Anyway – net result was 11 sign-ups for last night. We were all buffed, prepared, in the instance and ready to go a good 10 minutes early. It was LOVELY.

We had a really good raid – killing 5 bosses in DS with only a few wipes (one on Zon’ozz due to horrible timing of healers moving and tank suddenly being squishy, and a few on Ultraxion while people found their missing purple buttons and saw the fight for the first time) and also having a first few tentative tries on Warmaster Blackhorn in our 3 hours. We even had a full 15 minute break during which I managed to settle my daughter to bed AND make a cup of tea AND sort out errant kittens who were feeding their food pouches to the dog.

Everyone was happy and focussed and it felt GOOD.

I got some new gloves – even though my rolls for the evening consisted of a 2, 4, 17 and 58 (which was beaten by everyone else) – a lovely guildie who had cleaned up on the rolling front passed them to me. I think almost everyone got something shiny to go home with – we even seemed to have more than our normal share of epic gems as well.

Hopefully the attendance boss will be lenient and we can go back and see how we fare against the evil return of the boat. It would appear that Lootship Mark 2 is actually Evilship Mark 1.

This question has cropped up in my mind recently with my switch from ‘hardcore’ to ‘social’. It has been around for a long time – back when I moved from Common Sense to Take Ten it was one of the biggest reasons for the split. It’s a tricky balance and means something different to almost every player.

What do you expect when you turn up for a raid?

Do you expect to go along and have a go at killing things?
Do you expect the guild to provide food and flasks?
Do you expect your fellow raiders to be fully gemmed, enchanted, geared enough for the content?
Do you expect people to know how to play their class?
Do you expect that everyone has read up on the tactics or watched a video?

Each of these questions (and many more) can have sub questions – such as if your guild provides food and flasks, should they also provide potions so you can pre-pot before a fight? Should the gems be expected to be a certain quality? How do you check that people know what to do? What should you do if they obviously don’t know?

All of these things are going round in my head at the moment partly because of our recent Ultraxion fight. The raid, although successful was also frustrating for me as an ex-hardcore player.

I come from Vanilla days where we were expected to farm for things to help us improve – the time I spent flying round Felwood farming Whipperroot Tubers would put many a player completely off the game today. Back then I played rogue and would take 60-80 bandages, 20-40 tubers, 40-60 health potions (you could take more than one per fight) to every raid. I would be outside the instance at least 15 minutes before raid start time. I would have read the tactics. I WAS PREPARED!

This extends still today – in my bags I have 2 different types of flask (spirit and int), 4 different sorts of food (spirit, int, fortune cookies and coffee), 3 different potions (mana, concentration, ghost elixir) and a stack of bandages. Even though my guild always provides a cauldron and crab buckets I still carry this stuff about. I would not consider raiding without it.

Last week on our Ultraxion night we were 20 minutes late starting because we were short on people for the raid. That I am OK with – I’d far rather start late then not raid. When we did get a full group, we were delayed even more while someone got some gear enchanted – this was mildly irritating.

Before our last few tries, we decided to try and kick it up a notch on the dps front and pre-pot ….. so we waited while we got enough potions made to allow everyone to do this (which involved going back to SW to buy some mats off the AH and getting them crafted). This also bothered me a bit – to me this is part of being a dps player – do what you can to get the most dps you can.

Anyway – it worked and we killed the boss. I couldn’t help thinking though that if we had all been prepared we probably could have had some good tries on Blackhorn as well. It bothered me about my own expectation – was I expecting too much?

Now, I do love my guild and I don’t expect the sort of behaviour that I saw in my last guild – for example on a recent application made there it was expected that the applicant should have had the latest epic gems in their best in slot gear.

I don’t necessarily expect that from a ‘social guild’, but am I being elistist if I expect people to look after their characters and bring to a raid all they can to make them work to the best of their abilities? Is it wrong of me to feel a little like I am not given the respect of my fellow players if they don’t?

Do I expect to much of my guild friends? I think I probably do. But is it wrong to feel that way? Is it bad of me to want other people to get the most from their characters if they are going to raid?

On a side note – today I wondered how it would affect people and their play styles if the LFR didn’t let you in if you had unenchanted or ungemmed gear. Would it help people to learn more? Could it be extended to check for glyphs? To look for a decent talent specification? Could it be made to be a ‘learn to play’ tool rather than being full of tools who try to teach others to learn to play?

