I can do alts, me

ICC run in pictures

2011-11-15T10:25:00.000+01:00

Last night, because there were no normal raids scheduled this week.. I decided to lead an ICC raid for anyone who still wanted achies for the mount...

Here is how it went.. in pictures.. because words just fail me.

Lady Deathwhisper


I think we may have left a few too many angry cultists alive....

Gunship Battle: Aka Priests are evil bastards

At least I wasn`t the only one killed like that...

Rotface: Dances with Oozes

Get Jiggy with your Ooze, dammit :P

Professor Putricide

WAHHH! I am LOST.. I can`t find my way out of the rooom *blush*

Sindragosa

D'oh

(ps, fab warrior gnome picture is from here - http://herachann.deviantart.com/art/Cute-Gnome-Warrior-164247493 - I love it)

The Lich King

WAH! I`m TINY

We had lots of fun and were 99.9% successful. :D

I wasn`t going to mention it but...

2011-11-11T11:07:00.000+01:00

So, I didn`t have to tank the last raid, but in preparation I *gasp* got rid of my healing spec, got one bear spec, and one cat bear spec, because it seemed to me that the last couple of raids if I`d had a bit more survivability we´d have got a kill that we missed because I got squished.

Anyway we were a boss kill into the raid, when one of the tank`s whole network went down, and a quick call to the ISP said it could be up to 3 hours before it was fixed - typical right.

So I made Koch log in and dps.

We were about to do the 2 bosses in Firelands that only require 1 tank, so all was well.
Anyway.. we`re fighting Baleroc, and very early into the fight the tank gets squished, and we`ve already used our battleres because the noobie warrior (yeah yeah, it was his first time seeing the fight, and my tactics might have gone something along the lines of stand by the purple thing when it`s your turn, and move before you die)..
so whee.. I went bare and tanked the rest of it.

Koch after that fight is checking recount, because he doesn`t raid much he has no idea what his dps was like.. and sees me near the bottom of the dps.. `
At this point I`m yelling in our secret channel "I can totally tank, RAWR"
He has a lightbulb moment and says "Oh.. you were tanking..I wasn`t going to mention it, but I thought your dps was a bit crap".
GRRRR
I was tanking beautifully and NOONE NOTICED.

On Ryolith I did the most STUPID THING EVER.. and volunteered to steer. I have mentioned one or twenty times that I CANNOT TELL LEFT FROM RIGHT.
So, I turned my headset to voice activation.. (because I had my voice on my laptop, and ptt is a pita) beeeg mistake.. I giggle.. a lot.. and give Koch hints like "don`t worry about moving here, the healers will heal you through it" .. oops sorry healers..
anyway..
After steering Ryolith through the group 3 times in the first attempt.. I like to think I got the hang of it in the second because we won. If I am honest, I think that the melee dps being able to think for themselves is actually what got us through it.

Now all I have to do is be able to spot orange circles on an orange web, and I think I`ll have cracked the spider thingy too...

Was a lot of fun anyway.

Fun and not fun

2011-10-27T01:36:00.000+02:00

I can't sleep, and so I'm going to ramble in the hopes that I'm boring enough that I'll end this post, with my head on my desk, snoozing.

Beru's latest post has been very much on my mind. I have the utmost respect for Beru and her capabilities, and with my recent WoW break I've not really raided enough in Firelands to really have seen the frustration that she's currently facing. But Beru is one of the very few people who's word I will take for it.
400-500 pulls to kill one boss, no matter how heroic or epic he is, would not be fun for me. But I'm really not dedicated or interested enough in being cutting edge to ever do that. To be frank, if I had to spend much more than a month (raiding once per week) wiping on a single boss encounter, I'd be pretty fed up of it by then.
Saying that - I would put the work in, but then it is work, not fun.

Call me casual, or whatever really, I don't care, I respect that it is fun for other people, and I am cheering them on, but that would just not be fun for me.

Fun seems very subjective.. I know that I enjoy doing an encounter on every class and role there is because I like to use the things that make a class unique, and that makes it different for me.. whereas other people find that once they have killed a boss on one character, that is it for them.

I do enjoy raiding. I love working with people as a team, and hearing everyone happy that we killed something. And I do like learning new encounters.

I've just had a very bad week with depression and not logged into game at all. I logged back in today and immediately got ninja'd to go and kill some elite mob.. And it again made me think that it's the people that make the game for me. Yes of course I will fly half way across the world for one of your madcap schemes. Why on earth not :)

I've weirdly signed myself up to tank next raid, and so I decided that the best way to get my fingers moving into the right places automatically, was to do some content that wouldn't kill me.
So, I've spent the last couple of weeks soloing trash in ICC, and then pulling in a friendly shaman to help me with Marrowgar. I started duoing Black Temple with a shadowpriest, only to have 5 of us by the end because people wanted to come along for the *fun*. And it was fun.

Cyclone totems.. have to love them :/

The shadowpriest _swore_ that he couldn't get me out because he was also cycloned.
But I have my doubts, especially given the massive cackling at the floating bear.

We four-manned Naxx just for the luls, and that was also a massive amount of fun. Especially when we discovered that Instructor Razuvious still shouldn't be tanked by a non-tank *splat* :)

Today I ran through Kara pulling about a gazillion pieces of trash at once because I could.. and that was also fun.

I think those are things that Rift got right.. I enjoyed running up to a boss with a load of other people, not worrying exactly where my feet were placed every second, and hitting it until it went splat. It's vaguely satisfying.

I'm sure this has been debated more intelligently or not elsewhere, but I think because I like my fun spontaneous and unplanned (ooer :P) - and I guess we're back to Stubborn's MBTI analysis - doing random stuff on the spur of the moment is more fun to me than queuing up night after night to go through the motions of the night before, hoping for a breakthrough.

Bah, still not asleep.

Because I can't be bothered to read through a tonne of crap about MoP..

2011-10-25T10:49:00.000+02:00

Did they say anything about extra character slots per server so that you can have one of everything _and_ a monk??

I have suspected in the past that they might make extra server slots buyable..

And yes, of _course_ I am going to play a panda.. they are totally uncool but hey, I was never one of the cool kids :P

No contest...

2011-10-22T13:28:00.000+02:00

Koch's said pretty much what I think here.

But really..

???

See you on the dark side.

How to play a LOTRO hunter

2011-10-16T22:38:00.001+02:00

You will need

1 x level 20 or higher hunter
1 x level 20 or higher sacrificial hunter buddy
Lots x fire oil

Step 1: Load up with fire oil

Step 2: Wait til night (or play somewhere remotely dark)

Step 3: Fully load up your focus

Step 4: Send your sacrificial hunter buddy running flailing through the hills, waving arms and screaming like a girl, collecting up as many things to kill as is humanly possible

Step 5: Use Rain of Arrows skill - preferably on one of the things that is following him, and preferably before he dies (the latter is optional)

Step 6: You will now have aggro on everything in the vicinity, meaning your sacrificial hunter can now use Rain of Arrows

It's very pretty.

And moderately effective.

If you're wussy and boring, you can also use traps

Two years on...

2011-10-13T18:43:00.000+02:00

I sometimes can't believe that it's been two whole years since I started this blog.

Last year I celebrated keeping something up that I really didn't expect to.

This year, I thought I'd reflect a bit.

I feel like I've come full circle. I'm back on Aszune, with the old guild, raiding once or, more accurately, twice a week, and levelling alts.

There have been a lot of ups and downs this year. It started off really well. I had a lot of fun making up new addons (and notice Rift totally stole my addon idea!) and pets.

I started tanking proper.. and enjoyed it... despite some bizarre pugs.

I uncovered a sinister plot to make gnomes feel short...

On a more serious note, I lost a friend. I've lost two very young friends that I met via WoW to cancer this year, and it's broken my heart and been very hard to deal with. Even now I well up and struggle to talk about it. I keep finding things in game that remind me - and I wouldn't want it any other way. They were both very brave young men, who were extremely generous, all about living life to the full, and lots of fun. Edk would always try to make me laugh - usually by sending me pictures of his latest fancy dress creation. When Erc told me the cancer was back and he was dying the first thing he did was try and reassure _me_. I miss Erc and Edk. They were both really special people.

I've had people piss me off, but fortunately I could laugh at it.

And then I got the title I'd always wanted...

Things went sour in the raiding guild... and then I went back and tried to help

Discovered that there is a use for wild mushrooms afterall and organised some fishing fun.

Then I had a really bad patch with my Depression. Got very fed up with the WoW Blogging scene..

And took a bit of a break from blogging and WoW.

But things have changed, and I think I've learned a lot in the last year.

I found out that achieving something is great... but that I want it to be with the people I care about.

I've learned to chillax a bit... and I've grown a skin. I used to be afraid of conflict, and I realise now that was in part due to my Depression.
I think I've been really surprised at the number of times over the last year that I've asserted myself, and more so that the other person has generally stood down.
Of course, it always helps knowing that you've got someone in your corner who will back you up unfailingly.

I've tried to be a bit more tolerant where there has been a personality clash. I've stopped making up competitions with other people - I'm happy with the person I am, the player I am, and the achievements I've had in game and in life. *Letting go* of that was the thing that improved my enjoyment of gaming.

I've also learned that it's ok to reach out to people.. that sometimes they will slap you down, hurt you or ignore you.. but the times when you can breakthrough and make a friend, or a difference in someone's life make it worth it.

I've embraced myself. No longer do I aspire to be a tall slender elf. I'm happy being a dwarf, a gnome, a hobbit. That's who I am.

I've tried new things... I've even written about my cutest gnomeling and her adventures. And while I'm _not_ a writer, I've enjoyed the experience of keeping her *diary* immensely. It's given me a lot of pleasure.

I've learned what I _really_ want out of a game. I now know what's important to me, and what makes me _want_ to play something.
I want a real character, in a beautiful world, and I want to share that with people who are important to me.

Not a lot more to say so.. *hands cake around*

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 17 – Your favourite spot (in game or outside it)

2011-10-08T00:53:00.000+02:00

This is tricky for me.. I have a few favorite spots though, so I'll share a couple.

Borean Tundra - I love the geysers.. the reflections.. the sky

I'm a cow at heart.. I love all of Mulgore

(screenie taken from here - http://www.adamroulston.ca/wowscrnshots/index.php)
and more recently, I've grown to love Desolace

and this part of Uldum.. I hover here for hours

I could go on and on and on really. I have a gazillion screenshots which I need to get around to organising. I have so many favorite places, and who I'm playing and the mood I'm in means that these change all the time :)

and in real life:

Milford Sound area, New Zealand - I dubbed it the most beautiful place in the world. Sadly I don't have any of my own photographs anymore so I've stolen one off ze interwebs.

Funchal, Madeira - I love the Casino, particularly because someone came up to me and gave me a flower that matched the colour of my dress and told me I was just as beautiful last time I was there (easily flattered much? :P), but I also particularly love the harbour, the atmosphere, the pace, and the food, and the whole Island, again, I don't have my own photographs anymore.

Bruges, Belgium - I don't just love it for the beer and chocolate.. why oh why did I leave all my photographs behind :( I loved to just sit in the market square with a beer, and just _be_. Bruges is _really_ touristy.. but it seems so fitting.

My home town.. particularly the Cathedral as I used to spend a lot of time there.. and I find the grounds very restful.. and everytime I see it in the distance I know I am on my way home.

My feet are just too itchy to have just one favorite spot :)

Having a lav (a)

2011-10-04T00:44:00.000+02:00

I've been enticed back into raiding.. very gently and casually... and erm.. interestingly enough as a KITTEH. Which I've enjoyed because it's something I've not done before.. I'm not yet as comfortable as I'd like to be.. but I'm really enjoying the challenge of getting up to speed quickly.

But it's been fun.

The reason I wanted to mention it was because this evening during the raid I had a whisper from someone else in the group, that I'm ashamed to say I don't really know well at all .. and as someone who prides herself on knowing her guildies I feel a bit bad that I don't know a single fact about them.. apart from the class they play.

Anyway, the whisper was concerning something to do with the raid.. but it got followed up with *I'm singing Guns & Roses now because Issy makes me think Izzy*
Which, loving G&R, I couldn't fault :P

And as what I'd had in my head at the time was a bastardised version of Loch Lomond - "You take the left foot and I'll take the right foot, and I'll be in Lava befooooore you".. and told him so.. it was only an improvement.

The conversation progressed, and he promised to jump in the lava if we downed the boss. Which we did :) And he duly jumped :D *Issy does evil cackle*

The thing that stood out in my head though, was a line from him, "I'm so glad you joined the raid group. It's so much more fun with you around".

That really touched me, and it made me think again of Stubborn's posts about how people behave towards each other.

We might not think these things need saying, but they can make so much difference.

A minor Glitch

2011-10-01T19:53:00.000+02:00

Ok, so Tobold got me curious again, and I tried Glitch.

It's totally totally adorable.

The character creation is just so so cute.

This is me :

And check out my dirndl.. I'm totally down with the Bavarian thing.

It all seems to be going well.. I'm kind of playing it at the same time as WoW and UO (don't ask), and so my energy gets dangerously low because I forget I'm logged in.

It is fun, and silly, and very very cute :) People seem to be bimbling around as cluelessly as me.

It was all going well... until I accidently sacrificed my teddy bear to the gods.

WOES!

I can no longer kiss and hug people. (I seem to have also sacrificed my lips at the same time as my teddy bear).

It's awful. I see someone, they hug and kiss me.. and I've had to resort to giving them BEANS in return.

Oh the shame.

I actually _meant_ to sacrifice my captured piglet, as they are worth quite a bit of xp and favour.
I'm so hardcore.

:P

/still mourning the loss of teddy bear

I see circles

2011-09-27T18:42:00.000+02:00

I'm feeling a bit confused and headachy, with a lot of thoughts buzzing round my head, some related to my current guild, some to Stubborn's latest post, and these are my attempts to sort it out.

I'll start at the beginning.

Koch and I have guilded together 9/10 times. However the way we see a guild and our approach to it is completely different.

I see a guild like this.

Koch sees a guild like this

When I am in a guild, I feel like I have a responsibility to behave well, interact and get to know to some extent, all of them. Even the 1% that I truly detest.

Koch has a bunch of people he likes, and everyone else can basically go fuck themselves if he doesn't like them, or get marginally ignored if he's ambivalent about them.

When I'm in a guild, I think that I can be relied upon to know the mood of the guild, and the current issues.

Koch is generally oblivious, unless I tell him, and then he goes *oh yeah*.

We both deal with problems in a guild in a different way. He'll ignore them, or walk away. I'll generally either start hiding somewhere else, or erm.. try and fix them.

Koch rarely is stressed by anything that happens in a guild.

I'm constantly stressed by it.

I am aware that I've made Koch sound like evil bastard from hell.. and erm.. that's not true, he is generally a popular person in guilds, and I rather like him. When he isn't stealing my cookies.

I'm trying to work out _where_ my stresses come from.

The first time I ever got stressed by a guild was the incredibly vile reaction to my breaking up with Pillock!bf and the subsequent bullying. I was very invested in the guild and the people in it at the time, so this really hurt.

I went and hid on Terenas and Quel'Thalas, and joined guilds there, but never got involved in the running of them. Just had non-stressful fun.

When I went back to WoW and started again on Lightbringer, I fell into another random guild by accident. In my first few weeks, I was online in guild and there were rarely officers on during the day. We had a new person join, who unbeknownst to me was an officer alt, so I treated him like I would any new character, offered him bags, told him a little about the guild, generally tried to make him feel welcome. Anyway, next thing I know I'm an officer. Again it was all fine, until the GM sort of stopped doing anything. So then I pushed for stuff to get done. I was also pregnant at the time, and looking back, I probably was snappier with people than I intended. I'm not sure. Anyway, the guild started raiding for the first time in its history, and things all pretty much went to shit. At the same time, a friend lured us back to Aszune, and to be honest, I was glad to get away from the leadership again.

A few years later, when someone I really couldn't stand to be around was invited into that guild, my first reaction was to go and hide. Fortunately I picked Argent Dawn to hide on, and found Tam, and had the best time ever in WoW.
When SAN happened.. I was really happy at first.. but then the people I wanted to be around were around less.
Things happened again which stressed me out, and so I moved yet again. This time to Alonsus.
Initially I was really happy, the guild leadership seemed really well in control, I was made to feel very welcome, I didn't have to _do_ anything. I could just show up and play. It was great.
Then of course with the slack in raiding with Cataclysm, all that went to shit.
Trying to fix it, and keep the guild going and raiding, stressed me out enormously. I was extremely ill with Depression for quite a while afterwards.

