Helm of Lupine Cunning, or "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

I want to look like a wolf TOO! Unfortuntely, this is a level 64 quest item. :(

Sad.

Horde/Alliance, or "Which Side Doesn't Stink as Bad as Thrall's Armpits?"

Non-Gamer's Guide to This Post

If you leave a character in an inn or major city while you aren't playing, they will be "resting." This means that when you get back to your character, they will get 200% experience from all monsters that they kill until a certain point. The longer you rest, the further along your experience bar this "point" will be.

You do not lose your rest at any time, and there is no "window of opportunity" to kill monsters. (It is not timed.) Quest experience just bumps the resting point up (quest experience never counts toward your 200%, but it doesn't interfere with it, either).

There is a cap at ~2 levels.

The 200% experience is gone when you reach the marked point on your bar (the bar will be faintly blue and will say that you get 200% normal experience when you scroll over it). There are no tricks to it. It doesn't disappear if you log out before you've reached the marked point.

This was implemented to help players keep up with their friends even when they can't play as often.

Auction Houses, or "Well, I USED to Have Money"

Non-Gamer's Guide to This Post

Auction Houses are an in-game way to sell and buy goods. When fighting monsters, sometimes they drop equipment that is good, but your character can't use it. Selling it to a vendor (a non-player character who sells simple goods like food or weapons) is usually a bad idea, because vendors never give you what the item is worth. So you put it on the auction house and hope that someone bids on it.

Fake Patch Notes Addendum, or "Blizzard Takes Hints!"

It is, in fact, official!

"Speaking of PvP, we're also hard at work on our team-balancing feature for the battlegrounds. This feature won't be ready for this next content patch, but will be added in a patch sometime after the expansion launches. Team balancing will help ensure that the teams facing each other in each of the game’s battlegrounds will be as evenly matched as possible." (December 1, 2006)

"The matching system is currently on schedule for the next major content patch. As anything, that is of course subject to change, but we're doing what we can to ensure it's release." (February 8, 2007)

Even if it only helps a little with twinks, that will make a huge difference in battlegrounds. Thank you Blizzard! And thank you Malloc, for sending me this beautiful tidbit. ^_^

Fake Patch Notes, or "Blizzard, Take a Hint"

According to the creator of the fake patch notes:

Yep I'm Spybot. Well, I should say we're Spybot. My co-worker and I are responsible for the 1.8, 1.12, fake druid BC talent screenshots, and the latest 2.1.0 patch notes. Writing these really pass the time at work :P

I don't think I need to tell most of you that they're all fake. The reason we write these is to present a list of suggestions that we think would improve the game. I'm sure Blizzard would rather us use the suggestions forum :P but obviously fake patch notes will get much more exposure. If you're curious at how we were able to put so many obscure bug fixes and technical stuff, we copied and pasted everything from the UI + Macros and Bug Reports forums. The rest was blue posts and our own input. The "KDM" shoutout was for Caydiem - sorry for all the headaches with the other patch notes. Anyhow while these patch notes are 100% fake, I hope you at least had fun reading it.

-Spybot

My household's favorite note is the "battleground matching system," where twinking is effectively neutralized.

White Kitten, or "I'd Gut Timmy If I Thought I Could Get the One Following Him"

Little Timmy is a rare spawn in Stormwind (meaning he only appears every now and then). His parents are making him get rid of one of his two white kittens. The one he gets to keep is following him, and the one in his inventory is the one you can buy.

He only has the one white kitten for sale and then he's sold out. Many a person has gone up to Timmy thinking "WHITE KITTEN!" only to be disappointed because someone else has bought it. Like the guy I saw run up to Timmy after I'd just bought his kitten. I felt kind of bad . . . but not that bad.

You really just have to stumble across him, though I've heard that hunters can track the kitten following him.


White kittens go for 3-7 gold on the AH, depending on how many people want one and what they'll pay. I've heard tales of idiots who sold them for under a gold. Even a 3g white kitten is a bargain. 2g white kittens are outright theft.

Thesden has a white kitten. He felt bad because he didn't know it was a rare pet, or that it sold for so much, or he would have sold his. He just found Timmy accidentally, bought one, and used it. Soooo cute. ^_^ (I bought one on the AH for 3g and some silver, and stocked it away for later, when I decide what character I want to give it to.)