Over the past week my guild got Hagara down. I can’t really remember much about it other than running about OK and not dying. Then we moved to Ultraxion. We had a few goes on him on Monday then went back with a vengeance on Tuesday. My lovely druid friend and I were two healing it. This was a scary prospect, but in this guild I felt relaxed. I could do what I do best – stand still for most of the fight and heal my little socks off. Some 14 or so tries later and we were running out of evening… We got to the infamous last try of the night. Everyone had potions, food, flasks, serious face and nobody died a stupid death and we downed that silly purple dragon! (And I forgot to take a screenshot >.<)

I was hyper - it felt good to be pushed to heal well, use all my cooldowns and things I normally forget to press. But even so, the whole thing is feeling a bit of a let down to be honest. Having done it all in LFR there is nothing particularly new, other than it being 10 man.

It is fantastic to have done it with the guild - that means so much more to me than the LFR and it's great that we are raiding again after the Christmas lull. We have one or 2 new guildies so things are looking up. It's nice having some more bodies to fill in for those who are lost to Star Wars, but we could still do with a few more.

Other than that I was working on a new transmog set. I wanted something that showed a little more flesh than my devout set. This is how I ended up...

It’s the recoloured Transcendence set with the Staff of Infinite Mysteries. I do have the full ‘normal’ Transcendence set too, but it’s a bit of a dull colour.

We had a retro night this week as well and cleared BT, MH and SSC all in one evening. Through the middle of BT, this popped up, which was nice …

That, along with the achievement for visiting all the old people and I am over 10,000 points. I have been getting all the coins to buy the Lunar Festival lantern and bought the Horde one off the AH. I have been pottering about again with Archaeology. It’s so damn annoying though. I only want the Tol’vir pet. Here are my current stats…

It took me 152 tries to get the NE dolly and was the last NE rare to get. I have only had 2 Tol’vir rares in my 20 rares so far. It’s getting a bit demoralising, but I keep on plugging away. One day it will pop up, but damn, it’s dull at times now.

The only shame now is that I can’t have my real spelling – but I guess you can’t win them all.

I’ve been mulling this over for a while. When I came home from my Horde holiday, I decided to go NE because I’d been BE and quite liked it. Also, my first real character had been a NE rogue and I liked the look of her. I fancied having Shadowmeld so I could hide from Horde, which I don’t need to do any more on a PVE server and to help if a raid was wiping, which I always forget I have and so rarely use anyway. Plus NE get to do somersaults when they jump which is quite cool, except I’m not a teenage player idling in SW and don’t often jump for effect.

Since then, I’ve not felt right completely. Seph used to be Human. All my memories of her are as a Human. Now, I do love NE, but I’m kind of missing being Human.

Here are the then and now pictures…

What do you think guys? Should I go back to being human? I know the outfits aren’t quite comparable, but… hmmmmm.

I think human characters suit skimpy clothes a little more than NE – their bottoms are rounder and perter. I am wondering this because I am mulling a mogging outfit that would match/fit in with the rest of the tarts ladies in my guild.

Stir Crazy – used to refer to anyone who becomes restless or anxious from feeling trapped and even somewhat claustrophobic in an environment, usually a confined space, perceived to be more static and unengaging than can any longer continue to hold interest, meaning, and value to and for them. ‘Stir crazy’ could be classified as a more specific form of boredom, but combined with elevated and often increasing levels of anxiety, frustration, agitation, figeting, manic depressive type mood swings, and accessory episodes of acting out violently or otherwise antisocially on those feelings, the longer the unengaging non-stimulating environment is persisted in.

Now that is probably a bit extreme, but having had 3 weeks with no raid and only a couple of PUG LFRs it’s kind of how I am feeling. I don’t want to feel like this. I want to raid with my friends and have a laugh. I feel like I’ve been stuck at home for weeks with little human contact.

I love the people in my guild to bits, but am bored of archaeology (I got my Professor title), bored of Loremaster (7 areas to go), bored of waiting for rares to spawn. I have maxed my VP every week by Sunday. I have levelled a Shaman to 20.

None of it has the same appeal as raiding….

…. come back guildies – stop this real life / Star Wars / other game stuff and let’s kill some internet dragons – well, one in particular and some Firelands stuff as well so a certain Warlock can get her staff and I can have a cute dragon pet.