Anyway, back to the present. Because I've been online in WoW rather more than I intended, I picked up an issue that none of the officers seem to have noticed because they're rarely online. TK is not a guild that needs officering really - there are rarely problems, and the only real duties they have are to sort out the guild bank, and do guild invites. Anyway, I raised the issue, and basically have received the answer that *they don't think it's a problem*, *_they_ haven't noticed it*, and essentially that they would prefer to run the guild via the forums. Which, erm.. basically only officers and a couple of other people use. Anyway, this is really stressing me out, partially because I don't feel believed, but I think the crux of the matter is that I don't feel empowered. I've tried to fix it, and I've hit a brick wall.
Just for the record, it is a very minor issue, and I only mention it to illustrate because I have been thinking more widely about stress, and what causes it, in guilds. I am currently very happy in guild, the atmosphere is lovely, and I'm very glad to be back there. More on that soon :)

I don't want to be an officer in a guild again ever. I think people with Depression should be very careful about what they expose themselves to. But I hate not being able to fix things.

I don't know why I feel so frustrated that I can't do things about other people's problems.

I totally blame Stubborn for this :) He has me wondering if I'm on a crusade to defend the unworthy again :)

Too soon.. qq?

2011-09-13T09:41:00.000+02:00

I just read the following link http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3123319589 about the forthcoming nerfs to the Firelands raid. The universal response to this on my guild forums was *crap* :(

I'm all for people getting to see fights... but I do actually feel for those people who only raid once a week, who have been disrupted by summer holidays, and who would actually like to prove that given a bit of time they are capable of downing bosses - on _their_ schedule. Not Blizzard's.

At least with ICC the *nerf* was optional.

And giving one week's notice? Pathetic. Sadly not everyone is 14 and at home all afternoon, with no evening plans.

I'm not actually raiding atm, so I'm surprised that I'm as annoyed about this as I am.

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 16 – Things you miss (post Cataclysm)

2011-09-12T08:45:00.000+02:00

If I'm honest.. the thing I miss most in WoW since Cataclysm is my favorite levelling buddy. It's not the same without him.

However a few other things that I miss..

1. Loch Modan
My dorf gurls always felt at home here.. it was the place where I could most be found, when I'd parked myself to just chat.
The draining of the Loch is one of the things that genuinely shook me. It was when I first saw it after the shattering that I realised my world had changed forever. It actually affected me. A bit of Stormwind crumbled away, meh.. My precious Loch dried up.. *sobs*. I can barely look at it these days.

2. Orgrimmar
I _love_ what they did with Orgrimmar. But I can't find my way around it any more. And jeez is it ever a long walk around for someone without a mount.

3. Population
I loved the city of Dalaran, and it saddens me to see it empty. Especially as the entire population that used to hang round Dalaran can now be found between the steps of Stormwind bank and the AH. Mostly hovering on top of the nearest mailbox with the largest mount they can find.

I've pretty much accepted the world as it is. I approve of the new quest chains - even if they do go grey too quickly. But I've not yet covered all of the world since it shattered. I'm pretty sure there are going to be more things missing which give me pangs.

Building a Mystery

2011-09-09T18:14:00.000+02:00

I was chatting with Syl today and, amongst the gossip and ranting :P, we were talking about the person behind the blogger, and the fact that I talk like a Hobbit came up again.

Because Syl said that made her curious to hear me, I have sort of been thinking about it all day.

I'm always kind of intrigued by the person behind the blog.. and I will admit to curiosity.. so if someone I'm interested in is doing a podcast, or has posted a photo of themselves, I'll generally toddle along for a look.

This has led to giggles and gasps on occasion.. like Klep doesn't talk like a troll.. I was gutted.
Erm.. I still love him to bits, but a bit of the shine was rubbed off.
On the flip side, in her video guides, Beru sounds exactly like she's supposed to sound, and that made me warm to her even more.

I just am really curious as to whether people want to see what the Blog owner looks like, and hear their voice, or whether they prefer to keep the mystery intact.

I do like the mystery, but I'm afraid curiosity always bests me.

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 15 – Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it

2011-09-09T10:21:00.000+02:00

I decided to skip Day 13 and Day 14, because I've covered the people I admire so many times already, and LOADS of things upset me, and I prefer writing about them at the moment I am upset so as to get it out of my system.

So, my wallpaper...

Currently it's this:

Prior to that it was this:

Basically I use a screenie I like from a game I'm currently playing..
They don't usually have characters in, but they generally embody the game.

I also switch depending on mood. I try and keep the background as calming as possible.

Generally as soon as I get bored, I put a new one up.. but I don't really see a lot of my
background as I always have a game or a gazillion windows open.

Issy wants her MMO to herself

2011-09-04T16:56:00.000+02:00

When I first started playing MMOs, I met lots and lots of new people.. by grouping for quests, doing instances, or even from finding someone funny in general or trade chats and pinging them. I've stayed in touch with a few of them.. but one of the big draws for me was always meeting new and interesting people.

The guild I've gone back to now is one full of people I enjoy playing with, who will laugh and tease each other, and it's all good natured, because you know that despite all the banter, everyone of them would give you their last Rolo (or enchanting mats).

What I've just realised however, is that WoW is the _only_ game I've played where people have genuinely upset me or made me feel bad.
I'm not talking about my guild. I'm talking about Joe Random in battlegrounds, in PUGs, and in world chats.
People seem very quick to point the finger and criticise.. and while I know that it's probably a matter of insecurity, and that the easiest way of making yourself look good is to put someone else down.. it can still sting a bit. And knock confidence.

This sort of came to a head today, when I absentmindedly signed my baby druid up for an instance, not realising she still had *tank* up. And while I'm quite capable of tanking, and have tanked, before I'd even attacked anything I got *why are you tanking at lvl 18*, *you only have x health* and *O.o*. So I just buggered off, yes, a little because they stung me, but mostly because I don't want to play with people who start off with such a negative attitude.

It's something I've not come across in any other game. Maybe it's just because WoW is bigger, and thus there are proportionally more arseholes around.

But I think that if I do continue to play WoW, I'll be being very insular and staying within my guild as much as possible.

Which is a shame.

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 12 – A usual day in your life/online time

2011-09-02T15:47:00.000+02:00

Well, on a normal day, I reluctantly get out of bed, get ready and do a round trip of 6km on the bicycle to drop my son at Kindergarten.

I get back home, make some breakfast, and fire the PC up.

First things I open are my chat clients.. and yes, I'm an introvert, but there are a couple of people I can stand to have around me all day without feeling exhausted :P

Next up is my crappy crossword. I don't feel like the day has started until I've groaned at the clues.

I then go through the forums of all the guilds I'm members of, chipping in if I feel like it. I never read official forums to anything, I just generally find they're full of wankers, jerks or trolls.. Besides, if there's anything of note (and this applies to the entire internet, not just forums) someone will mention it to me so I don't have to sift through piles of crap myself.

Then I open my blog up, and read through the latest posts in my links.

I then have to make sure I'm ahead of all my Facebook friends in Bejeweled Blitz by a margin of at least 100,000. (Moi, competitive much?)

Depending on the time, I might then open something like WoW and do a couple of daily quests, or a quick dungeon in DDO, or bimble around in LOTRO.

Then I have to do another 6km round trip on the bicycle to fetch the little un. I know 6km isn't much, but I am unfit dammit.. this is the most exercise I've ever done in my life.

We have lunch.. and yes, sometimes that consists of pootling out to one of the 6 nearby bakeries for cakes or pastries..

Afternoons are interesting. The little un and I do drawing, reading, making monsters out of play doh, playing Crocodile v Captain Hook, or Crocodile v Shark, then he's allowed his computer on for a bit, and his favorite websites are Nickjr.com, Disney Junior - and he is great at the games and activities, and youtube, where his current favorite videos are this one, and this one.

In between doing all that, I'm usually logged into one game or another giving it about 20% of my attention. I die a lot.

I'll sometimes watch a film, or an episode of a series instead.
As it's now X Factor UK season, I'll now be trying to watch as much of that as possible.
Speaking of X Factor, I'm loving the new panel. I was very much a Dannii fan, but I think the new panel gels really well together. Also, I'll out myself as having been a closet Gary Barlow fan.. I have 100s of unsent letters to him from my youth :P

In the evenings, add a cocktail, or a glass of wine or beer, into the mix, and rinse, repeat, really.

What game I play, and which character I log in, are really dependent on mood at the time.. and that is infinitely variable :)

Of course that's all just a normal day, you'll have to wait for my memoirs to read about me being an underworld spy, or winning the races at Saratoga...

Sometimes I like to run like this

2011-09-02T11:10:00.001+02:00

Phoebe: Well, I didn't get embarrassed running next to Miss (panting). But no, okay. No, no, I can see why running with me would be embarrassing to you. Yeah, okay. You're uptight.

Rachel: I-I am not uptight—Hey-hey-hey-oh-oh! Listen, I am not uptight, man.

Phoebe: That's okay Rachel. I'm not judging you; that's just who you are. Me. I'm more free y'know? I run like I did when I was a kid, cause that's the only way it's fun. Y'know, I mean didn’t you ever run so fast you thought your legs were gonna fall off? Y'know, like when you were like running towards the swings or running away from Satan? (Rachel looks confused) The neighbor's dog.

My little mage hit 85 last night, and rather than twink her to high heaven and start running heroics, I thought I'd take some of Shintar's advice and run some normal instances.

I must admit I'm rather lazy on my mage.. I have Arcane Blast bound to left click, and Arcane Missiles bound to right click, and I just mouseover the tank's target, sit back, flail around happily and enjoy. It's fun.. I don't care about optimising, I don't care about doing the most damage, I am just a bouncy gnome and enjoying it.

So yesterday, I got rather annoyed when out of nowhere this resto druid in my PUG started a running commentary on my playing and telling me everything I was doing wrong.
For instance *If you have more mana, you do more damage* - *What, really? because you know I'm totally incapable of reading the accompanying text to my abilities.*
This went on a while, and they eventually told me that their main is an Arcane Mage. Right, well, mine is a resto druid, and I didn't pick you up on letting people die.

I should probably explain, that I started in a rather peeved frame of mind, as the tank pulled after I'd just started my mana cakes summon, and also that I was at the top of the damage meter.

But yes, I was playing lazily, and having fun doing it.

I don't really have much of a point other than, as long as I'm not hurting anyone else, I will play how I fucking well like, and enjoy it. So don't rain on my parade.

The Good, the Bad, and the downright Dippy...

2011-08-27T18:27:00.001+02:00

Yesterday, I had to open a GM ticket in WoW because I was playing my little mage, and yet again, my Battlemaiden chain in Vashj'ir bugged and my quest giver had gone AWOL.

I was really pleased with how quickly the GM responded and fixed it, I wasn't in game at the time - but I like the new email updates.

And I thought it was really sweet that she'd taken the time to give it the personal touch

For the sight impaired, she basically told me someone had sent me a *huggle* while she was logged in as me.

I carried on merrily, finishing Vashj'ir, moving onto Deepholm, doing 2 or 3 instances... when I noticed at some point that my XP bar had disappeared.
As I had *hide XP bar when in a vehicle* checked in Bartender, I assumed that somewhere along the line I had done some *bad touching*.

It got to the point late on this afternoon where I was thinking *come on, I know I don't have any heirlooms equipped, but _surely_ I must have got enough XP to have levelled by now???*

So, in a desperate bid to find my XP bar, I disabled one addon after another, copied profiles from all my addons from other characters, and generally tore my hair out.

Then someone in guild suggested jokingly that I might drunkenly have been to the NPC that turns your XP off for a 10g fee.

I was clutching at straws by this time, so got directions to the NPC where you can do that.

I eventually (after a lot of directions) managed to find the NPC, went to talk to him.. and sure enough he offered to turn my XP back on for me!!!

As I'd had no clue where he was, and even when I managed to get to the right room I had to ask which one it was, I am pretty sure that drunk or sober I did not turn my XP off myself.

When someone suggested that maybe Koch had for a *joke*, I said *Nope.. a) he doesn't have my password, and b) he knows I'd fry his balls.*

So, in conclusion, it must have been the GM when she logged into my character.

My first response is WHY???? and the 2nd is *why didn't she turn it back on again?*

And then I'm *I should have checked this sooner*.

Anyway.. I opened up a ticket, but I'm pretty resigned to getting a *we value your custom, nothing we can do, kthxbai*

WAAAAHHHHHHH.

EDIT: I was right.. and to add insult to injury I had to pay 10g to turn my XP back on.

Comfy shoes

2011-08-23T10:37:00.001+02:00

So, I'm playing WoW again, and I've moved back to Aszune.

I spent about 2 hours playing with my UI.. and YAY.. having a completely customisable UI is something I'd really really missed. Of course I had to start from scratch as I'd nothing WoW related saved on my laptop at all, but ho hum :P

I was bimbling about yesterday morning, getting a couple of achievements (World Explorer & Lil Game Hunter), when I got a tell saying *do you still have a healing spec?* and *can you raid with us tonight please, we're a man down*
It must have been too early for me because (after asking Mum for permission :P) I said *sure*.

Anyway, I ended up in the Firelands, and had a really great raid, very casual, very fun..

Like I said to a couple of friends, it was like slipping back into comfy shoes after a night out in killer heels.

It feels pretty good to be home.

EDIT: NOW WITH UI SHOT :)

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws

2011-08-18T16:24:00.000+02:00

Oh, we can have a field day with today's topic :)

Where to start..

oh yes.

1. I am impulsive (and possibly flaky).
For instance, yesterday I decided that I didn't want to go back to Germany quite yet, so I booked an aeroplane home giving me an extra 10 days in the UK.
I'm very spur of the moment and hate planning things.. I'm very much a *go with the flow and see where it takes you* person.
This is all well and good until you're surrounded by people who have their day itemised into time chunks and get upset if they don't know precisely when you will be doing what.

2. I have the most horrible nails in the world.
Beru recently showed a pic of her nails saying they were horrible, well, I'd have killed for them. I would post a picture of mine, but they are seriously vile, they make my sister freak out, and I'd hate to make anyone ill :) I started biting them when I was 7, and no amount of evil tasting polish, attempts to give me something else to do with my hands or anything else has worked. They get worse when I'm stressed, or watching something like the final of The Apprentice :)

3. I have a horrible temper
I've mentioned this before.. I can control it now.. well, I go beetroot red when I'm angry, but I will not raise my fists, or leave drawing pins under your bed sheet where you can't see them :P

I just asked my husband if he would ask me think of some more... and he said *NO! Not after reading 3!!!* and shuftied off again with a slightly panicked expression.

4. I use too many dots
I think I must have been exposed to Barbara Cartland as a child staying with my Nan.. because I do not have a clue where all these dots come from. I've never used them in anything else I've written. (Not that I would ever consider myself a writer, I mean everyone has written shameful love poetry so that doesn't count. :P)

Anyway, that's all you're getting for now. I might have to do a part 2. and 3. and 4.

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites

2011-08-16T12:51:00.000+02:00

I think I've mentioned my WoW blog favorites numerous times - and sadly several of them are no longer in operation..

So instead I'll share a couple of my bookmark tabs I open daily.

These've reduced greatly since I blew my PC up and have been on the laptop:

1. Dictionary.com - I do their crappy crossword every day.. because it's so abysmal I kind of have this compulsion to compare it to the previous day. It's a tad too American for me - I mean, I don't have a clue about which States are where, what their flowers are, and their American football team & baseball stars, but I can generally get the awful clues which leave me enough room to guess. For example, Clue: Head of France, Answer: Tete. GROAN.
I also love their word games - particularly Word Machine, although I fail totally and can never get past about level 27.

2. Historical Lols
These just make me smile :) I like a lot of things like this. My favorites were the German futurist predictions, which just made me regret that I didn't have my own personal flying machine.

3. Damn You Autocorrect is another one which I don't read religiously, but if I find myself at a loose end it's invaluable :)

4. This one was sent to me by a friend to cheer me up, and it totally worked :) Having actually posed with instruments (never naked, my plans for a band calendar where we just posed with our instruments and nothing else on never came to fruition.. I think it was suggesting that the conductor posed with only his baton for coverage that killed it), I understand the difficulty, and what seems like a good idea at the time.. ends up.. well, like this...

5. The same friend sent me this one, and although I'm very reluctant to admit it, I've spent hours here. As a child I was never into dolls or anything, so I'm not quite sure why I enjoy this so much. Possibly for the same reason I spend so long at character creation in games :)

SuperIssy to the rescue... or to firebomb you or something....

This one has the added advantage that there is a dragon creator, which the little un also loves :)

I can't move... can I?

2011-08-11T13:42:00.000+02:00

I literally cannot move. Having had the honour to celebrate the marriage of two friends, and enthusiastically joining in with the Ceilhdh dancing - I literally kicked my shoes off - I ache all over.

I also cried happy tears throughout the entire day - having seen the relationship between two WoW friends develop from "what did your mum say when you told her you were going to visit someone you met online?" to this joyous occasion, made it a very emotional day for me.

It was also an occasion where I met up again with all of the people I loved to play WoW with on Aszune.
As is natural when you haven't seen each other for a long time, you catch up with all the WoW stuff first.
And, I missed it. I suddenly wanted to be back there, deliberately killing the mage in imaginative ways.

It made me think rather a lot.

I've always thought the rule of thumb of guilds (a bit like any social or work gathering really) was that there will be 1 or 2 people you _really_ like, 1 or 2 people you really hate, and the rest you will feel amicably enough towards.

