The Holy Paladin’s Plea

Dear Blizzard,

I have many characters, but my heart belongs to the craft of holy paladin healing. In an attempt to reclaim my love for it, I have rolled a little paladin and intend to level her as a healer. However, as I am leveling her, I have noticed a bit of a problem. It has nothing to do with quest content or anything like that. No, the content is lovely. What I have noticed, however, is a lack of healing mail and plate in the early leveling range.

Do you have any idea how hard it is for us to find gear that is not leather or cloth with +INT on it in the 10-60 level range? It’s next to impossible, at least until we hit level 40 and elemental/resto shaman are capable of wearing mail, when we can (finally) have access to mail gear with intellect. Right when we receive a bonus for being decked out in plate.

Now, I understand that out of all the plate-wearing classes in all of Azeroth, paladins are the only class that might even so much as look at mail/plate with +INT on it. Even then, it’s only the one spec that truly utilizes it. However, some of us fully intend to level as healing paladins. Most of us intend to do so through the LFD tool you provided us with. We work best when we have the proper gear to do our job with. We can’t take advantage of the bonuses you provide us with if we don’t have access to the gear in the first place.

Some people might argue that it doesn’t matter at lower levels. If you were to ask me my opinion, these individuals are liars who have never had to heal an entire dungeon with the incorrect gear. It’s painful. Yes, a lot of people at lower levels are decked out in heirlooms anyway and it hardly matters, but what about the people who are fairly new to the game who don’t have a higher level character to get the heirlooms in the first place? Besides, the whole point of leveling through the dungeon tool is to get us used to our toolboxes so we can learn what works and what doesn’t in various situations. Everyone else has the benefit of the proper gear for their class and spec type. We do not, and it makes me sad.

I know you don’t have anything against us personally, Blizzard, but it almost seems like you do.

Sincerely,
Me

Siege of Orgrimmar

All right. It’s been a few days. Now that the excitement of the very first Garrosh kill on both factions has died down — well, sort of; a lot of us are still very much excited about it, and congratulations to the guilds of both factions who successfully brought him down a couple of days after the patch dropped — let’s talk about the ending of the Siege of Orgrimmar!

Warning! Warning! Spoilers exist below the following cut. For those of you who have managed to remain spoiler free, and for those of you who want to keep it that way until you guys manage to take Garrosh down yourself, do not click the cut. This will be your only warning!

Continue reading

A Letter

Dear World of Warcraft,

It’s been over a month since I had to cancel my subscription to you. However, in the past few days, I’ve come to an interesting revelation. Do you want to know what it is?

I can’t do it.

I tried. I genuinely tried. And it worked for a little while, but the longer I tried, the more I realized it wasn’t the same. Of course, then Blizzard put out the 5.4 trailer, and it hit me just how much I really missed the game.

It isn’t that I didn’t have other games to play. The problem, though, is that they aren’t you. They don’t capture my attention quite the same way. You are the one I love, totally and completely, and despite the amount of free-to-play games out there on the market, they don’t really compare to you.

So I’m coming back, Azeroth. Are you ready for me?

Love,
Me

P.S.: Let’s try getting this blog back the way it should be, shall we?

Happy Independence Day!

For those of us in the United States, it’s our Independence Day! In WoW, it marks the beginning of the end of the Midsummer festival (as a reminder to all, it ends tomorrow), so I hope you guys bashed Ahune to death while you had the chance and got everything you were hoping to get from him!

I don’t have a lot of time today, due to various 4th of July traditions and a barbeque later, but I wanted to wish those who celebrate a happy Independence Day and leave you guys with this (still very amusing) bit of machinima created four years ago by Oxhorn. Enjoy!

And don’t forget to catch the fireworks in-game tonight, guys! They’re always spectacular.

Sad Realizations

It’s a sad thing, seeing your server die.

