the idea of some of the mechanics with the new MM talents, but after 3 arrows, the mob’s coming to chew on me, and that’s not acceptable. I was an aggro whore. So, out came the BM spec. My current spec? Right here. 51 points into BM, 10 into MM. I’m sure there will be those that will ask “WTF? Why did you put points THERE?!” with some of my choices. My spec. Deal. (Yes, I have a headache right now and I’m cranky, so consider this the apology if you are offended.)

I’d also said yesterday to some of the other bloggers that I was kinda scared to play Siana. Yep, scared. Why, I wasn’t sure. I think it’s from lingering issues with specs, talents, new abilities, and the dreaded viper/hawk dance. The one thing that I LOATHED on Siana prior to 3.0.2 was having to stay in Viper mode or pray that my potion cooldown was done by the time I needed more mana. Or even better, that I’d stacked enough pots to begin with. Now? Well at least on the testing dummies, I was very very VERY pleased with the viper/hawk dance. Less viper, more hawk. Thank god! At last! So I’m actually looking forward to playing her again, and with any luck, I’ll be able to go along on the corehound taming run tonight.

The mage? She’s going to Kara tonight with the regular Friday night crew. New spec, Arcane/frost. We’ll see what happens.

The warlockette? Well she finally dinged 57. She’s a little into 57, not all that much, and I have NO idea where I want to take her to level. EPL? Mostly all dungeon quests left there, and no one to take me. WPL? Again, dungeon quests. Blasted Lands? Dungeon quests. Wait! Silithus? …gawd I hate bugs. /facepalm She’s going to run out of rested shortly, so I really need that experience from questing. Anyone have any brilliant ideas where a warlock and her voidwalker to go to get some xp to get to Outlands?

Matticus over at World of Matticus poked everyone to post their haircuts. And other than spec’ing my hunter, mage and warlock, that’s about all I did: get a haircut on Siana. So, for Matt, here’s Sia’s haircut:

I like to think of it as “feminine with a ready-for-killing” look. Oh the mage also got a haircut and dyejob, but I didn’t take her picture. The gnome? I liked the buns too much. >.>

Was that really all I did? Spec and get a hair cut or two? No not really. I ended up hopping onto the lockette for a few minutes and testing out her spec. Then giggling. A lot. To the point of concerning my household. I checked some other stuff and found out that I’m an aggro whore, even with a tank pet. Sooooo I’ll prolly be respecing again, at least til I hit 80. ::growl:: Tonight? MAOR WARLOCK! I needz gigglez.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off in the corner trying to get rid of my headache. /sigh

I live on one of the servers that seemed to be borked for most of the evening yesterday. I tried several times to log in over the course of 5 hours and finally gave up. However this morning, everything was working muuuuch better. So where do I stand now?

Siana’s in Stormwind, admiring her new haircut. Me, I’m thanking god that most of her addons seem to be working correctly. There’s a couple that I need to finish poking and double check on versions of, but otherwise, okay. Once I kill a couple of things with her and make sure everything’s okay, then I’ll copy her preferences over to the other characters. Spec? No fricken clue, but I’m leaning towards the MM spec I have sitting around. I just don’t feel the call for an exotic like everyone else seems to have. We’ll see how cranky I am by the time I get logged in.

My mage is probably going to be arcane/frost spec and will also be getting a haircut, although hers is going to be a bit more drastic. She’s also getting a dye job. I’d created her as a frost mage in mind for end game, and thus she had white hair. On the beta servers, I played around with black hair on her and I like it a lot better. Dye job, here she comes!

My lockette… oh my lockette. Haircut? Not sure. She’ll prolly wander over there and check it out. Spec? I’m torn between staying with affliction or trying out demonology. Since affliction’s a known element, I’ll prolly end up staying with that.

And now to go home and see if I can beat those addons into submission then actually get to play!

What’s been YOUR mess to deal with because of the patch?

That’s right, it’s patch day! Everyone rejoice! For today is the day all of your hard-crafted, slaved-over talent specs go up in smoke! Oh and those addons that you used to make that uber UI? TOAST! Welcome to the joys of server crashing and lag city, population YOU!

::cough::

Okay so I might be a little “meh” on patch days. I’m actually not that bitter/upset/angtsy about them as it may look. My feelings on this patch are decidedly mixed. I’m not sure about my main, my hunter, anymore. I’m not sure if it’s just me hitting the end of my “end-game” with her or something else. My mage? Eh, I’m a bit more interested in her, but not “Wooooo! MAGE!”