What I realised was that on Aszune, there were 1 or 2 people that I really can't stand, but there are also at least a dozen people that I really love. That I want to spend time with, that I enjoy the company of, that I laugh with. And, possibly most importantly, who have stuck by me through all my dark days of trying to push people away, and who have actively not let me do that. And that's what's made me waver.

While I'm in no hurry to go back to srs raiding, TK on Aszune is a casual guild. I wouldn't have to raid, but I could probably spotfil.

I'm having a massive dilemma, as I am really happy bimbling about in LOTRO and DDO, and waiting patiently for SW:TOR.

But my heart is now saying pick WoW. Go back to your friends.

Off on me hols...

2011-08-02T22:43:00.000+02:00

Off to the UK for a couple of weeks for 2 weddings and an anniversary...

Have fun :)

Silver shoes, I has them! (Not really these)

Some people always take it that one step too far...

2011-08-02T16:15:00.000+02:00

I'm the cute hobbit, my husband is the um.. elf.

I'm a bit surprised the name got passed as when we tried to go for a duo of Pomp and Circumstance, we were told that Circumstance was not a name suitable for Middle Earth.

Go figure.

This is after I tried to make a really podgy hobbit called Elround only to find someone got there before me :D

Metal makes it better... sometimes.

2011-07-31T18:30:00.000+02:00

I am somewhat amused to have just found the Robot Unicorn Attack - Heavy Metal version.

I thought I'd give it a go, because the general rule is anything sounds better if you do it metal style :P

(I totally love this guy btw).

I suck at it.

It's possibly because it's harder to play while your head is involuntarily moving forwards and backwards because it thinks you're still 18 and should be bouncing up and down to the sounds of metal.

So for now, I'll stick to the original version with Erasure because I just sing along to that, rather than actually try and mosh at my desk.

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 09 – Your first blog post

2011-07-30T16:04:00.000+02:00

My first blog post basically just introduced me, where I was playing, and ran through my alts.

I'd never actually read any blogs before I started my own - I think I've said that my husband used to read all of Tam's Sissy Robe & Righteous Orbs posts out to me because blogging wasn't something that I was really aware of.

I think when I started, I only told very trusted friends - Lam, Cam & Tigs - about my blog.
It came as a bit of a shock when I realised other people were looking at it too. Scary :)

I am a bit surprised that I'm still enjoying it this far down the line. I'm not very good at sticking to things.

Guilty as hell

2011-07-29T19:55:00.000+02:00

I've written a few times now about people needing to realise when they take a certain action, it's going to have an effect on the people around them.

When I stopped playing WoW, I knew that I was letting Vengeance down. In particular the GM. I did feel supported in that my decision to quit was for the right reasons, but all the same that guilt remained.

Since I left the GM moved on, and somehow, someone who should never ever have been given any responsibility ended up first an Officer, and then the GM.

The officers forum in that guild contains a lot of posts from me about why he should have been guild kicked, and he ends up running it.

Next thing I know, he has taken roughly 320k of gold from the guild bank, as well as anything of value from there, changed his name, and joined another guild on the server, telling guildies to whisper him if they wanted to go with him. Funnily enough he was *asked to join* the guild of the person who was originally GM when I joined Vengeance.

Well Pirox. As much as I thought you were a terrible person, I always kind of hoped you'd prove me wrong.

This is one of those times I wish I had been wrong. And I'm trying not to feel guilty about leaving the guild in a position where it could happen.

My sincerest thoughts are with Vengeance, and I hope finding out someone you had fun raiding with is such an untrustworthy slime hasn't been too much of a knock.

Race: Half-orc, Alignment: Awful Stupid

2011-07-29T11:55:00.000+02:00

Because I enjoyed my DDO Barbarian half-Orc gurl so much. I also rolled a half-Orc gurl Fighter.
I was a bit put off fighter, by having played one in a NWN2 module, and well, finding it not as interesting to play as other things.. I mean, I didn't seem to have any actual abilities.. so I either hit or missed. And I missed a lot.
But it's actually a tonne of fun, when you play it like a Barbarian in Full plate.

One of the cool things that's happened since the last time I played DDO, is that now - from when you reach the marketplace (level 3 or 4 imo) and onwards - they've created a story arc which runs through a lot of the instances, which makes them that bit more interesting to play.

So last night, I did said story arc on my fighter, because there was this pathetic little rogue who needed something to bash stuff while he concentrated on lock picking, and trap disabling. Me bash gud.

It was all going very well, me bash, he fix traps..

Until I kind of stopped paying attention (only in part due to chatting with a friend on the side), I think it's because I got into a *if it is in front of you bash it* mentality.

So anyway, at one point Koch says something about bash, so I BASHED. And he's omg, what are you doing? *Me bash gud*. */sigh, I said _don't_ bash yet*

So then we came to a room full of treasures, each one of them trapped with either poison, lightening, or something else which I can't remember. Koch moves round the room slowly disabling all the traps, while I follow behind taking all the loot.
*Darn*, he says (there are children present), *I missed one*.
*Nevermind* says I.
And, I continued round the room, picking up treasures.
When POOF! A cloud of poison hits the room. Bang! My strength is reduced by 2 points. Bang! The rogue has only 4 strength left.

*Which part of _I missed one_ didn't you get??*

Oh well, me takes more treasures.

*No! Not that one! That one opens the door to the boss.....*

*Me takes*

*Omg.. I hope you have more than 2 strength left then, because I can't even move*

*Me kills boss*.

So, we get to the treasure chest... and..

Me says, *Why haven't you taken your loot?*

*I only have 2 strength left. That is not enough to be able to pick it up*.

Oops.

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you

2011-07-27T21:04:00.000+02:00

I had a bit of a panic here, as I'm not sure there are 10 things that people don't know about me. Looking back I've admitted quite a bit - from my band geekery, to where I holiday, to my PC addiction.

But I'll try. So in no particular order.

1. I am terrified of crocodiles.
This stems back to my mother dangling me over the crocodile pit at some zoo type thing when I was an infant. She has no memory of it at all, but it frightened the life out of me, and I've never forgotton. It's actually one of my earliest memories.

2. I am a bit of a rock chick/metal head
If you ask me what music I absolutely prefer to hear live, it's a toss up between Rock and Classical.
But I've seen rather a lot of live rock/metal (read every weekend, and some weekday evenings for several years), and spent most of my time in the mosh pits, covered in blood and sweat (not usually my own). I was fortunate that my 2 best friends were larger than average guys, and they used to start slam-dancing to carve a path, so as people frantically got out of their way, I could run down the gap to the front :)

3. I've always worked
My parents didn't give me pocket money, and weren't really in a position to pay for the music and horse riding lessons I so badly wanted. So from the age of 10/11, I've worked so I could have them. My very first job was a *split* paper round with a boy down the road - he was old enough to get one, I wasn't, so I persuaded him to subcontract to me. From then I did anything really, delivering leaflets etc, until I was old enough for a *Saturday* job in the local coop. I did Saturdays, and basically signed myself on for every other hour I could get. Sadly the horse riding went by the wayside, because I was very focused on the music, and wanted to buy my own instruments and things.
I kind of feel a bit weird writing that now, as I'm approaching my 5th year off work, but as kids are more exhausting than a job, I think it's fair enough.

4. I've got a terrible temper
It's horrendous, really. It's taken me years and years to control it. What I hate most about it though, is that it renders me incapable of speech. I'll have this angry retort in my head, and all that comes out is a stutter. I really admire those people who manage to remain articulate while they're seething, while I'm still just grateful I've not run out with fists flying :)

5. Piercings freak me out
Weirdly, I do have my ears pierced - somewhere in my *omg I'm approaching 30, change everything* phase. But, my view on piercings generally is ARGH MUTILATION, GET IT AWAY FROM ME.
I remember being in the lift at work once, with a really gorgeous guy who's hair was in this fabulous mohican, so I looked a bit closer and OMG. I COULD READ THE NOTICES THROUGH THE GINORMOUS HOLES IN HIS EARS. Ahem. Sorry. I understand that I have a completely weird view here, but there it is.

6. I have a very good memory
Sometimes it's a curse, but sometimes it's useful. I did a lot of drama at school, and usually landed the lead part in plays purely because I had the script memorised after reading it a couple of times. And I mean, everyone's part, not just the one I'd happened to read. People tried to catch me out when we read set books at school, by flinging a line at me to see if I knew the next one. I always did. Sadly I've kind of lost that ability - actually, I'm not sure I'm that sad about it, I mean my brain can only hold so much junk. But I do remember things people say, and write, and can find them again if I need to. The downside is if you've written something I don't like, I'll forever remember you for it :P

7. Foods
In the interests of honesty, the way to my heart is through jam doughnuts, pickled onions, and roast dinners, and meat from any animal.. seriously, any kind. I totally draw the line at offal, with the exception of erm.. testicles (yes cooked). I will try anything once. Except maybe insects. If I was a celebrity, I'd rather fall over on my arse trying to dance or ice-skate than go to the jungle :)

8. Clumsiness
I've touched on how clumsy I am a few times. I may not have been explicit enough. I fail at walking.
Elsen would totally not date me (btw, have not heard from Elsen in ages, hope you are ok out there).
I totally identified with Bella in Twilight. Because, when you are as clumsy and have so many *embarrassing* things happen, as I am and do, you do stop getting embarrassed about it, you learn to accept that it's going to happen and try and get out with a tiny shred of dignity. Like when you first meet your future husband at a guild meet and all go to the zoo together, and your bra strap comes undone so you have no choice but to remove your pink lacy bra (I was 30, I went from everything being black to everything being pink (Pilf understands), and put it in your handbag in front of everyone. Or like the time the security gates are closing behind you as you leave a work offsite, only to have one of your shoes come off, and have to hop and kick it through the gates before you get closed in while everyone else on the coach is laughing at you. Seriously does not bother me.

9. Come the revolution.
I'm a decent shot with a gun. An RAF trainer watched me do a shooting scenario, and winced as I shot a guy somewhere painful and then did an air punched *GIRL POWER* yell. Come the revolution, or zomfie invasion, you had better fear me, or hope you're on my side. *nodnod*. I just got Sniper Elite for my Wii so am getting myself back into practice :)

10. I've an escape route for everything.
This might be due to the fact I had to do the same ferry crossing _right_ after the Zeebrugge disaster, but I always have multiple exit routes planned. I have the blueprints of ferries, and layouts of aeroplanes, I notice which windows you can get out of, how far the jump is etc. A very good friend of mine noticed this when we were on a trip together, and I was chanting, window, fire escape or some such, and she said *What would you do if _this_ happened?* And, when I answered immediately, said, *right, if anything goes wrong, I'm following you.*

Whee! I managed 10.

Wow Blogging Challenge - Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name

2011-07-27T05:40:00.000+02:00

I've noticed that I'm posting a little more frequently these days. Well, the truth is that I've had several changes in my medication, which have made a little bit of a difference, a lot of difference actually, it was such a hard effort before to engage myself, write, comment, respond to comments and emails and things, and I'm just feeling so much better in myself at the moment that I'm able again. I'm not completely better, but it's a big step forward.

Anyway, not playing WoW anymore, I'm probably not really entitled to play with the Blogging Challenge, but I'm pretty sure that Saga won't mind :) I'm also hopelessly hopelessly late with it, but better late than never has always been my motto. It has to be when you procrastinate as much as I do.

So, the reason behind my blog's name.

Erm, well, I was very unimaginative I'm afraid. The *I can do alts, me* was just from Brainiac's (awesome programme) *I can do science, me* segment. They have people write in with experiments they'd like to see, and they then film these people doing said experiments.

Said experiments are always kind of.. dumb really. And the people that do them, can't _really_ do science.
I was basically just taking the piss out of myself.

I used Jayceandco in the URL, because, well, because it summed it up and was shorter really.

Laziness ftw.

Remember when you were a noob?

2011-07-26T18:51:00.000+02:00

It's funny going back to DDO, to realise what a noob I was first time round.. you know it never occured to me then to plan a build _completely_ from level 1-10 (I think 10 or 12 was max level when I first started) picking appropriate feats, in order to be able to grab other feats. I mean, at the time, I stuck my head into the D&D manuals, so I wasn't completely vague, but I was still pretty happy go lucky with my selections. Let's be clear though, I still totally rocked. Level 9 bard with high UMD so I could use a wand of resurrection before the cleric was high enough level to cast it :P *Sweeps the bit about letting someone die in the first place under the carpet*.

Now character building is all made pretty simple with tools such as this, and the excellent and amusing suggestions listed here.

And um.. yes, I do have to admit I've probably spent as much time playing in the tool as I have in game :)

I've started to regret that I'll never be a really green noob in any future game that I might play. I know how things work, I can't help but try and optimise, and I have to try and remind myself how much fun I had in WoW when I deliberately forgot about what I knew, and instead started to just run around, shooting stuff, and completing quests by accident. And it was more fun. I think it's a lesson for me that I need to stop myself sometimes, and instead of doing what is the most optimal thing, do the most fun thing. Which at the moment is play my half orc Barbarian gurl. I'm in love. ME BASH GUD.

I recently _have_ come across a completely green noob, someone who has never ever played an MMO before, and I am afraid I laughed rather a lot at his expense, and being the kind, generous person I am, I'm sharing so you can either laugh, or tell me how mean I am.

See, he's trying LOTRO... which I guess is quite a sensible choice for a very new player because of the familiarity of the lore.. even if that is via Viggo Mortenson (Drrrroooooool).

He was recounting that he's playing a hunter, and had engaged a couple of enemies... when South Park came on the TV.. so he frantically looked for the PAUSE button for the game.

Needless to say, he couldn't find it, and thus died.

It just made me laugh so hard. And have a little regret that I'll never do silly little things like that. Ok, I will _totally_ do silly things like that. But I'll _know_ they're silly. And that's kind of sad.

Maybe I can be a bit of a noob in SW:TOR. I has my pre-order (normal edition), and somewhere in my head, Dwism and I are bouncing up and down together in anticipation of its arrival :)

Sometimes you just have to accept that things can't get better

2011-07-24T16:49:00.000+02:00

So I rolled a couple of new characters today in DDO. I wanted a Barbarian, and plumped for half-orc as my race.

I have to admit, my motivation was terrible. See, I just wanted to see if I could make a _pretty_ female half-orc.

I must've spent around 30 minutes at the character creation screen. And when you bear in mind that at any given moment I could tell you exactly how Eyebrow option 3 or Hairstyle option 22 look, you'll have to concede that's quite a bit of time.. even for me.

So, did I succeed? Well, on my first attempt I made what would pass in my books for a pretty hawt dude - as long as you don't mind the tusks, and rawr, who doesn't like tusks, right?

But here we go, this is what I ended up with:

I know my boobs look weird, it's the armor.. honest.

And the obligatory close up:

So, yeah, I ended up pretty happy, and while I wouldn't be chomping at the bit to date me, I wouldn't run screaming either.

But then I had a Eureka moment, and realised all that effort was for naught... because in game, all I see is this:

and I look pretty damn good from the back :)

Epic kills...

2011-07-22T21:52:00.000+02:00

It's not the swing of your axe in an epic battle*

It's not the enemy lying dead at your feet..

It's the 4 year old looking over your shoulder, chanting *Go Mummy, Go Mummy*

*YAAAAAAAY You killed it. Let's kill another one*

It is pretty awesome having your own cheer squad. For _every_ kill.

Then we moved onto moral dilemmas..

*Let's kill MANS instead*

erm.. no, no, we don't kill men.. unless they're evil.

*That man looks evil!! Let's kill him!*

*yes, I was fighting grey bears for convenient screenshots

There is NO German porn here

2011-07-21T20:14:00.000+02:00

So, will whoever it is that keeps searching for

"das blah 4 german porno"

"embarensing"

"opposite of babe magnet"

"tender moment with strapping blood elf"

"*grab my sword* meme" (wtf???)

maybe be a little bit more specific in your search terms in the future :)

Actually... now I think about it.. I might have mentioned those things.. *shuffles off*

The Science of Alting

2011-07-20T20:19:00.000+02:00

I've been thinking a lot about why I play alts as much as I do - again.

It is a deep inherant trait I have - the first thing I did once I had my own WoW account was roll a 2nd character.

I was discussing it with Koch over dinner (Soop nomnom), and we sort of came up with the following pattern for me playing a game.

This can be applied to _any_ MMO I've ever tried (quite a few).

Step 1. Issy has read carefully through all the descriptions, and as much other information as she can get her hands on, and comes up with what she thinks she will enjoy playing most. Favored character 1 is created, and probably looks a little like RL Issy.

Step 2. Issy levels Character 1 exclusively to roughly level 20 - enjoying the new quests, and the exploration.

Step 3. Issy has enjoyed doing that area so much that she wants to do it again. Issy rolls character 2.

Step 4. Issy plays Character 2 through the starter area.

Step 5. Issy rolls 1 of every possible class combination - if she doesn't have enough character slots she buys more.

Step 6. Issy plays each of these classes through the starter area.

Step 7. Issy sorts out all her crafting so that she is completely self sufficient.

Step 8. Issy completely twinks all of her characters with said crafting.