I’m not saying it’s an official death sentence for my home server of almost four years now, of course, but I have the feeling it’s coming close. I took a hiatus for about a month in an attempt to try to straighten things out for myself and explore a few other games. When I came back, I was saddened to discover that the usual chat channels, once full of life and happy conversation, were dead. In fact, most of the time, it seemed like I was the only person in them. To say it broke my heart was an understatement. I love Thorium Brotherhood. It’s where I met a wonderful group of people, people I’m proud to call my friends to this day. Unfortunately, it seems as though most of my friends have moved on to other games. The majority of my friends list haven’t logged on in months, and while I still love my characters, I’m slowly realizing that I don’t think Thorium Brotherhood might ever be server that I knew again.

As a result, I’m server shopping once again. I haven’t done this in years, and it’s a little scary. As a roleplayer, I’m really only looking at RP server, maybe even RP-PvP. I know the “standards”, of course. Moon Guard and Wyrmrest Accord are certainly viable options, and the servers I see lots of people recommending, but at the same time, I’m a little worried about this. For one thing, I left Moon Guard to escape some particularly bizarre drama after I left my old guild. For another, Wyrmrest is where a couple of the dramamongers went to. If I went to WrA, would I run into them again? Would they even remember me? Also, I’m in Eastern Standard Time. Would going to a Pacific-based server throw me off too much? WrA does have a few points in it’s favor, however, as a few of my friends have gone there.

If not either of them, though, where do I go? What do I do? Do I just abandon the thought of RP entirely? The thought of that kills me, to be perfectly honest.

So, fellow Warcraft players, help me out. Any recommendations?

Happy Panda Day!

Hey, WoW players of the United States! Guess what? IT’S PANDA DAY! Mists of Pandaria is finally here, and today, I want to know all about your panda plans. I, for example, will be making the slow level push to 90 and doing a lot of exploring out in Pandaria. I shall also (maybe) be rolling a panadaren shaman. But what about you?

Are you planning on rolling a pandaren? Or a monk? (Or a pandaren monk?) Are you going to set forth and explore Pandaria? Try to get a server-first level 90 character? Craft like a fiend? Roleplay your heart out?

Leave a comment below and let the world know!

Tales From the Front

Hello, everybody! Long time, no see! It’s been about a month since my last post. I hope everybody’s doing well and hasn’t given up on my little corner of the internet.

Since I last posted, things have taken a much different turn than I expected. Race changes went on sale (GASP!), and Adaret, whose story has been done for quite some time, got changed into a blood elf as opposed to a pandaren like I had originally planned. The short version of the story is that Thyanel, my old main, lives again, though as a priest and not a paladin as she was originally. I missed her so much, and I’ve slowly been getting back into the swing of playing her.

On the roleplaying front, chaos has occurred amongst the Harbingers of War (my beloved RP guild). ICly, we’ve been stationed in Hillsbrad Foothills, supposedly helping the Forsaken as punishment for something that happened long before any of my characters joined up. None of us have been particularly happy about it (the majority of the unit consists of trolls; what did we honestly expect here?). However, finally, we were supposed to move to Hammerfall out in the Arathi Highlands last night so we could help slaughter the Alliance out there. While the trek went without incident, we were greeted at the little Horde outpost by a trio who promptly arrested our guild leader. While it was planned OOCly (I can only assume), I completely didn’t see it coming at all, and felt just as outraged as Jinaki, my druid, did. Currently, we’re trying to figure out what’s going on, and one of our officers has temporarily been appointed guild leader, so we’ll see what happens there. Needless to say, however, I’m excited. RP again!

The trek, however, made me realize that I never actually obtained the raptor Jinaki rides ICly in the course of me rerolling her multiple times. Thyanel has, once again, been running the Argent Tournament dailies to fund it, since mounts are account-wide now and she’s been exalted with the Crusade for ages.

Speaking of account-wide mounts, however, patch 5.0.4 dropped when I wasn’t looking! It’s taken me awhile to figure out what talents work best for my playstyle, and while I still haven’t quite solidified them, I’ve found a workable set for shadow priest PvP. Thyanel has been participating in a lot of that lately, mostly to fund obtaining a Swift Warstrider and a set of armor for transmogrification purposes.