And then there’s my warlockette. Her? I’m irked at the servers for being down so that I can’t work on her. Yes, I’m mildly obsessed with leveling her. Right now, I’m trying to convince myself it’s a good thing they’re down, so she’ll have some rested xp on her when I log in tonight to fight with addon replacements. Friday morning she was level 51 and then got a lovely headache from hell, so it was a short grind day (not to mention, I missed out on the roundtable I’d promised a certain dwarf I’d be there for). I worked Saturday, then came home to a WoW that ate itself, requiring a reinstall. Sunday was mostly repairs to addons that will still get replaced tonight. Yesterday was a day off, so I worked my little gnome butt off. Result? I’m now lvl 56, and about 15% from 57. /dies

But like has been pointed out by most of the WoW-blogging planet, it’s patch day. And this patch is bringing an overhaul of every single class out there, complete with new talents and a total rethinking of a lot of specs. I have specs plotted out for the hunter (3 of them), the mage (only 2), and the lockette (a whole 1). But am I really excited about any of them? Not this time, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Ah well, I’m sure once the weekend hits and I have some time to REALLY play with things, I’ll be standing on a mountaintop somewhere yelling “I LOVE THIS GAME!” as loud as I can.

As a side note, Blizz? Love the info we got from the con, and love what you’re doing with your IPs. But I don’t suppose you could let loose some more info about classes for Diablo 3 or possibly a release date? Pls? You know, just to tide me over til Lich King’s out… >.>

Okay no idea where that title came from, other than me thinking of missing time, and memories of The Muppet Show. >.>

I managed to go poof for a while. Blame it on trying to not get sick, the weather, allergies, and plain ol’ blahs. I started thinking about everything that I “needed” to do to prep for Wrath and, well, came to a screeching halt. Granted, I still went on Friday’s Kara run with the other guild on my mage and had a blast.

Saturday’s guild ZA didn’t happen, as 4 of the 10 people weren’t able to make it at the last minute. Two had their power go out as they were prepping and the other two were dealing with a injury from laying a wood floor that involved bleeding and nausea. We all made mutters about our ZA runs getting cursed lately, as we’ve had more trouble with them in the past few weeks than anything else. Phone calls were made and we rescheduled the run for Sunday.

Sunday rolled around and I was tired and admittedly grumpy. I had a lovely headache that wouldn’t die (see allergy comments above) and jsut wanted to sleep. The other hunter was in a similar state. Apparently, so was most of the raid. What happened? Pure carnage. We actually got 3 timers for the first time. Another 6 minutes and we would have made the last timer. The last two bosses were cake after that and we sailed right on through them. Okay, we wiped on Eagle phase of Zul’jin, but we were all so giddy still from the timers we didn’t mind that much.

I’ve played around more in beta, but my heart’s just not in it this time for whatever reason. Granted, Northrend is stunning, what I’ve seen of it. They’ve pulled out all the stops in their art department, cos the landscapes are are some of the prettiest environments I’ve seen in a long while. The detail that’s in some of the models is impressive as all hell. And Sylvanus? Damn… Siana covets her gear and wants to look that badass when she grows up. >.>

But the actual quests? Not so much this time. I don’t know why. I guess with Outland, there was this storyline that took you up to it. There was the quest that happened right before the gate opening, with tons of mobs pouring out of the gate and people questing to kill them to get a special tabard. It was fun insane chaos and on a PvE realm, there were a bunch of people that accidentally flagged PvP from shooting/attacking/nuking an opposing faction player who stepped in the wrong spot at the wrong time. I know I got killed a couple of times and leapt right back into the fray giggling the whole time as a Tauren kept apologizing to me through emotes. And I did the same to the Undead that I shot by accident. Good times, good times.

This time, I guess I missed any quest that was the impetus to go to Northrend. I’ve not seen anything that looked like a call to arms for people to go. It’s just been boom there’s the boat, have fun kids. So it leads me to this: WHY?! Seriously, from a story line, my character’s sitting nice and happy in Shattrath in Outlands, farming away at dailies. Suddenly, there’s no one in Shatt anymore. She asks where everyone went to and they all say “Northrend! Wooo!” She asks why and they all say “No clue! Northrend! Woooo!” Yes there’s leveling, new areas, and new things to kill. But WHY? Is there a quest or going to be a quest where Arthas sends a memo to all the major cities saying “Nyahhhhh! You can’t get meeeee! Mwahahhaha! /fart” that gets everyone riled up to build ports to go visit Northrend? Maybe the Red Dragonflight landing in the middle of Stormwind and knocking on the castle gates? “Excuse me, we have a neighbor up north that’s making life difficult for us. Seems to be a relation of yours. Can you come take care of him pls kthxbai.” On the Horde side, did Sylvanus get a postcard from Arthas saying “Hai! Wish u were here! Mmmmmmwah! ::kissyface::” and got ticked he was trying to take liberties with her undead self again?

Inquiring minds want to know!

To Doom List:
1. Farm $$ on hunter and mage to be 1k gold on each. (GD dailies… /mutter)
2. Level Lockette to 70
3. Get Lockette into at least 1 Kara run before expansion
4. Try to not go (any more) insane FAIL EPIC FAIL

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::