Step 9. Issy reluctantly moves to the next area on one of her characters.. Generally not Character 1.

Step 10. Issy levels 2 characters up - or sometimes up to 8 characters - in parallel.

Koch then proceeded to point out, that - and he didn't think this was possible - that I did _exactly_ the same in Single Player games. Mass Effect for instance. I played through 20 levels as a soldier, and then wanted to try them as an Infiltrator. And then decided I didn't like my hair, so DID IT AGAIN.

I mentioned to Syl, and in another post that I think this is directly related to my personality type.

I've mentioned here before I've done extensive personality type testing, with a lot of input from peers/managers/staff, so I'll share a couple of results.

Belbin Team Roles
My strongest team roles are Shaper, Plant, Specialist and Resource Investigator - the blurb for RI below is probably just about right.

Resource Investigator
The Resource Investigator gives a team a rush of enthusiasm at the start of the project by vigorously pursuing contacts and opportunities. A good Resource Investigator is a maker of possibilities and an excellent networker, but has a tendency to lose momentum towards the end of a project and to forget small details.

For anyone interested in this kind of thing (I'm actually fascinated by it all, even though I've been tested to death), my least preferred roles are Monitor/Evaluator, Implementer and Completer/Finisher, while Teamworker, and Coordinator sit somewhere at average.

Then if you look at my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I come out as an INFP - that's Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perception, although the Feeling part only just comes out ahead, so I always got to look at all the stuff for INTPs too. (T is for Thinking).
I remember having a piece of paper once with jokey meanings on for them, and one of mine read something like
"I must try harder to - oooh look over there!! - focus on one thing."

So, yeah, I basically like to have a lot of pots on the boil. I am _easily_ bored, I need a lot of variety, I have mood swings which make one character/activity preferable to me at that given moment in time.

Interestingly, Koch does rather the opposite of me. He'll start off by playing 5-10 levels of each character, not seeming to favour any, then all of a sudden, one will be his *main* and he'll want to play it exclusively.

I think that playing alts _can_ give you a breadth of knowledge, whereas playing a main _can_ give you the depth. However, if you're someone who is deeply into research, can maintain both. That's what I'm aiming for, anyway.

Why I didn't pick Rift..

2011-07-19T10:35:00.000+02:00

Dwism asked after my last post why I didn't pick Rift as one of my 2 MMOs. That sort of made me step back a bit and have to think about it, because I do all my processing internally, and usually the right answer just pops out.

I didn't answer in the comments field, because I suspected my answer would be long and rambly, so here we go.

First up, I do like Rift very very much. It is very much a WoW lite in my opinion, however I preferred the character customisation.. and female dorfs are teh hawt :P

I was mostly playing a rogue, with 3 souls - the first being Bladedancer/Assassin/Riftstalker - with the Bladedancer and Assassin trees pretty balanced, although I had the 31 point Bladedancer talent. And I loved that, dancing into a group of mobs and swirly twirlying with daggers out. The second soul was pure Assassin for when I wanted uninterrrupted stealth, and the 3rd Soul was bard which I used for pvp and rifts.

One of the things I really loved in Rift was *shock* PvP. I am pretty sure the warfronts were similar to WoW, but what was missing was *l2p you noob, you suck, you no have gud pvp gear*, followed by lots of swearing.. so I felt a lot less self concious pvping.. and what do you know.. turns out I wasn't bad at it - I was always near the top of the favor earned charts.
And it was fun, queues were short, battles were short, people were amusing..

I also loved the invasions.. where you started off just one or two of you killing the invasion boss, and more and more people started turning up, and following each other around to close off the Rifts... it felt pretty epic actually. Same with the World Events - they were fun.

I loved all the races, I played all of them, favoring Kelari (dark elves) at the start, and then falling in love with the cute little dorfs.

See how cute I am!

I also loved the landscape, it is a very pretty game. However, what I _didn't_ like is how linear the questing was. There was absolutely no choice at all if questing is the way you like to level. Basically once you leave the staging area, you do the starter area til level 20, then the next area, then the next are, etc etc.. I got stuck in Gloamwood for about 10 levels on my mage, because she was PvPing so much.. and the first time you do Gloamwood, it's great, really atmospheric, a proper spooky wood complete with spiders and werewolves.. but there is _no_ alternate questing path.
Whereas with WoW, if you did the Barrens on your first character, you could go to Silverpine or something on your 2nd instead, there was no choice like that in Rift.
And being a complete Altoholic, I did Gloamwood about 16 times, and I was just completely fed up of it.

However I think it was less about why I _didn't_ pick Rift, and more about why I _did_ pick the other two games.

DDO was a no-brainer.. the guys I love are all playing again, as sort of a get-together before SW:TOR comes out - and that's _still_ the game I'm waiting for, no matter what anyone else says about it.
Also, DDO was long time my favorite MMO. Like I say, I learned to play in it, learned about healing, learned about cc, learned about my role in a team. The game's gotten easier, and more fun, since I last played - with the addition of henchmen, the early levels are pretty easy. You can still really challenge yourself by setting the difficulty to Elite.
Also, it's F2P. Of course I bought a few extras like the 32 point build. And actually VIP access would probably be worth it.

LOTRO is an interesting one, I just find it very relaxing to play, and it _feels_ like a bigger world, and being a fantasy nut, I've always loved Tolkien's world, and I think it's been done sympathetically.
The quests are fun, the music's nice, the sky is really pretty, in fact all of it is very pretty.
Hobbits are adorable, elves are a bit emo but ok :) The only thing is I will _not_ play a dorf. Which is kind of sad, but erm.. I can't play a girl with a beard.
It might just have come down to the fact that LOTRO was what I was playing _more_ of when I made the decision that one of the games would have to go.
And it's also free (lifetime VIP membership).

So basically, I can have an extra bottle of wine a week with what I'm saving on subscriptions :P

I got completely sidetracked, and I don't even know what this is about anymore...

2011-07-18T15:07:00.000+02:00

I've now cancelled my Rift subscription.. not because I wasn't enjoying it, but because I just really can't keep up with 3 games at once.. I just feel pulled in too many directions, and too many options is not a good thing for someone who wants to do *everything*.

So I'm sticking with my *Epic Flail* guild in DDO, and bimbling about mostly solo in LOTRO.

One of the things I love most about DDO is that there are so many little instances, and each one has a story, from the little Kobold who says *please get all those dogs out of my sewer, but don't kill them*, to the *If you're such a great adventurer then this dungeon should be a piece of cake to you*. It's the sort of game where if I know I've only got half an hour to spare, I can run 3 instances on a little level 3 character, whereas most games by the time I'd got started, I'd barely manage a quest in that time. Although, that may just be a symptom of altoholism - because I have so many characters I have to get back into the skin of the one I picked, and see which quests she's on etc.

I've always said DDO is the game where I really learned to play, and I find the actual character creation and customisation as much fun as playing. The looks of the characters aren't great, but there are so many ways to make them unique. There are lots of suggestions of builds on the official forums - my husband has tested a few of them and found them excellent - but personally I much prefer doing all of that myself.

When I roll a bard (I keep coming back to Bard - it's my favorite class, and yes, I know I'm weird), I have the option of charging forth with my greataxe, or standing at the back singing and occasionally healing, or playing a heavy cc role.. and many more options.
I was pretty heavily disappointed that you can't do that sort of thing in WoW. Or, you can if you don't care.
I mean, in DDO it doesn't matter if your team's unbalanced, or who's getting all the kills.. or, more likely in my team, who grabs all the gems... noone gives a fuck if I'm doing less damage than everyone else, because we're all having fun.

Sadly, I think WoW kind of paved the way for people to be elitist jerks with the armory, and inspection options.. and it's kind of irritated me recently, because I've really enjoyed being anonymous, and not really giving a fuck about squeezing out that last percentage of output..
It made me realise that WoW was actually a large contributing factor to my high stress levels.
I'm not blaming Blizzard for my stress levels - I just think that the environment and expectations - and a lot of the input from the community - were all kind of needless really.

So that's why I've also enjoyed playing with good friends in DDO, and am enjoying LOTRO again.

I say I've been mostly playing LOTRO solo, Koch also dips into it sometimes, but after our escapades last year, I won't play with him til I reach level 20 unscathed :P

Whereas in DDO it's pretty intensely instances, LOTRO kind of feels the opposite to me.. very open. I feel like I could just wander around the Shire (yeah of course that's my favorite) listening to the music, killing any hapless wolves that cross my path.. just generally feeling serene.

Oh, I should probably confess about my DDO cleric.. I kind of rolled her in the *who's going to be the first to cave in and roll a healer* spirit.. someone else caved first (nener), but I rolled one *just in case*. Anyway, I'm playing on a F2P account but, as my characters all still exist somewhere from when I subscribed, I've had to actually be creative with names as all my usuals are taken. So, I think about how useful my cleric will be.. and hit on the name *Amenity*.. great I think! It's even got Amen at the front - that's religiousy right. How awesome am I. I carried on thinking this right to the point where I told Tam all about her. "Omg". he says, "I can't believe you just named your healer *Toilet*". After I had picked myself back up off the floor where I had fallen off my chair laughing - I totally had _not_ thought about that connotation - I said "Bah, you called yours *Kum*".

Erm.. I've just spent the entirety of this post sidetracked. What I actually set out to write about was, how annoying it is that I've decided to play two games run by Turbine. Because, I wanted to sit and play this afternoon, and they're BOTH down for maintenance. Bad choice.

Ok, who sent Turbine the memo??

2011-07-11T14:38:00.000+02:00

This is just _SO_ mean.

It caused much mirth that my character's new Title is *Easily Lost*

add to that the fact that I actually sound like a Hobbit..

I feel mocked.

/grumbles

It's been a while...

2011-07-09T21:56:00.000+02:00

I vaguely remember young Dwism wondering what I'd get up to if I wasn't playing WoW..

So here it is..

Until last week, I was mostly playing single player RPGs - Mass Effect 1 and 2, Dragon Age, mostly recommendations from Tam and Teut really, that I'd just not got around to before, and got absolutely absorbed with.

I played Rift very casually too.. I fell into a guild by accident there, when I was playing my mage (yes I have about 50 characters in Rift, 6 per server across a lot of servers) on my original server, and happened to have my necromancer pet out - the tanking skeleton, who I'd named Frank. As I was stood at the portal, I happened to be stood next to another necromancer, with the same pet out, also named Frank. So I /say *See! I totally knew he looked like a Frank*, at which point, a nearby cleric laughed, and asked me if I wanted to join his guild. I was in one of my *what the hell* moods, so I did. And they actually turned out to be a really nice bunch of people, into being casual, and helping each other out - and also a lot of fun. We spent 4 hours one evening reminiscing about the good old days of the Commador 64 and ZXSpectrum. Totally up my alley. But then I've always had this habit of falling into a bunch of people I really like by chance :)

I had a little bit of guild angst when we were forced off the server, and I wasn't really into the new one they picked, but I finally decided to move with them, and it was the right thing to do.

However.

My old gang from DDO has started playing again... and because they are top top guys, who I love to bits, and who seem to want me around despite nicknaming me Banshee (not sure if that's because of my singing or my laughing over Vent with them all the time) and finding it endearing that I'm always lost.. I'm billed as *the only Bard who actually sings*. I think they just love me for my *cure light wounds* actually, because our Cleric is more into bashing stuff, and finding the traps by walking through them.

So, anyway, I bit the bullet and loaded it up again, and.. It's EVEN BETTER THAN I REMEMBERED.
I loved it at the time, because of the way you can build and customise your character, and it's just FUN FUN FUN.
So, I now have erm.. 6 new characters and counting...

And I've made my *main* a Bard again.. they're going to get a total shock when they see her charging forth wielding a Greataxe though :)

It's very much an *instance* game... which is probably why I also loaded LOTRO back up, and am bimbling about there too.

I've been following the debate about alts via Syl.. and my pennyworth is this - I play alts, because I hate to complete anything. If anyone's familiar with Belbin team roles, well, completer-finisher is like off the scale in the negative for me. I like to start things, and then start other things.. I'm not sure if that's what makes some people need a main, and some people like alts, but I thought I'd throw it out there :) There's probably also a small amount of comfort in there too - Koch pointed out to me the other day that given the option between running a new dungeon, or one I've already done with an alt, I'll probably take the latter option, because I feel safer.

At the moment I'm playing on my laptop - I bought a laptop last time I had to visit the UK for 2 weeks, because, well, basically my parents still won't allow games on their laptop, which by the way Slowy McSlowperson would race ahead of. And.. it's really fortunate I did, because my PC kind of had a misshap.

Ironically, I'd just typed to a friend not to worry if I suddenly went offline because there was a storm brewing outside and my PC might blow up... when my PC blew up.

Not because of the storm, I _think_ it was just a combination of the opressive heat, and my lack of housewifelyness.

But, it has gone on the back burner to fix, because.. omg.. I have to buy a pair of *gulps in distaste* silver shoes to wear to my sister's wedding. I _hate_ shoe shopping. I did an hour of it this morning, and have now resorted to online shopping because I just couldn't take any more. I should add that the silver is by force, not my burning desire to be sparkly, or in case any werewolves appear, or anything..

Anyway, as I'll be in the UK for another couple of weeks soonish I decided to wait til I get back to fix the PC. I'm optimistic it's fixable.

As for WoW, I've had several moments of missing it. It's still the most complete and polished game out there. I don't know though. I think if I do play again, I'll stay well out of the raiding game. It's kind of nice to think, *hmm let's cycle out and get an ice-cream after dinner* (note, do not cycle along the river when it's getting dark unless you want mouthfuls of insect), instead of, *oh shit we're raiding in 15 minutes and I need to craft some potions first*.
I'm not saying I won't go back to WoW ever again. But if I do, I will probably do my usual trick of starting all over again quietly somewhere else.
I've still (obviously) been reading my favorite WoW bloggers, and I like having that little link back to WoW - afterall, it was a big part of my life for 6 years. I'm not going to say I was addicted, nor try and shrug off the time I played. When I think of the number of people I really care about and have in my life now because of WoW, it would be a terrible thing to regret any of that time.

*hugs*

Phishing fail..

2011-05-23T21:23:00.000+02:00

Aww how sweet, I thought. I've been gone all of a month, and Blizz already want me back.

Then I looked twice..

Erm.. Blizz, this offer expired YESTERDAY.

I looked 3 times... this offer expired over a YEAR ago.

C'mon phishers, get your info right. I'm still not going to click on your links because I'm far too suspicious..

But, make me believe...

Although.. perhaps it is the rest of the world with the date wrong.. and the RAPTURE man was actually right in *phishing time*.. if the world ends next year, hackers are going to have a lot to answer for...

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 6 (Your workplace/desk)

2011-05-02T11:40:00.000+02:00

Well, I was in two minds about posting this after seeing everyone else's beautifully laid out, clean, sparkly, nicely designed deskspaces.. but hey here we go.

And yes, I did remove 3 empty bags of cookies and a few empty glasses and other bits and bobs before I took the photo.

I totally didn't spot the cobweb until I took the picture - it's quite a dark room.

*blush*

Also, that is not my chair under the desk, it's for me to put my feet up on. Yes, I'm that short.

In other news, I've been rather ill again for the last month or so, both with Depression and flu several times, and I've cancelled my WoW subscription.

That wasn't an easy decision, but I think for now it's the right one.

Blah!

2011-04-04T23:26:00.001+02:00

Typically, the evening I write a moopy blog post, is the same one that I end up yelling WOOT over Mumble, both because we FINALLY got Cho'gall down, and because I GOT MY WINGS!

Those wings just happen to be the _only_ piece of loot I've ever really wanted.. and I'd hoarded over 3000dkp, only to win them for 5 :/

But I put them on.. and NOONE told me that they molt!! I said in raid that I prefer to think of it as spreading my feathery goodness.. and then I realised that could possibly be misinterpreted :/

Raid banter was a bit on the lively side too.. we were reminisicing about the good old days when everything was on floppy disk, and the youngsters were talking about pokemon and hand held consoley thingies.. and I mentioned that I had my first hand held game in 1982. When they'd finished doing the *I wasn't born then*s, someone asked what it was called. So I said *Frisky Tom*.. and they were all OMG is that German Porn?? (we'd been talking about porn earlier, but I won't repeat that here).. and I was NO!! It's about a plumber..
so they were all OMG that sounds like German porn!! I said NO!!! There's this lady in the bath.. and you have to fix the pipes and *IT'S GERMAN PORN* came the chorus.

Except for one youngster who said *what, like Mario*.. and I was like.. Frisky Tom was WAAAAAY before Mario... only... I looked it up, and apparently Mario and Frisky Tom appeared in the same year..
1981.. the year of the plumber.

(and yes, I'm a little horrified that my Frisky Tom link takes you to a *museum* page :P)

More geese than swans...

2011-04-04T20:10:00.007+02:00

There've been a lot of goodbyes in the blogsphere, and WoW generally, of late.

Some have affected me more than others..

Righteous Orbs closing down is the one that should have affected me most, it was long my favorite blog.