Also, the Glyph of Shadow Ravens is best glyph ever.

I think I’ve waited my whole life for this glyph to exist.

Guild Wars 2 also came out, but I’ll be touching on that in a separate post entirely. Today, this is all about World of Warcraft.

How about you, my dear readers? What have all of you been up to lately? Any game… anything at all! I want to hear all about it!

The Cinematic Has Come

Today was going to be a different post. However, today Blizzard unleashed the Mists of Pandaria cinematic and I was so thrilled by it that I had to share it with all of you. It would have been nice, at least, to see the monk be a female pandaren, but I still enjoyed it.

Other people have said that the cinematic is missing the epicness from previous cinematics, and while that’s technically true, it fits into what seems to be the general theme of Mists of Pandaria. For once, there’s no major villain we have to worry about here (that I know of, anyway, though I will maim people if Blizzard throws one in at the last minute). It’s just the game getting back to it’s roots, with the Alliance and the Horde fighting each other, and something new getting a starring role (in this case the pandaren). The cinematic itself also emphasizes the pandaren and their initial neutrality by having the monk fight both the Alliance and the Horde, which, I have to admit, is pretty cool to see.

It might not be as epic as seeing Deathwing break through Azeroth, or watching Arthas raise an undead army, or even seeing what we could be depending on the classes we choose. However, I really don’t think the cinematic needs to be. It is what it is, no more, no less. That in and of itself seems to be what the pandaren are all about. They aren’t flashy. They are practical, in my experience, and this cinematic captures that from the minute the pandaren enters the picture.

Also, would you just look at the backgrounds in this one? They’re gorgeous!

Getting Back in the Groove

So quite a few of you, dear readers, follow me on Twitter. As such, most of you have been subjected to my ongoing tweets about messing around with Alliance-side RP. See, the majority of the people I know on my home server of Thorium Brotherhood have been taking a bit of a break due to various reasons. While I hope that things pick up come Mists of Pandaria next month, I did miss RPing with people, and with my druid almost at 85 and my other characters on standby until Mists drops, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try something new. After all, none of my Alliance characters have ever lasted very long. When I mentioned this on Twitter, Bricu of WTT: [RP] naturally suggested Feathermoon. I do follow a good number of Feathermoon people on twitter, and they all seemed ridiculously awesome. I figured that if I was going to try this anywhere, it should be on a server that I knew had awesome people. I was even told there was RP happening Tuesday night!

I had a bit of personal drama regarding what character I was going to roll (the race remained consistent, but the class changed several times), and, unfortunately, twitter got the brunt of it. (I do apologize for that, guys.) Ultimately, I went back to a dwarf priest, one I spent all of Tuesday leveling like mad so she could at least look decent for when she made her appearance. Finally, six p.m. server time rolled around, and I made my way to the Pig and Whistle in Old Town of Stormwind. I was all excited on the way there, and a little bit nervous, but it wasn’t until I got to the door of the inn that I realized something.

I was completely and utterly terrified.

I could see Tarquin and Threnn and even Aelflaed (whose blog, Too Many Annas, I also follow) already inside, and these are people I’ve spent at least two years reading about through various blog posts. And then I saw Bricu himself walk in, and I panicked. I couldn’t even get my little dwarf through the door! Yeah, suffice to say that I was incredibly starstruck already.

Eventually, I decided I just had to get in there, similar to ripping off a bandaid, so I just ran inside and hid upstairs for a few minutes before sneaking downstairs and hiding at the table under one of the staircases. Bricu, however, saw me, and he was nice enough to provide me with a way into the conversation. Everyone was wonderful, and even though I may have botched the dwarf accent horribly, I really did have a lot of fun. I didn’t say much, no, and I spent a good chunk of the time thinking it would probably be easier if the character was a hunter or some other class (and I did have to admit that a priest drinking seemed a little odd to me), but I still had a great time. So much fun, in fact, that I’ll probably be back next week, if the Feathermoon crew will have me.