It really makes me sad that pet (and mount) collectors are treated to such randomness. For everything else in the game some persistence gets you rewards. To have something available on a random roll for only 2 weeks a year is pure torture. I have little doubt that I will still be playing next Winter Veil (I have bought my season ticket), but the thought does not excite me in the slightest. This year I was all excited at the thought of a new pet but became more and more despondent every day. I am left feeling hollow and very miserable.

So I turn my thoughts to the Darkmoon Faire. I managed to catch the reset in the early hours so have a head start on my collecting for this month, but with 2 of the quest items currently bugged and one extremely rare drop (I’m NOT paying 12k gold for it on the AH) it looks like I will only have enough tokens for one pet this month – welcome to my collection Darkmoon Cub .

I can cope with the collecting though, I know it WILL happen if I keep going. I don’t mind the grind. It took me almost a year of perseverance to get the Green Proto Drake (back in the days when you got an egg once a week rather than the current 3 days).

Ah well. Happy New Year to everyone who still reads my whines and drivel. Have fun in WOW. I hope I can find some again.

I have done every seasonal event in WOW for many years. I even repeat them with Seph because I enjoy the fun, the novel things. I have done the new Greench, I have worn my jumper and sung my Carols in the Horde cities, but the sparkle has gone for me this time with the introduction of the pet for this year – Lumpy.

I know there are other cases where RNG happens – like the headless horseman’s mount and in all honesty they really bug me. I don’t mind farming, I don’t mind a rep grind. If I wanted to I could get “The Insane” title, but when you can ONLY get something on the roll of a dice, once a day for 2 weeks of the year, something feels wrong.

I am quite happy that it will take me months to get all the Darkmoon Faire pets – I know that I WILL get them eventually. I don’t HAVE to do something every day and hope.

This time round, even if I do get Lumpy I will feel dreadful for those who collect and did not get him. I’ve not tried on any alts because I know that if he dropped for them I would be devastated that he didn’t arrive for Seph. I have got 2 Tiny green Ragdolls, which have a comparable drop rate, but no Lump of Coal. My only hope is that he may be added to the Satchel that as a healer I can get (not that it would help any dps collectors so again would not be fair) or to the Molten Front Daily loot bag thing.

I suppose Blizzard’s excuse is ‘they are only vanity items’ but when you think about it really isn’t everything in the game a vanity item – isn’t your Tier chest piece a vanity item? You don’t actually NEED it to play the game. You want it because it makes you feel better in some way. It’s not essential to playing the game.

How would you feel if the only time you could get it was on the roll of a dice (a 300 sided one according to the stats, but that is irrelevant), once a day, during a two week period once a year? That is how a pet feels to the collector – pets are why I continue to play the game. Pets and my friends – hugs to you all who support me in my whining and obsessing.

So keep your fingers crossed and your thumbs held for me for the next 6 days as I try again for my Lumpy and good luck to all the other collectors out there….

He is the character on my page-a-day calendar for today, and looked very manly with bits of chest hair, six pack and burly muscles.

Actually, I have met him before because I remember he was the dude you had to keep alive and stand near when attempting General Rajaxx in AQ20. I just don’t remember looking that closely at him! I never wanted any of the blacksmithing patterns he sells once you kill Rajaxx.

So – I went searching for more information about him. I found a bit on Wowhead along with another screenie.

Now then – is that a tattoo on his lower regions? Hmmm – interesting…

The quote on WOWwiki about him is ..”Many guilds joke around that he would probably survive in battle longer if he wore a breastplate, maybe a shield. Many guilds affectionately refer to Andorov as “Captain No Shirt” or simply “No Shirt”, due to his choice in battle garments.”

It makes me giggle how folks (read ‘guys’) think it’s perfectly fine for women characters to go killing things in their bikini bottoms, but you come across a bare chested male and they get all uppity!

Apologies guildies for stealing this, but I am very happy with this plan…

Based on feedback during Thursday’s raid (*cough* seven one-shot kills in 2h50 *cough*) here’s a rough plan for the next couple of weeks:

One final consideration: Blackwingrockspirecavernslairs HEROIC, so we can take a look at Sinestra. This has the possibility to be more challenging than Firelands, but is a boss fight that most of us won’t have seen yet.

That to me sounds a wonderful mix that will hopefully please everyone in some way and pleases me in LOTS of ways.

What a good week – I got my project finally signed off in RL – phew! I got my character looking gorgeous. My guild comes up with plans like this Happy Seph is still happy

Have a great weekend all.