But in the end, it actually affected me the least because I still have access to Tam's insight and wit.

The one that's actually hit me the hardest is Tessy, whose farewell post was typically lovely.

I will miss Tessy's voice.. she never said anything startling, or groundbreaking, but I always felt a little better for having read one of her posts.

While at the PPI I always imagined sitting at a quiet corner table with half a cider, the sounds of constant chatter all around me, and the flickering of flames; when I visited Tessy's blog I always imagined sitting quietly on a sunny rock, paddling my feet in the pond, and just being calm and relaxed, listening to a friend, watching the ripples on the water.

And this isn't a *there's nothing left for me in the blogsphere* whine. I don't regret that things change, and people move on, that's natural.

It's just this time, it all feels a bit different.

My two weeks enforced break from WoW, has made me feel a bit meh about going back. I raided last Thursday, and up to the point where I had to stop because the little one woke up with a fever, I _was_ enjoying myself. The banter was good, the raiding was going well, I remembered how to heal..

I've had to wonder though, if all the people quitting WoW actually have a point. Instead of chomping at the bit to play now I can, I've found myself playing Civ IV and erm.. *blush* spider solitaire (yes of course Schwer: Vier Farben), and a bit of Rift and Lotro, and I wonder if I'm reaching the end of my time on WoW.. or if I'm just needing that reminder of why I love the game.

WoW's been a rock for me for so long, I'm not sure if I'm ready to let go of it.

Last time I took a long break from WoW, I played DDO for around 9 months instead, and I absolutely loved the game, the guys I played with, and I've said before I think it's really the game where this noob learned to play. When I went back, WoW felt fresh again.

I nearly quit WoW again, around December 2009, but then I found Tam, and WoW became a new game for me. And again I got a new lease of life last October when I moved servers and joined a *proper* raiding guild.

I'm just feeling a bit.. lost.. and left behind at the moment..

I'm sure it'll pass, perhaps I'll become a nerdraging pvp expert instead... though given my reactions are not those of a 13 year old, it's unlikely. I see myself more in the General role sending all the 13yr olds off to die for glory really, and I'm not sure they've written that position in yet..

So yeah, no plans to quit, but I'm rather thoughtful about what I want from the game.

Anyway, to those no longer blogging or playing WoW, I wish fun..

To those people who feel the need to whine about people writing honestly about their current feelings towards WoW if those aren't positive, I say *some people are so touchy!*

Oh, and in other news, I've actually tidied my desk area up, so Day 6 of the wow blogging challenge coming up as soon as I find my camera!

Edit: Now with pics and better spacing. Note to self, do not try to write a blog post between raid wipes.

Wow Bloggers NG

2011-03-27T21:46:00.000+02:00

I've had roughly 2 weeks now of being ill. I'm pretty pissed off with it. I've not even logged into WoW.. I've missed raids, I'm missing my friends, and I'm feeling a tad guilty about having not been pulling my weight for a week.

But I heard a few things today that made me both sad and angry, and having missed Klep's whiny post day (bah, I should totally have taken his advice) I thought I'd direct them into some thoughts I've had for a while, and moan now.

Today I read Larisa's post that she's pulled the last pint in the PPI. I commented that it felt like the end of an era to me. It did.

Then I read Vidyala's post here, which to sum up badly says *yes, it's sad, move on, there are new bloggers out there.*

She makes a good point, and I endorse her *challenges*.

However, it does not change the fact that what once felt like an intelligent community of strong voices, has been diluted to the point where to me it just looks like it's full of Teenage American Popularity Craving Drama Queens (I'm too sick to reword and think of an acroynm, and to clarify, the American part of that is reflection on my watching far too many American teen TV programmes, rather than specific US bloggers).

The thing about Larisa - and other strong bloggers that I _really_ admire - Syl, Shintar, Vixsin, Keredria, Tessy , Beru - is that they are self aware. They know themselves, they have strong opinions, they can hold themselves up to the mirror and see their own flaws. They are all intelligent and thoughtful people with interesting personalities. And all of that comes over in their blog posts.

What I see in the Next Generation of WoW Bloggers is a swarm of sheep (and yes, I know that's the wrong Collective noun).
To me, some WoW Blogs became like Facebook, with *Blog friends*, you giggle and back each other up to the point where there is hardly any original thought left, and you generally only post once you are pretty certain you'll get a positive response. A lot of WoW Blogging personalities now feel to me a bit like It girls...

Some bloggers seem to just be looking for validation that they're awesome, publishing things like that they had been called out for acting in a particular way by their guild.. They just seemed to want for it to be reinforced to them that the calling out was ungrounded. It didn't seem to occur to them, that hey, if someone you spend a lot of time with suggests you might be acting in a certain way, the chances are that they might have a point.
But the *community* just saw someone portraying themselves in a good light, and just gave positive feedback.

I hate that. It's pathetic. It really is.

One of the hardest things I ever had to do in my previous job, on one of my management courses, was 360 degree feedback. If you're not aware what that is, you send a whapping questionnaire to your managers, peers, and people you manage, and ask them to fill in anonymously what you are like in the workplace, with any comments about things you do badly, and things you do well. It's actually weird working with people for years, and then suddenly asking them what they think of both you at work, and you as a person, and I actually dreaded doing it.

When mine was returned it was mostly glowing, but there was a tirade of negative comments from one person. The advice I was given by the course trainers, my mentor, and other support people was *ignore it, it's clearly wrong, it's so unlike what you're like as a person that whoever wrote it clearly had a grudge*.

I knew who'd written it - as anonymous as they make these things I pick up on people's styles very quickly. I also knew that the person did have a grudge - several in fact - I'd been promoted over him being the very least of them. However there is no way in the world that I was going to ignore what he had said. In truth, he had said some pretty nasty things about me, and while it took me a while to get over that, I eventually decided that some of what he said _had_ to come from somewhere. He hadn't made it up. So I took the personal out of it and started to look at it objectively.

I know myself very well. I find being honest very hard. It's always difficult to go searching in dark corners when you're afraid of spiders. But I did it, I took what he'd said, I looked at myself from his perspective, and I realised that there had been several things I'd done which I could have done differently, and better. So I tried to fix them. I failed rather hard. But I know that it was not for want of me trying. I genuinely believe - and professionals confirmed to me - that I could have done no more than I did to try and fix the situation. I keep the things I learned from it always in my mind, and whenever I think that I might be straying down the path of single-minded arrogance (as a for instance), I try to take a step back.

Those bloggers that I admire, all seem capable of doing the same thing.

Asking for support is a good thing. Asking for validation is not a bad thing. But if you _really_ need 2000 random strangers to stop by and say *pat pat of course you're right dear*, without knowing _you_, without knowing your situation, without the other person's perspective.. then something's wrong.
Not everyone's going to agree with you. That's a good thing. We are not sheep.

But that's kind of what I feel the WoW Blogsphere has turned into. I am pretty disgusted with it to be honest. Twitter made it worse - and I really lost respect for several people based on their Twitter activity - one of the reasons I dislike it.

All of those feelings have been building up in me over the last year.. so, this was not an angry rant based on a respected blogger drawing her last pint, it was an expression of how I feel.

I'm not going to stop blogging.

I like my cosy corner where people I like and respect occasionally stop by for tea and cake.

There will always be cake.

False claims!

2011-03-04T18:11:00.001+01:00

I entered game earlier today to be greeted by the following tip:

It says, for those who can't read the tiny print and can't be arsed to click on the image to make it bigger,

*Being polite while in a group with others will get you invited back!*

This is WRONG.

I am _always_ polite in groups - whether tanking - *Would you please let me pull, I'm the tank*, healing - *Would you mind if I got some mana back before you pull again, please*, or dpsing - *Would you mind ressing me, please*...

I have NEVER EVER been invited back by ANY of the gazillion random people from other servers that I've played with.

BLIZZARD TELLS LIES.

*does grumpy face*.

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 5 (Favourite item(s) in game)

2011-03-02T17:18:00.000+01:00

In some ways, I had to think about this, and in other ways, I didn't... I mean, there are loads of ingame items I love - some mounts, some minipets, and the lovely T11 druid set... but when it came down to it..

The sort of item I _really_ like best in game is

Well, let me see...

If I showed you this picture:

You probably would be thinking something along the lines of *Awww a picnic basket.. how sweet and romantic*.. right?

Ok, well.. I think of it as an opportunity to do this..

BWAHAHAHAHA!

If it doesn't have tentacles, I'm not interested ;)

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 4 (Your best WoW memory)

2011-03-01T16:21:00.000+01:00

Like everyone else, I have a lot of stand-out WoW memories so it's hard to pick one.. I particularly loved Elsen's picture boards which I thought were beautiful, and apt, because really all of my best wow memories have been with other people.

I've chosen to share one memory in particular though.. I think it's the *best* because it never fails to make me laugh every time I recall it, even though it's more than a year since it occurred.

Most of the time I spent with Tam carousing around the Barrens consisted of me falling off my chair and holding my sides through laughing too much, and I think that is the sort of thing that I _want_ to remember.

So, I present for your entertainment, the Adventures of Verbose Cow and Hotpant Cow...***

PS You are not hard of hearing, there is no sound :P If you need sound for the ambiance, imagine a gentle breeze, animals in the distance, lots of giggles, and a thud as I fall off my chair.

*** Teut.. I _promise_ I will do a proper vid soon.. this was the best I could do with year old screenies :D *hugs*

A carrot and 3 sticks...

2011-02-28T22:18:00.000+01:00

Until three days ago, I had fully intended that the previous blog post be my last one. I had very bad down phase Depression-wise, on top of a very stressful week in guild, and then all of the horridness floating around the blogsphere which made me want to step away from it completely. Then I had the fortune to have a surprise visit to my server from someone who cheered me up immensely, and made me realise that I couldn't let a few popularity mongering drama queens stop my enjoyment of blogging in my own tiny corner, and of those bloggers that I do respect a great deal.

I wanted to talk a bit about why last week in guild was stressful, and what's happened since, because I think it's important that I have a reminder here, so I can counter it next time. I remember when I first mentioned that I was going to take on Officering again that I had words of advice warning me against getting drained, and too much pressure. Normally I shrug off these things, and thrive under pressure - I was renowned for this and my hard work ethic in my previous career. However I think this is where Depression strikes. Our GM went off on a school trip to the States for a week (I know, how dare he), and all of a sudden, it became apparent to me how much I was leaning on him. I kind of hope he was leaning back, but don't like to assume these things.
Anyway, with my prop gone, I felt this great heavy weight on my shoulders, which I felt physically leave me when I got his *hai, I'm back* message.

From the gazillion bits of psychological testing I've undergone, I know that when I am under stress, I become even more closed in than usual, even more harshly critical - of myself and others, am unlikely to communicate well or at all, and definitely will not pull my head up enough to ask for help. Actually knowing that is how you're going to respond doesn't help much.. I'm lucky that I have a support network who does understand me, and will take steps to allieviate that stress.

As a result of last week, Koch has taken a new role as Communications Officer, in order to make sure that everything we're discussing in Officer channels is communicated to the masses. Just a simple thing like summarising things discussed that week, and posting for comment will, I hope, make everyone feel more involved, and prevent *them and us* situations evolving.

This kind of made me look at our officers, and who we have.. and I realised that we have quite a balanced team. On the one hand we have youth, enthusiasm and optimism, and on the other we have well, erm.. maturity (old gits), erm... fact-finding and analysis (cynical gits), and erm.. erm.. runs out of tactful words..

It just made me chuckle though, because the guild only has the one carrot, but we have three sticks. I'm the subtle stick that is mildly pleasant but can sting a bit, Koch is a bit more heavy weight, and well, Teut's could demolish mountains :P

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 3 (Your first day playing WoW)

2011-02-08T11:39:00.001+01:00

Let's see.. my first day playing WoW would have been sometime near the end of June 2005. I'd actually _seen_ the game prior to that - Pillock!Bf played, obviously, and showed me a little. It mostly seemed to consist of him riding around on a horse (which his friends had bought him out of pity) on a beach, getting beaten up by something, and bandaging himself. I was semi interested. Now Pillock!Bf worked two jobs and was also studying, which left me twiddling my thumbs rather a lot, being somewhat too shy to inflict myself on his housemates at that stage. So Pillock!Bf said that I should create a character on his account, and if I wanted to be an elf (of course I wanted to be an elf back then), then the simplest option for me (pats head) would be hunter or rogue. Well, the fact that hunters got pets decided it, and I rolled me a night elf hunter - the original Jayce.

I looked something like this

Then he played the cinematic for me, I entered the world for the first time... and I fell in love. This.. This was the game I'd always dreamed of, the beautiful scenery, the captivating music, I walked into a world that I'd always secretly longed to inhabit.. and I embraced it, and got lost in it.

Anyway, back to playing, I logged in, Pillock!Bf got me invited to his guild, and then he got called away to be a bouncer somewhere, and left me on my own, with all these strange people, with not a fucking clue what to do.
This was a bit different from Civ2 :P

I think one of the first things that fascinated me was guild chat.. I'd never seen anything like it. And there were swathes of green text, all saying hello to me and welcoming me.. *oooh, fresh meat* was one I particularly remember.. I threw myself into that side of things whole heartedly. (Chatting, not meat).

I remember picking up my first quest, to kill stuff, and somehow, I must have managed it.. But I'm sure I was stuck in the spider cave in the Night Elf starter area for DAYS. Killing stuff with my skinning knife.. because my bow was probably broken...
I was just the most clueless nooby noob if I'm honest.

But I loved it, I was happy, I'd found a world to escape to that I didn't have to conjure up myself.

Eventually Pillock!Bf had a hard time getting me off his computer, and started getting annoyed at the amount of time I was playing, so I bought my own copy.. and told him to bugger off.

WoW. The best thing for relationships evah.

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 2 (Why did you start)

2011-02-07T13:14:00.000+01:00

The truth is, I started keeping a blog on a total whim. If I'm honest, most of the things I do are spur of the moment, drop everything and leave the country type whims.

What were the triggers for me starting this though.
If I go back a bit.. my first introduction to blogs was Koch reading bits out to me that made him laugh - usually from Tam's Sissy Robe blog..
I didn't really read many blogs to start with, Righteous Orbs was the first blog on my roll and remained my favorite, and Tessy's blog was the first one I found by myself and loved.

One day, out of the blue Koch announced *I'm going to start my own blog*. And I went *humpf, if you are then I am too*.

It was as simple as that.

I didn't know what I would write, or how long I would keep it up, and I only told a few close friends about it.

In truth, I usually tend to keep my rants fairly private, there might be a handful of people in the world that know how angry I am about any given topic.

I'm under no illusions about how interesting I'm not.. and gods know I should probably have stopped writing after a month.

The reason I haven't is mostly because it's proof. Proof that I exist, proof that I've been doing things, and thinking things.

In my darker days, I can flick through my archive and say *Hey, you were part of a team that pulled together and succeeded against the odds*, and *You tanked!!!!*

That's why I haven't stopped.

Psyched up for more fishing...

2011-02-06T17:13:00.000+01:00

Beer - check
Rock music - check
Fishy snacks - check (glaring works, Koch bought 2 packs this week)
Vent - check
And dressing up - check

I call today's outfit *Would you Be-leaf it*

WoW Blogging Challenge - Day 1 (Introduce yourself)

2011-02-05T18:47:00.000+01:00

Introducing Issy...

Issy the Player
I'm currently playing on Alonsus EU with my resto druid - which I love - as my main.
But, I'm a confirmed altoholic. It doesn't matter which game; I cannot stick to one character. I desperately envy people like Koch and Tam who have a very clear main.. but I just can't play the game like that. The thing about being an altoholic is that you always wonder if you could be doing better... if you spent the hours on your main that you do across all your little alts, then surely you'd never do things like forget to drop your totems *blush* (it was just one time OK :P).
In game I enjoy running instances, doing nostalgia runs, raiding, fishing, archaeology, questing, and dabbling in the occasional bit of RP along the lines of *and what brings a night elf like you into the dwarven district* ;)
Oh, and chatting.. and I wish they had a slot in the statistics counter that said *death by not paying attention due to guild chat*, mine would be fairly high.

Issy the Officer
I've said before a few times, that I take the responsibility of being an officer in a guild very seriously.

I've been involved with guild mergers, guild reforms, guild competitions and events, real life guild meets, dramas you wouldn't believe, making disgruntled people happy or showing them the door, you name it, I've probably seen it in action :)

I think I'm diplomatic, approachable, and fairly good with people. I'm intuitive and read moods quite well. Usually well enough to stop trouble before it even starts. I think I'm open, and communicate well.

I'm determined, hard working, loyal, and I care.I'm prepared to put the time in, in guild and behind the scenes, and I don't mind tedious admin.

What I'm not good at is keeping a fair and balanced outlook towards anyone who slights people I care about.

I'm also not very good on the gkicking and *hard talk* front without support.

I am very critical and a harsh judge.

Issy the Person

This is about as close as you're going to get to a picture of me.

I'm from the UK, but living in Germany. I still struggle with the language, but can get by on a day to day basis.

I'm a lot of things - a mother, a housewife, an ex-*career girl*, a bit of a geek, a gamer, Depressed - but I don't like to be defined as any of them.

I'm motivated by amusement and diversions, and I think I'm generally good at making my friends laugh :)
I trust my instincts.

I'm a lot of other things too, but I'm picky about who gets to see them :)

A new challenge...

2011-02-04T19:02:00.000+01:00

Saga's proposed a new 20 days of.. challenge.. and I have to say that I think her questions are very interesting. I've posted them below, because if I get a round tuit (people are always saying I need one of those to do stuff, and I've never yet found one), I'll probably take part...

And yes, I know I haven't finished the last one. I did have my day 20 written up at least a month ago, but I changed my mind about posting it :)

Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog
Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW
Day 04 – Your best WoW memory
Day 05 – Favourite item(s) in game
Day 06 – Your workplace/desk (photo and/or description)
Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name
Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you
Day 09 – Your first blog post
Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites
Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws
Day 12 – A usual day in your life/online time
Day 13 – People (players/bloggers) that you admire
Day 14 – This upsets you
Day 15 – Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it
Day 16 – Things you miss (post Cataclysm)
Day 17 – Your favourite spot (in game or outside it)
Day 18 – Your favourite outfit
Day 19 – In your bags/bank
Day 20 – If this was your last day playing WoW, what would you do?

I thought I'd be put off by it being of a more personal persuasion - I'm really not keen on stepping into the TMI mark - but I think Saga's struck a really good balance with her questions. We'll see.

In the meantime, if anyone has any surplus tuits, I'll gladly take them off your hands.

Fishing is fun!

2011-01-30T18:20:00.000+01:00

Having stood at the shores for rather a long time with my fishing pole, and not having the fish feast counter go up quickly enough for my liking, I organised an Erc inspired Fishing Extravaganza for the guild.

I was a little bit disappointed in the number of sign ups, actually strike that, I'm glad it wasn't just me :D

So, 3pm found me preparing.
(Preparing = finding one of the 3yr olds crayons that wasn't broken or yellow, and some paper).

I had this really cunning plan where I'd do the fishing on my dorf shaman instead of my druid. Now the druid has the instant flight form true.. but I planned to fish in Tol Barad. So I thought the shaman had 2 advantages, 1 she can water walk, and 2 she has lots of empty bag space.

So onto the outfit.

I had a hard time picking between

The Grim Pumpkin Eater

and...

Strange brew

Koch eventually persuaded me to go with the latter.. I'm convinced it had something to do with my large jugs.

Next stage of the preparation was the most important. So I ran downstairs to fetch a beer, cranked up Star FM's Classic Rock station, and glared at Koch because he'd eaten all the fish snacks.

We met up, formed a raid group, logged into Vent to mock each other's outfits, and set off, with a cunning DBM Pizza Timer set for 1 hour.

I portalled through to Tol Barad, and realised my mistake..

I do not have Find Fish on my shaman! Le sigh. Anyway, I did it the old-fashioned way and used my eyes.

The hour flew by so quickly, I don't think any of us could quite believe it.

We did have a few amusing incidents.. like someone dinging Journeyman Fishing, like Pandadin wondering how I was going to catch fish with my jugs.. and our druid casting starfall to kill a couple of mobs who disturbed his fish.. and ending up fighting a hell of a lot more mobs than he started with :)

I don't think _any_ of us were expecting it to be quite so much fun.

We met back up at the Golden Keg for some group photos

and the awarding of prizes..

I'd given the prizes some thought, and fortunately the other officers agreed with me that DKP was the most suitable prize for a raiding guild. (And yes, I do always ask for book vouchers for birthdays and Christmas :P)

We decided to let the guild judge who should win best dressed with a forum poll.

I had a really fab time, I was really grateful to everyone for taking part, there was a lot of talk about repeating it, so I'm hoping our fish tally will skyrocket :)

I'm probably speaking too soon, but...

2011-01-28T20:57:00.000+01:00

We've now had a week of raiding, and all in all it's gone pretty well.

Tam's post today made me think a lot about the expectations I had when I went back to Vengeance.

From everything I'd seen and heard, people cared about the guild, but were licking their wounds a bit.

The deadline for raiding set by the previous administration had passed, people were still gearing up, still complaining about the quality of pugs, and generally being lethargic.

Initially, it didn't look like we'd even get enough sign ups for a 10 man raid..

But then we one-shot the Baradin Hold boss (we'd been there before but not as a guild) on an impromptu run - our previous attempts had been beset with DC's and other issues and we didn't get a proper shot at him.

And that seemed to spur people on a bit - we've also managed to recruit some excellent people.

Our first raid night, we spent 2.5 hours wiping on Omnitron.
I was initially worried that this would put people off. I'd had _no_ expectations that we would kill anything our first night. People had been used to knocking over the Lich King and Alganon with their alts. But we'd changed, we'd lost some of our best raiders, we'd lost what had been perceived to be the driving force behind the guild.

But... we'd made sufficient progress in one evening that everyone was vaguely optimistic *we'd get it next time*.

And sure enough we did.. and Magmaw fell after a few attempts too. It was another night before we got Maloriak down.

But we are progressing at a sensible speed.

I had feared that people would expect us to go faster, push more quickly through the content, because of the way the guild had previously raided.

But the people that remained are the people who stuck it out, because they cared about the guild and were prepared for a rocky road... so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised really that these people grit their teeth after every wipe, pull their belts in and are determined to do better next time.

I'm honestly really happy with and for my guildies, and of what we have achieved so far.
We've got a guild leader and raid leader who is shining in the roles, who I'm proud to follow and support.
We've got a team who are pulling together, willing to try anything, and have been switching roles out of their comfort zone to help the guild move forward.

Oh, and PS, we're still recruiting ;)

Endless amusement :/

2011-01-25T12:38:00.000+01:00

How to keep a 3 year old amused in 3 easy steps:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Wait for it...

aaaaaaaaand

KABOOOOOOOOM

Do it again, do it again...

Thanks Blizz *does evil glare*.

Any idea what this is all about?

2011-01-24T14:14:00.000+01:00

I was out fishing, well actually I was out stealing fish from hardworking fishermen, and I came across this sight. I have to ask whether he was perhaps preparing to dunk the gnome. Gnomes being ebil and all that. But, that gnome dude on the right of the shot doesn't look very worried, so erm... perhaps it's something else..

There and back again

2011-01-16T22:51:00.000+01:00

Anyone who knows me, and who has read Koch’s post here will probably wonder why I haven’t mentioned the fact that we quit our raiding guild last month.

There’s rather a long story, and it’s rather complicated, and it took me a while to work out how I felt about it.

Koch didn’t *rage quit*, the feelings of hostility and lack of communication had been building up for quite a while, and he was fine about leaving. I, of course, totally supported him in leaving – it was the right action to take.

However... although I’d only been in the guild a short time, I liked the people very much, and had enjoyed raiding with them. It’d felt very much like a home and somewhere I fit.

After we left, there was a stream of other people leaving. Most noteably the Guild Leader and her partner. This was a blow to the guild as she was very much a driving force, the best raid leader I’ve ever seen in action, and they are both very capable players.

When they left, we were instantly bombarded with whispers to the effect of *You will be coming back now, right?*

Not everyone seemed to understand that the issues weren’t with a person, but the general approach the guild had to communication with, and treatment of, its members, and the fluctuating expectations.

The guild was left in a bit of a state, with only 3 members left on the leadership team – 2 of which – to my knowledge – did no visible work in the positions, and the other, while coming across as very sensible and steady, was not in guild a lot due to work and other reasons.

At this point, the members were left kind of floundering, with noone taking active leadership.

Then one of the members wrote a heartfelt plea on the guild forums to say, please stop leaving, we’ve got a great guild, let’s try and make it work.

I've reproduced it here, because it genuinely moved me.

I think its about time we had a post like this up.

Its impossible to ignore the recent cascade of departures from the guild. Sadly, they included some of our more prominant members, starting with Snack who had been one of the best tanks I've ever raided with, and most recently Limbo, who had earlier posted about not leaving the guild, period. It even included the loss of our beloved Guildmaster, Estele, and Falc, a valuble Officer and asset to the guild.

Those who have left had their own reason, and I doubt much we can do or say will bring them back. So to any who have doubts about their future in the guild...please, just stick to your guns. It would be very easy to just leave, forget about it and start again, but all of us would rather see Vengeance restored to its former glory.

Anytime another member leaves, its just another blow that we have to overcome, and makes things that much harder for us. So, if you really want to see Vengeance turn around...don't go. Yes, we're not raiding much right now, but thats because its the holiday season. It is going to take effort from those of us left to turn things around. Enjoy a peacefull respite up untill the New Year. Level an alt, perhaps dig up some shinys. But after, when things have settled down...perhaps make a macro for trade, directing people to the site. Tell them we are recruiting. Bump our recruitment post on the forums. Old blood leaves, new blood enters. Those of us who remain...we can, and will, turn this ship around. If someone leaves, fine, they didn't want to stick around and help out, we can't change the past. Don't worry about it.

I already saw one guild I cared deeply for crash and burn, I refuse to allow another.

I remained aware of all this because when we left the guild I created a chat channel so that we could stay in touch with a couple of people. In the chat channel, we had a lot of discussions about what would be needed to turn the guild around and make it work.

Action was taken by the member above, and as a result there was an overwhelming surge of requests from the guild that he take on the GM position.

Unfortunately this was handled rather badly and, the current GM – and one or two others – left the guild, after promoting the popular – and right – choice.

At this point, I realised how invested in the guild I still was, and Koch and I accepted invites to rejoin.

After some careful consideration on my part, I’ve accepted an officer position. I was hesitant to do so initially.. having seen the effects Depression can have on people, I’ve begun to doubt my ability to be fair and impartial. I spelled this all out to the new guild master, but seems I’m invaluable :P

So I leave this now, at the stage where there are 3 of us on the officer team, working really hard to get the guild raiding successfully again.

We have our first raids planned for next week, will let you know how it goes :)

In case there is anyone out there looking for a new home, we're on Alonsus EU, and recruitment is now open for all classes and specs - apply at http://www.iheartvengeance.com *grin*

On Cata PUGS..

2011-01-14T10:52:00.000+01:00

I was reading Nowiamtree's latest post about people being put off pugging by the stories of bad experiences, and this reducing the pool of *nice* people in LFD.

My experience of the LFD system for Cata seems to be rather different than most of the stories I've been hearing..

Ok, so normally I've been grabbing friends, and only having to pug one or two people, but I've met at least two gnome mages that way who have been enormous fun, joined in with the banter, have cc'd successfully, played their class well, and the goodbyes at the end have been rather sad. It must be something about gnomes, because in Heroic SFK, we found twin gnome warriors, and that was a very fun and successful pug too.

However the other day, I found myself on my lonesome, with some time to do a heroic, so I threw myself into LFD on my druid healer.

I ported in to Blackrock Caverns, to find everyone was corpse running.

*Oh dear, what happened?* I asked, and was told that they were on Corla, that their healer had become mind-controlled and had left.

Ok, I thought, sounds like the previous healer couldn't count to 80.. I've had practice (*grins at Panda* you should never have told me that I could be a dwagon if I got 100 stacks :P), should be no problem.

So we start the fight... I'm merrily healing while stood in the beam.. and all of a sudden there's this dragon bearing down on me. WIPE. Ooops said the shadow priest, I thought I'd moved in time, but the stacks kept going up while I was moving. Not a problem, let's try again. DWAGON. WIPE. Sorry, say the tank, that was totally my fault, I missed an interrupt. We continued for a few more tries, and eventually it all fell into place and was an easy kill.

At this point I noticed that I was running with a guild group from my server (yes, I'm slow and unobservant).

We went onto the next boss, and accidently got an achievement, didn't manage to kill Beauty, but the last boss was plain sailing.

All in all, was a pleasant time, with capable players, who were also rather on the nice side.

So I was delighted when I got Blackrock Caverns again yesterday with 3 friends, and we got a DK from their guild as our 5th member in LFD. We had a smooth run, except it took a couple of tries to get the achievement on Corla right. The DK was an excellent player, and also very nice.

On the other side of the coin, a healer from my server, who shall remain unnamed, queued for an instance the other day, which wiped on the first trash pack. So he left. He requeued for another instance, and again wasn't happy with the group, and left, and logged off saying Pugs were shite and he couldn't be bothered.

I can't help but think, if he'd stuck around, if he'd shown a tiny bit of patience and tolerance, if he'd given the group a little bit of a chance - he might have found that actually it was a really nice group, who were maybe just warming up, or nervous about pugging, and with the right words of encouragement, instead of being made to feel they were crap and couldn't keep a healer, would have done really well.

I just feel like you can't complain about the state of PUGs if you're not prepared to at least make some effort yourself.

I changed my mind!!

2011-01-11T17:51:00.000+01:00

I have a new BEST QUEST EVAH!!!

The Day that Deathwing Came: What Really Happened

What I really liked was no more clicking through tedious walls of text, you get to live it...

erm.. *blush* yes, I totally want to live through tender moments with the strapping blood elf.

Yes, I quite probably will...

2011-01-09T23:27:00.000+01:00

But not for this reason...

Honestly.. what is wrong with people?

On dailies..

2011-01-07T16:21:00.001+01:00

So, I've done a fair few dailies now

I've done Wildhammer and Therazane to Exalted on my druid, I'm doing Tol Barad daily on my druid and shaman (preferably when it's Alliance controlled for all the extras), and I usually do the Ramkahen daily when I remember.

I _like_ dailies. They take me back to areas I've *finished*, they're not taxing, they fill in the odd half hour, they're sometimes incredibly fun.. blowing up boats and bashing pygmies is never going to get old. Not to forget they keep my gold supplies nicely topped up.

I've got to the stage on my shaman where I should now be doing Therazane dailies..

But there's this massive problem. I hate them.

The trouble is I just don't understand _why_

I can't see _any_ difference between them and the other dailies.

Deepholm itself.. I love. I find it stunningly beautiful, fascinating, fluctuating, the richness, the colours, the structure.. I find myself flying round it, just looking.

But my fingers are openly rebelling against picking the quests up. The worm cave - and I think it's the first cave in WoW I could navigate round successfully - is ok. I don't _mind_ killing the worms, picking up the pyrite***, and I totally adore Pebble.

The mushrooms, and the fungal men, and the sodding sodding bag thing (there were MILLIONS of bags just lying around when I did the quest normally, where the hell did they all go??), just irritate the hell out of me.

It's been pointed out (thanks :)) that I could just ignore the dailies and wear the tabard.. but.. but.. but.. it would take longer.. and I have it ingrained in me that it'd be barking to wear a tabard that I could get rep from dailies on, instead of wearing a tabard that has no dailies..

I'm just completely flummoxed, I don't understand where my dislike has stemmed from..

Perhaps I just resent having to kiss up to the earth mother instead of blowing Hodir's bits...

***EDIT: I hate them so much I can't even tell the difference between Pyrite and Painite.. PAIN how could I miss that :/

I know it's wrong, but I'm doing it anyway

2011-01-05T14:21:00.000+01:00

So, I'm feeling pretty comfortable healing heroics on my druid now.

I've been reading a lot of the resto druid guides out there, and it made me recheck my glyphs.

Now for some reason, I have a glyph of regrowth left in there.

This surprised me somewhat, as I can't remember ever including it.. it was possibly when I switched my specs so my former primary was now my secondary, or I was half asleep when I did them, or I just saw something beginning with R. (What? R is a great letter)

It doesn't matter, what is important is that it should technically be a glyph of lifebloom instead.

However.. I'm reluctant to get rid of it just yet.

When all is going well, when the mage has sheeped the right target, and I've rooted the right thing, in the right place, (no, not that mob, the one on the _other_ left) and the warrior is swirly twirlying everything else dead while the paladin tank stands there looking pretty ;), I just merrily have my 3 lifebloom stacks on the tank, refresh them with nourish, and use my clearcasting procs (and wow the 2 points in Malfurion's gift make hell of a difference) for swiftmends and regrowths.

BUT

When it all goes bad, when the crowd control fails, when the huntard pulls an extra group or 2, or the boss when everyone's still recovering from a bad trash pack, leaving me out of mana with another 40 seconds before I can innervate again, and I've already used my mana potion...

Then, I've found that using my clearcasting to put regrowth on the dps classes, means - as long as they don't do anything stupid - I can safely leave them on barely any health, the regrowth will just keep ticking, and I can focus on keeping the tank alive, casting Nourish just in time to prevent the lifebloom ticks going off.

It's saved a wipe so many times now, that I really hate to write it off as a useless glyph.

Sure, I won't be using it for raiding. But until I've had my full of heroics, it stays.

Shhh you're scaring the fish!

2011-01-05T00:22:00.000+01:00

It's late, I'm looking to wind down after healing a few instances... I am blissfully unaware of my surroundings.. enjoying the relaxing calm of the gently lapping waves, and this happens...

What girls want: Rabbits and Chocolate

2010-12-31T21:11:00.000+01:00

No! Not that sort of rabbit!! What do you think this blog is?? :)

(/whisper me for recommendations.. shh!)

My husband, on a vague remembered wish of several Christmases ago, and possibly a recommendation from Teut, who has me pegged surprisingly well on such a short acquainatance, bought me a Wii for Christmas.

Complete with Wii Fit, Wii Sports, and various Wii lots of exercise and exerting yourself (and the sofas are _just_ too far away from the TV to do all this seated).

So, you plug your Wii in.. and the first thing you have to do is all these tests to determine your *Wii age*.

This involves typing your height in, letting it weigh you, and then doing some posture and balance tests.

I'm heartily embarrassed and totally mortified about this, and am going to post it to shame myself.

My Wii age is 56.

Ok. That might have had a _lot_ to do with me not being able to work left and right out, because when I retested I came out at 37.
Teut did say *that explains a lot* when I confessed to him :P

*dies*

Then the machine told me that my BMI is too low. I suppose there could be other interpretations, but I read this as *eat more chocolate*. YAY Win!

So.. where do rabbits come in?

That was Teut again ;)

There are these series of games called *Rabbid* something..

And THE BEST THING EVAH.. is disco bunnying. Honestly.

So, Koch and I can now be mostly found wiggling our bums (it's in the rulez!) to the tune of *Girls Just Wanna Have Fun* and failing badly under the influence of gluhwein.

Now if only they would incorporate that into WoW somehow...

Priorities

2010-12-30T15:00:00.000+01:00

So, let me get this right. You're in a cave, under the ocean, in the middle of nowhere. You have a *Powerful Need to Eat*, yet you can manage not one, but TWO Christmas trees...

C'mon Greatfather Winter, give them what they need, not what they want....

Bear Tossing

2010-12-29T10:24:00.000+01:00

No! Not that!!!

How far can you get yours??

This really is

2010-12-27T23:54:00.001+01:00

BEST

QUEST

EVAH!!!!

Took my little rogue on an excursion to the Barrens to see some of the new Alliance quests, and this one is just full of win. You have to blow up 10 rowing boats. I think I got at least 50. Talk about an overachiever :)

I needed a relaxing break after healing a few stressful heroics on my druid.

Have had some lovely, patient groups.. but to illustrate how they've been, quote of the day from Koch *I can't put it any nicer than this, but dps, please don't stand in bad shit* :)

And my excuse of the day *I did not see the large rock about to land on my head because the adds swarming on me were in the way of the warning smokey stuff*

Fun fun fun :)

EDIT: Blizz clearly recognised that is the best quest EVAH.. Just realised blowing up rowing boats is a daily in Tol Barad too (Bombs away) :D Too bad the rowing boats aren't populated with orcs though.. they make a much more satisfying splash :D

Merry Christmas

2010-12-23T22:17:00.000+01:00

Conspiracy alert!

2010-12-14T18:36:00.000+01:00

Ok, you may remember a while back I had a little gnome mage with a height complex because she was shorter than peacebloom...

Well, this time I was cunning!

I rolled a little gnome priest with BIG HAIR.

Somehow, Blizzard got wind of this....

and MADE PEACEBLOOM BIGGER!!!

It's not me, it's you.

2010-12-10T18:44:00.000+01:00

Extra long post broken up into bite sized chunks. I didn't mean to go on quite so much, but a friend is having some issues which triggered me off because I've been through them.

Bullying in games and on the Internet
My experience of social/emotional bullying
What I did
What do you do when you see this happening to someone else?
They're out to get you
What happens next?
On responsibility
So, what to do?

Bullying in games and on the Internet.

When people talk about bullying in WoW, and call it bullying, they generally mean one of the following:

Cyberbullying

Griefing

Dickish/Antisocial behaviour

For example, nastiness to someone in a pug due to their gear, give me the loot or we’ll kick you from group

Sexism/Racism/other isms

I’m not talking about giving the female mage that little bit more help because she’s a girl.. I’m talking about deliberate insults, designed to make someone miserable.

(A few google searches also turned up Woman On Woman bullying.. sadly the internal visual I got for this was female mud wrestling :/)

You’ll find lots of examples of these, all over forums and in blogs.

When I think about bullying in general, the first thing that pops into my mind is being pushed around in the playground, name calling, and well school stuff really.

What I want to talk about is bullying within a guild though. And more specifically the treatment of one individual in a guild by another. I’ve had a lot of trouble finding examples of this out on the Internet. Maybe it’s because I’ve searched for *bullying*, and not many people are prepared to call it what it is. I don’t know. So I am going to plough on ignorantly anyway.

While I think the interaction between two people in guild has the potential to lead to guild drama (huffs, public rows, splinter guilds being set up, people being kicked etc), I don’t think this actually comes under the guild drama heading. I had done a lot of reading around, before I remembered Tam’s post on guild drama. That post made a lot of sense, and does link in nicely with bullying. We’re all prepared to say we are angry about something, we’re less prepared to say we’re individually hurt by something, or someone.

I think as an adult it’s just generally harder to accept that you might be being bullied. That, and the fact that you don’t sometimes identify bullying behaviour as being what it is.

Here are some examples of behaviour that is identified as bullying. I could have picked on any number of sources to the same effect. (Please note this behaviour needs to be exhibited over an extended period of time to be labelled bullying.. having an off-day (usually due to stress) happens, and while it isn't great, it's accepted):

http://teenadvice.about.com/od/violencebullying/a/girlbullies.htm

- deliberate exclusion of other people for no real reason

- whispering in front of other people with the intent to make them feel left out

- being friends one week and then turning against a peer the next week with no incident or reason for the alienation

http://www.osach.ca/products/resrcdoc/rvioe528.pdf

- Social isolation (silent treatment)
- Rumours
- Personal attack of a person’s private life and/or personal attributes
- Excessive or unjustified criticism
- Over-monitoring of work
- Verbal aggression
- Withholding information
- Withholding job responsibility
- Trivial fault finding
- Replacing proper work with demeaning jobs
- Setting unrealistic goals or deadlines

My experience of social/emotional bullying

I personally have been quite badly affected by this negative sort of social bullying.

About 5 years ago, I was in a guild with someone I considered a friend (I’d even gone to meet her a couple of times in real life). As soon as I split up from my boyfriend (yes, pillock!bf) and started dating Koch, her behaviour towards me changed dramatically.

While she wasn’t the GM, she was very popular and influential in guild, and other people were *loyal* to her and guided – consciously or subconsciously - by her behaviour.

I was subjected to this sort of thing:

- I was ignored when I logged into game, only to see her enthusiastically greet anyone who logged in at around the same time as me.
- I was deliberately left out of instance groups.
- My attempts to join in guild banter were ignored
- I was accused of behaviour that I hadn’t exhibited
- False rumours about me were planted.

This made guild life unbearable for me – especially when a good friend actually believed the stuff that had been said. (Fortunately another friend told him the whole thing from my point of view and I did get an apology and we are still good friends now).

It got to the stage that when I logged into game, as soon as she logged in, or even if someone just mentioned her, I’d feel sick and start to shake.

On the surface, what she did was probably not even noticeable to a lot of people. But it was deliberate, and it was aimed to cause me upset. And it did.

What I did.

So I guild quit, and server hopped.

It helped in some ways, but not in others. I mean, the person was out of sight, and the negative behaviour stopped, but the whole experience has never really left me.

This all happened at a time when I had first discovered that the thing that was wrong with me was depression, I was recovering from a breakdown, and on top of everything else that was happening in my life, this left me in a pretty bad way.

Obviously because I was ill, and had low self esteem, I just assumed that hey, I’d done something wrong to make her not like me any more and that her behaviour was justified. It wasn’t. I felt helpless and unable to defend myself.

It was a long time before I could accept that I had been bullied.

What do you do when you see this happening to someone else?

Now a chat with a friend has flagged up that she is going through a very similar situation to the one I went through. She isn’t sure why, (*what she's done* were her words), but one of the officers in her guild has been exhibiting the same sort of behaviour.

She’s told me what’s going on, and I’m trying to be supportive and pull on my past experience to help her deal with it, and hope she finds a better solution than I did.

She tells me that the officer is very social and usually greets everyone when they log into game, but recently she has noticed that she is being *skipped*.

I suggested that this could be easily explained away – they could be busy or tabbed out, or just not paying attention. I miss tonnes of people logging in because I'm reading blogs on the side and forget I'm in game sometimes.

But apparently this is not the case (and she has screenshotted evidence of this) as, they greet the next person to log in, sometimes only seconds later, immediately and enthusiastically. When people only periodically say Hi, it’s not really noticeable. When it is someone who usually greets everyone who logs in.. it stands out. This has been going on for a few weeks now.

She also said that she feels she never gets directly answered when she is in guild chat, and that while other people’s silly questions have been tolerated in a teasing, pleasant way, she was given a fairly rude/blunt answer when she asked a silly question herself.

The officer in question is apparently very dominating in guild chat, and online several evenings a week, so this is affecting her a lot.

They’re out to get you

So, although it’s taken me a while to get there and admit it, I’ve felt bullied, my friend is gradually accepting that she is being unfairly treated. We’ve both been through the seemingly natural perhaps it’s me angst. But even if one _has_ done something *wrong*, bullying is not a valid response.

The trouble is that the silent treatment, as a form of social rejection, and thus bullying is very subjective. I know that, suffering with depression, I can be a little bit on the paranoid side and my perception can get a bit warped sometimes. Since I started taking medication, I’ve been a lot more stable, and a lot less *they’re out to get me*. But sometimes, they are out to get you.

What happens next?

I think the worry is, that once this sort of behaviour starts, when does it stop.

In my case I left before I could find out.

The things I have described hurt. They upset me a great deal. I’m not the sort of person who can easily shrug off being disliked – and actively disliked at that. It’s even worse when it comes from someone you trusted and respected. However, there are worse things than hurt and upset.

If the silent treatment isn’t having enough effect for the bully to think it’s working, is the next stage going to be having gear criticised? Given low priority for raiding? Playing cross-examined? Being humiliated in front of the raid group/guild?

Anyone in that situation is going to feel under pressure, that their slightest mistake will be jumped on.

Continuing in that state of anxiety for any period could have mental and physical consequences. It could lead to stress, which impacts performance, which starts a downward cycle.

It could affect someone’s life.

On responsibility

I don’t want to unfairly criticise my friend’s officer (only being given one side of a story), however I believe that when you are a GM or an officer you have a responsibility to be impartial and treat everyone in the guild equally – no matter how you feel about them personally.

If your dislike of someone has taken you to the stage where you are ignoring them, and refusing to interact with them, you are then also at fault, and acting irresponsibly. It’s your duty as an officer to at least try and settle disputes before they get to that stage. If you don’t feel that you can handle it yourself, you can always ask another officer to deal with it.

I acknowledge that being an officer can be very hard work.. but people are important.

As an aside, I was thinking about Gevlon’s guilds with his * No idle chat* rules, and wondering whether they stamp out the social rejection form of bullying, or just mask it. I guess that they’d rule out the bullying aspect, but that you would still get a sense of hostility. I don’t know.

So, what to do?

My friend is sufficiently upset that talking directly to the officer in question is probably not an option for her anymore. She also feels too awkward and embarrassed to ask why she is being treated that way, and she fears that she might be told she is being silly or paranoid.

I think this is why people get away with bullying to some extent – people are too embarrassed, ashamed, guilty, blame themselves.. and on top of that feel that they are being weak or silly in raising it as an issue.

This totally sucks.

If I have learned anything, it’s that moving away from the problem doesn’t make the problem go away.

Of course it could all be a big misunderstanding, which will be sorted out if she manages to talk to a neutral officer – which was the suggestion I gave her. But I suspect not.

Resolving issues like this is not easy, but I’ve learned from experience that if you want to walk away with any self-respect, you have to face them.

I’ve read a lot recently about bullying in the workplace… and I found quite a bit of it was applicable to WoW guilds.

But if this behaviour does happen in the workplace, there are support mechanisms in place - union meetings, welfare representatives, tribunals, management chains etc - for people to turn to for help in dealing with it.

When it happens in WoW, all you can do is turn to your friends.

Halp! My friend has turned to me and I’m flailing wildly.

20 Days of WoW - Day 19 (time)

2010-12-09T11:43:00.000+01:00

Day 19 - How many hours do you play a week, roughly?

I'm guessing around 40. It might be more. It might be less.

I play for a few hours during the day, then 3-5 most evenings.

I've previously given a run down of some of my /played time here.

20 Days of WoW - Day 18 (screenshot)

2010-12-08T14:55:00.000+01:00

Well, this is an interesting one. I've recently started storing my screenshots here, because they were getting unmanageable, and although sadly I've only got about 2 years worth due to computers with the old ones on being trashed, it's still a fair few.

However, my favorite screenshot, is this one.

Today. It's my favorite out of a selection I took yesterday.

Tomorrow, no doubt I'll have a new favorite.

So I'm fickle or something :P

YAY

2010-12-07T14:04:00.000+01:00

So, after the nightmare of having flights cancelled, and eventually being fetched from Frankfurt airport and arriving home at 2am..

I've finally hit the Cata loading screen...

And I've taken little steps in...

The first thing I did was create my worgen hunter and rogue..

Then logged in Issybelle

And decided I'd better buy old world flying :/

Phew only 200g :)

I still has glod!

Having not been around for the Shattering, and having not read spoilers and stuff..
I've had to unlearn a lot..
Like you don't get the boat from Auberdine anymore..

First mistake, oh, I don't need to get the portal from SW to Moonglade.. I'm a druid..
but then you don't get quest completion d'oh :P

I decided to start in Mount Hyjal...

and I shall go and get on with it :)

20 Days of Wow - Day 17 (down time)

2010-12-06T13:59:00.000+01:00

Day 17 - What do you do when the server’s down?!

This is rather easy to answer having had no WoW for the last 10 days.

Obviously first choice is play on a server that isn't down :P

At the pc:
Read forums
Read blogs
Do spreadsheets of stuff (gear, wishlists etc etc)
Plan what I'm going to do when I get online again
Send emails
Chat with friends

Not at the pc:
Watch a DVD
Read a book
Eat
Sleep

Or.. which is what I'm supposed to be doing right now.. pack my case because I leave for home in an hour...

Issy ponders about guild stuff

2010-12-06T01:11:00.000+01:00

I find myself in a bit of an interesting position recently.

It should have been clear to everyone reading that my focus and energy are now directed into my resto druid, and my new guild on Alonsus.

However, I am way too fond of some of the people in my guild on Aszune to detach myself from there completely, and that, plus me being trapped away from WoW and clinging at straws (:P) has meant I've followed a lot of discussion on the forums.

Debate there has become heated over the last week, when someone suddenly piped up with *why don't we and our raiding alliance guild merge so we get better perks in Cataclysm*.

Now we first had that debate back in January, and it just went dead. So to have it picked back up in the week before Cataclysm hit, just had me shaking my head in disbelief.

The first thing that interests me, is my own reaction.
When I was an officer, and invested in the guild, I'd have screamed NO WAY. Vehemently. Mostly because I have erm major personality clashes with a couple of key people in the raiding alliance guild. As it is, I could view it quite dispassionately. Not completely. I mean, chances are if there _is_ a merger I won't be popping back to say hi every now and then. But I could read the arguments for and against without getting majorly pissed off. I'd even go so far as to say I'm relaxed about it :)

The second thing that really interested me was the split in the officer core of the guild. While I stepped down from being an Officer over a month ago, I have not yet been demoted or had my restricted forum access removed. So I've got a pretty good picture of the whole discussion. (I've mentioned this btw, I'm not just reading it with everyone being blissfully unaware).
The guild has always been a real democracy - a level 1 bank alt is the nominal GM because you _have_ to have someone as a GM - and everything is done by majority officer vote.
All major decisions have always taken the views of the entire guild into consideration - for example whether to spend the guild's gold on the last bank tab.
So it was quite a shock to find that a section of the officers were prepared to rush into the merger, and present it to the guild as a done deal, with zero consultation.

Something else that surprised me, was how different the two guilds are. They've been raiding together for years, many people have a character in each guild, there is a shared chat channel, the other guild mostly use our forums... so it was odd to discover that recruitment rules are different, the other guild accepts under 16s and has a watershed for *adult* chat (I'd totally fail).

Another weird thing is that the most vocal people *for* the merger are raiders. The guild is very much a social guild that just happens to raid. The *social* people don't seem to be very active on the forums though, which I find really odd, because well.. erm forums are kind of a social activity.

The thing that has annoyed me most in the whole thing, is that the guild went through a merge with another part of the raiding alliance a couple of years ago. This was a massive undertaking, and a lot of work for all of the officers involved, and we actually learned a lot from it. One of those being that you _will_ lose people. Now when it was mentioned in a thread that not to learn from previous experience was stupid, someone took that as a personal affront and threw their toys out of the pram.
I just found that a bit crazy.

Of the people that have said *No*, a few - one being me - have done that because they have personal issues with someone in the other guild.
So of course someone chimed in with *can't we all just get along*?

That requires a bit more thought. On the one hand, we're adults, and being civil to someone you dislike is sometimes necessary. But what if it really affects you?
I've had an issue with someone that was so bad, it more or less drove me off the server. If I start to shake and get angry every time I see them log on, I fully accept that is my problem, and I should learn to overcome it. However, I don't get like that for *no reason*, and the stress usually triggers my depression. So often the best solution for me is to remove myself to somewhere where I won't see them log in.

We have people in each guild that really detest each other and will not be in the same guild - I suspect that it is the byproduct of a failed romance - but a guild merger would mean that one of them would _have_ to leave.

Is going ahead with a merger anyway letting them down? Is not going ahead with it for the sake of a small minority letting everyone else down?

I think if anyone felt that for the two guilds to continue successfully a merger _had_ to happen that I'd be more comfortable with it.
But what I see are two fairly large, fairly successful guilds, that have been around a while, and the talk of a merger has only come about on a whim amid fears that alliance guilds aren't catered for in Cataclysm.

It's been kind of weird looking in from the outside.
And it's been kind of nice that it's someone else's problem for a change :P

20 Days of WoW - Day 16 (quest)

2010-12-05T17:26:00.000+01:00

Day 16 - Favourite quest/quest chain?

Ok, I missed posting yesterday due to being frogmarched round bridal shops in search of a bridesmaid dress. I cannot begin to articulate how much this is so not my thing, but having found something I actually liked and looked ok in, my sister is now talking about putting me into pale yellow or pale pink. Having previously stated I look like a dorf - with appropriate skin colour to blend into Dun Morogh - you can probably imagine how thrilled I am at this prospect.
Anyway the dress shopping lasted for FOUR hours. FOUR hours. So I was too cross and knackered when I came back home to post. Not to mention that Saturday in England is TV night, with strategic channel changing to watch Strictly Come Dancing, X Factor, and I'm a Celebrity get me out of here.
But anyway, back to the point.

There are lots and lots of quests I love in WoW.
I enjoy questing a lot.. I like the stories, I like the little jokes in the quest text, I like having a *purpose* for collecting my 10 rat ears...
There are quests for every occasion.

If I have to narrow it down though, I'd probably go for the ones that I'd like to have been repeatable quests...

like this one:

Oh Noes, the Tadpoles!

this one:

Surrender... Not!

probably my most favorite though, is the Drakkensryd

It's just fun :)

20 Days of WoW - Day 15 (Battlegrounds)

2010-12-03T14:55:00.000+01:00

Day 15 - Favourite Battleground and why?

I'm not a pvper. It's probably the aspect of the game I enjoy least.
I'm not sure why. It might be because I'm a bit of a coward who hates confrontation... It might be because my reactions are not that of a 3 year old... It might be because I don't know what to expect...
It might be because my first experience of pvp was as a low level accidently clicking on someone with ?? next to their level, who was pvp flagged, and being splooshed in one hit..

Also battlegrounds freak me out a bit.. I am well aware of my many shortcomings, and don't really relish being yelled at for being a complete noob by all the 13 year olds charging past me while I am dead on the floor having been stunned to death while trying to remember where I'd put my pvp trinket :P

I looked over my participation in Battlegrounds and Wintergrasp, and it's a bit of a joke really - over a sample 8 characters, I've got less than 10000 honorable kills between them, and my death knight is responsible for nearly 50% of those.

I think I wrote before that the introduction of Wintergrasp made pvp a lot more accessible for me, I enjoyed it, and did eventually stop shaking in pvp situations.

However, with the exception of my death knight, I think that most of my participation in battlegrounds has been for achievement purposes.

I stated before that Arathi Basin is my favorite battleground, I don't think I expanded on that.
I'm not really sure why I like it. I think I like the concept of capturing and defending resources, that you have to work as a team and the individual's actions are important, and it has a nice simple map where everything is, unlike AV where I can never find anything, and because I've switched faction so often it doesn't matter what way you hold the map up it always looks upside down. 15 players is nice and manageable, I don't feel lost in a crowd like I do in AV, or over exposed like I do in WSG. I've only done a couple of Strand of the Ancients and Isle of Conquests, what I saw I liked very much, but I'm not familiar enough with them to call them favorites.

Heh, this has actually motivated me sufficiently that I am going to try a bit more pvp once I get back in game :)

20 Days of WoW - Day 14 (role)

2010-12-02T18:40:00.000+01:00

Day 14 - Healer, tank or dps?
Today's question is probably a fairly obvious one..

I'm a healer right, I enjoy all the healing classes, in any game I've played.. it's my preferred role, and I get a buzz from saving lives.

I also find it the least stressful role.

The thing is I've not done enough tanking to actually make an informed decision about whether I like it or not. I think I'd actually enjoy tanking in a raid, but I've never actually tried.
I do find tanking quite stressful, in that you have to be aware of so many things.. but I also suspect that is mostly due to me not being entirely comfortable with the classes and abilities due to lack of practice and experience.

I enjoy dpsing. I love seeing big crits pop up. But I do find the competition aspect of it quite stressful.

Until I played my retridin, I'd always played a healing class.. and while I loved my retridin, I did miss being part of Team Healz.

I like the fact that the healing team (and I guess the same is true of tanks, well it seems to be given the amount of chat Koch does with his fellow tanks) is a team, you know you have to work together, you have to trust each other, you have to communicate. Healing at its best is when you know the play styles of the other healers, you know they've spotted you were dumb enough to get silenced and are going to cover for you, they've realised the tank's health is going down a bit rapidly for you to cope with and chuck a couple of hots his way.

I've never really felt like that about dpsing.. I mean, I always prioritise getting people out of web wraps etc, but you don't get *oh the mage seems to be low on mana, I'll pop my CDs and get that extra bit of dps out to cover them while they evocate...*

I think I was talking about this with someone a while back, and said that the reason I like healing, and would probably also enjoy raid tanking, is that they feel like team roles, and to me, even though it is such a vital part of the raid, dps doesn't.

Forum sigs aka Issy is bored

2010-12-02T14:02:00.001+01:00

Ok, I am missing my pc, that has actual stuff on it rather than a web browser and paint.
Yes, that is all my parents have on their laptop... and they look at me funny if I suggest adding anything else to it.. and with Christmas coming, I don't want to be a bad Issy.

Hence Tam had to do amazing artwork all by himself.. and when I have this urge for a new forum sig.. I'm pretty screwed.

So, I started looking around on the interwebs..

So for my own future reference, here's a quick run down of what I found:

1. Best signatures

Just scroll past all the adds, it's worth it.

There is the option for a single character, or up to 5

There is a nice range of styles, and many avatars and backgrounds (or colour) to choose from, or you can upload your own

You can display up to 4 stats (including ilvl/gear score)

I ended up with this:

Here's the 5 character option as an example:

2. Siglaunch

This again is very straight forward, not many options, although you can pick your game and also produce guild banners, but the stat choice is optimal, and I ended up with this:

3. Toonsig

I wasn't impressed, there were a lot of backgrounds to chose from - separated into categories, but it was lacking in customisation options.

If you want something quick and simple it's fine - not much messing about

I was a bit put off by having to type a password in to get to my sig.

Here it is:

4. Mysigspace

I got put off by having to register so skipped this.

5. Zetbit

This is another really nice site. Lots of backgrounds to chose from, I had to wait ages for them to load, but don't know if that was their end, or my hamsters not running fast enough.

You can input up to 5 stats, including gear score/item level

I kept getting errors when I tried to generate my sig though :(

6. DKP System Sigs

These look nice - samples available at the URL, but again I was put off by the need to register.

7. Wow Mini Flash Armory

Sadly I just get error message when I input my character details

8. Warcraft realms

You get to the sig generator by searching for yourself, and then selecting (funnily enough) the *sig generator* link at the side.

There are actually a few options to customise this, but with nice backgrounds rather than information, but when I did, I borked it.

So here is what you usually get:

9. My WoW Card

This is another nice simple site.. it's limited in design choice, and you get what you're given avatar wise..
also, you have to register to choose which of your stats are displayed, but on the whole it's quite ok.

I ended up with this

10. Magelo

I was pointed there from here. And was sufficiently interested to register this time (which was admittedly quick and painless).
However, I was unable to produce a sig, because it requires you to log into the wow armory... and I don't have my authenticator with me in the UK.
Argh.

I am sufficiently interested to look again once I get home though

11. Arena Armory

What I like about this is you fill in your information from drop down boxes, and then get a choice of 4 sigs to choose from. And the speech bubble option. However there is no stat information, and no live updates.

12. Thrissa's Sig Builder thing

This one is out of date, the stats and talents are very dated.
It does have a few sig choices though, and is very simple.

If I am going to use something static rather than updated and live, then I can do something myself

(argh, have I mentioned how much I hate paint?)

The thing is, I love the WoW ones you can generate, but I also wanted to be able to embed a URL.

And then I had a facepalm moment, where I realised that I could just do this:

[url=http://whatever][img]xxx.png[/img][/url]

to make my sig image clickable with a link to a url.

I has my forum sig sorted. YAY. (I ended up picking the one from Best Signature if anyone is interested)

20 Days of WoW - Day 13 (faction)

2010-12-01T11:56:00.000+01:00

This is tough...

Admittedly, I do love dorfs

and gnomes

and nelfs

But

HORDE TOTALLY ROCKS

20 Days of WoW - Day 12 (suggestions)

2010-11-30T13:15:00.001+01:00

Day 12 - Suggest any idea for Blizzard that they could put in the game.

Oh dear... I think this is the question that's given me the most trouble so far..

I mean, there are lots of things that I would like to see, or have in game, and I generally burble on about them (to Koch, not here) as they come up..

I mean, ages ago, there was my new Dwagon Lord Hero Class, where you got a dwagon mount, and a little companion pet dwagon that could provide a buff, or act like a searing totem, and you could fight on dwagon back or dismounted... not remotely overpowered...

My Dream Addon

My portable anvil

but...

Sometimes I think I'd like a guild area.. somewhere for the guild to hang around, have access to the guild bank, and maybe some personal storage space, a few table games (why not, there is that plants vs zombies thing now, and there have been addons for a couple of popcap games for ages where you can compete for high score with guildies), and why not a target dummy shooter type thing where you can compete for fun with guildies (using your spells, not a gun, obviously, unless you're a hunter, in which case it probably is going to be a gun).
I don't want an enclosed guild hall though, I want it to be outdoorsy, and visible, so you can see out and everyone can see in - because I wouldn't want to lose the sense of community a server had.
You could post adverts up - we're recruiting etc
Silly things like a little trophy cabinet for the bosses you've downed would also be cool..
A little board you can scribble messages on for the slackers who never bother to read the forums..
Stick figures you could move around to talk about boss tactics..
A customisable playlist of in game music for when you are inside..

I know it's weird, but having that virtually physically space feels like it might make a difference to someone who enjoys the social aspect of the game as much as I do.
Talking to a character *sat next to you* is better than whispering to someone the other side of the globe... and it'd be kind of nice to meet up in that half an hour before the raid while you're checking your flask count etc.

Hmm I've rambled on about that more than I expected to, leaving no space for my suggestions about having *barber* as a secondary profession with more options than currently available via the barber shop, and dpsers working more closely together through the use of combination spells like say rogue coating target with flammable poison and mage or warlock igniting it, not to mention the flying cloud mount I've always wanted... MONKEY.

20 Days of WoW - Day 11 (holidays)

2010-11-29T11:50:00.000+01:00

Day 11 - Favourite WoW holiday (e.g Brewfest, Childrens week)
I was totally tempted to pick Pirate's Day so I could post a gratuitous picture of Johnny Depp all dressed up in his pirate gear, but as just the thought is making me drool enough to flood England, here's one of Tamarind as a swashbuckler (lifted from RO) instead ;)

RAWR

My real favorite holiday is probably Hallow's End

I like the boss, I like pumpkins everywhere, it's fun and silly, it's great xp and gold to go round collecting candy buckets with little alts while getting the flight points at the same time, and it's a sort of cheery way to start winter...

20 Days of WoW - Day 10 (glod)

2010-11-28T15:11:00.000+01:00

Day 10 - If a level 3 called “yurmom” asks you for gold, you say/do?
Very boring sorry, but

Just say *No*.

I'd also say no if the person begging for gold was called Ysdf, or Iadoreissy.

I might not have mentioned this, but I hate people who beg for gold. In the time you have spent begging me for gold, you could have popped outside Ironforge, killed a couple of rabbits, and sold your 6 slot bag on the auction house.

Or, you could *gasp* quest.

My disdain for people who beg for gold is nothing compared to my disgust for people who buy and sell it though.

However, I have just been reminded of the one time I saw begging being done very well; a group of undead on Argent Dawn RPing - if I recall correctly they had a tale of woe about collecting money to buy one of them a new jaw...

20 Days of WoW - Day 9 (RL Race/Class)

2010-11-27T11:36:00.000+01:00

Day 9 - Which race/class combination are you most like in RL?
I think I've already said that I can relate most to dorfs...

Nothing to do with this conversation...

5:46:48 To [guildie]: argh no mount :D

15:47:05 [guildie] whispers: tell me about it lol...im glad i have mine now

15:47:22 [guildie] whispers: even if I hate the tall rams

15:47:38 To [guildie]: you.. don't like the rams?

15:47:46 To [guildie]: but.. but.. everyone loves a Swift Ram :P

15:47:57 [guildie] whispers: the small squat ones yes....the daft 6 foot tall ones...no

15:48:06 To [guildie]: :P

15:48:16 [guildie]: I mean for a racial mount, Dorfs need a ladder to get up on them

15:48:35 To [guildie]: *giggles* my Dorf gurls have no problem getting their leg over :D

15:48:52 [guildie] whispers: O.O !!!!

But erm physically I'm a bit of a short arse, and I do like my food... Dwarf's just feel very real to me, in a way that none of the other races, except humans of course, manage. I mean, if you did actually compare me to a photo, I would probably come out as a human (hopefully :P) but, dorf is how I feel.

As for class, that's a bit more tricky, and requires a degree of honesty I'm not sure I possess..

because were I actually to be living in Azeroth, no way I'm going to be on the front lines being a hero.. no way.. I'd rather be in the pub in Ironforge, with a good beer, listening to the tales of everyone else who'd stopped by for a drink before they headed for the next battle.

But hey, let's answer the question, which actually is, if I had leet superhero skills, and was brave, what class would I be most likely to be..

I think the answer is shaman... I'd like to be able to heal and provide some kind of guidance to people - both stemming from my ingrained sense that I MUST BE HELPFUL. I trust my instincts to be able to read signs, and when I lose my temper I am likely to charge forth with two axes swinging..

So yeah, dorf shaman..

Feel free to correct me :P

20 days of Wow - Day 8 (Guild names)

2010-11-26T19:30:00.000+01:00

Day 8 - Favourite guild name you’ve come across?
Grrr been stuck in airports all day, and having to get used to using a stupid English kezboard where all the keys are in the wrong place, so this will be quick :P

The most recent guild name I saw that I liked was *is lost* - if ever a guild name was written with me in mind, that's the one... alternatively *Arghh Crap Leggit* always made me smile...

Couldn't talk about guild names and not mention *Single Abstract Noun*

and I recently smiled at *Druid's make me thorny*

I think the trouble is with a *fun* guild name is that the joke quickly wears off when it's always hanging over your head..

20 Days of WoW - Day 7 (companion pets)

2010-11-25T22:30:00.000+01:00

Day 7 - Favourite companion non-combat pet?

I think I am going to cheat.

Ishani's favorite pet is her red proto-drake whelp

Issybelle loves her Teldrassil Sproutling

Cerelia is torn between her azure whelpling and her Ice chip

Clute loves her pet bombling

Jahdiel adores her wolvar pup

Issie has a Lil K.T. following her around

Astolat is never without her Mulgore Hatchling, while Alzubra gazes fondly at her Cockroach.

However, probably my favorite, and most of my alliance characters have one, is the Sprite Darter Hatchling (I wish it were bigger :P)

20 Days of WoW - Day 6 (Dungeon)

2010-11-24T17:30:00.000+01:00

Day 6 - Favourite dungeon and why?

Erk.. I hate this question.

I just looked over the list of instances to refresh myself, so I didn't miss anything out.
I was a bit kind of saddened to see my eyes glaze over at each one, because I've just run them all so often.
After the first few times, when the newness and excitement runs off, it's just never the same.

The ones that stand out for me are

Shadowfang Keep - I loved the music, the atmosphere, the layout - both that it's a castle and that the route is winding, the fights, the loot :)

Zul'Farrak - Again, I loved the design, the fact you could mount up in there, the pyramid event will always be awesome..

Maraudon - I think because it feels so epic, and the first time I saw the crocodile boss I nearly died

Karazhan - for similar reasons to SFK actually, but that was fabulous even to revisit at level 80, and is probably the most enjoyed raid in WoW. It wins for me.

It's really sad for me that only 1 Burning Crusade, and no WotLK instances make it to that list. I remember absolutely loving all of the Northrend instances when I first did them. But the repetition has just made them feel.. well blah really.

I guess that tells me to make the most of the start of Cataclysm.