Robes of Insight, or "Good for Priests, Better for Hookers"

Why does clothing look a little different on women than on men? I can't quite put my finger on it, but it sometimes seems a smidgen unbalanced. What do you think?


(Level 47 robes, said to be good for priests. Check out stats at Thottbot.)

Thanks to Tenshi from WomenGamers.Com for mentioning them.

PVP Ganking, or "Breaking News"

(The above is entirely fictional.)

I expect higher level folks to kill lower level folks on a pvp server. It's just done, you know? That said, my group tries not to gank people who are lower level because my husband doesn't think it's very fair. Even though we're all 28-ish, we don't even attack lvl 32s because there are five of us and one of him, and it would be a massacre.

Which makes me wonder why, when we were questing last night, a level 32 hunter decided he could take all five of us on. We weren't going to attack him. We were going to pass right on by. But he attacked us, and we had to defend ourselves.

Then, when he died, he asked a higher level warlock to come kill us for him.

Whine, whine, whine. Such a baby. (If you attack people who can kill you, don't complain about dying. It's your fault.)

Terminology, or "If You Don't Know This, You Shouldn't Be Here"

At least, that's what the guy in my Arathi Basin group said when I didn't know what he meant by "Spirit Run." Our graveyard was being camped by 5 horde, and I said so on battleground chat (/bg), and he said to spirit run. Apparently, you can resurrect at any graveyard your side owns, and not just the one you pop up at. (That may seem obvious, but, if you haven't played Arathi Basin before, it's really not.) So you can run in spirit form to the next one if yours is being camped.

Battlegrounds, or "Aren't You Related to Twinkerbell?"

Non-Gamer's Guide to This Post

Battlegrounds are PVP (player-vs-player) games that players join, trying to steal/recover land or flags from the other side (Alliance vs. Horde). They remind me of children's games like capture the flag, hide and seek, or king of the hill.

Whichever battleground you play, you're divided into level brackets (10-19; 20-29; 30-39; and so on). So it's unwise to play a battleground until you're near the top of your bracket. Once a side gets a certain amount of points, the game is over and you leave the battleground.

Marks of Honor are soulbound items that you can trade with battleground vendors to get special things, like gear. If your side wins a battleground, you get 3 marks of honor. If you lose, you get 1.

Twinks are characters that a player has leveled to the top of a certain level bracket (usually 19 or 29) and then decked out in the very best gear available. Twinks are unfair to players with normal characters, but they aren't against the rules.

Playing Late, or "I Don't HAVE a Bedtime"

I love not being in school anymore. By the time midnight rolls around on a weeknight, I know most of the teenagers are crawling into bed, muttering about how early school is.

I got to sleep at 7a.m. and just got up. I might say it was because I was partying all night, but I wasn't, though there were some minor shindigs -- I went to a church teen awards ceremony that was fun, but it ended by 10, and I did stay up until 1a.m. watching a movie with my husband and his friends, but they went home right after, and then I caught the end of Deep Blue Sea with the hubby, which is one of the few movies that doesn't have a guy and girl making out at the end because the woman dies, and it's just LL Cool J and this blonde guy, and nobody wants to see them making out.

The truth is that I just couldn't turn my brain off, and so couldn't get to sleep.

And my tea during Deep Blue Sea might have been caffeinated.

Fortunately for me, most people with school and work in the morning don't stay up until insane hours like I do, so the game is fairly sparse late at night on the N. American realms. This means more nodes I can pick up, fewer bosses being camped, and a wonderful feeling of being left alone.

Unfortunately, this is probably bad for my life, health, and work, and it's certainly been bad for my church attendance, so we're "correcting" our schedule this week. *sigh* Goodbye late-night gaming.

Collector's Edition Pets, or "Is It Wrong to Want Blizzard Dead?"

It's not like we don't have enough trouble with pets when the cutest things you can get are cats, rabbits, and prairie dogs. We don't need Blizzard to screw us even more.

[Yes, prairie dogs are third in cuteness of what I've seen so far, and they're not that cute. But of course, this list doesn't include the Children's Week turtle. Adorable. (We'll get to him May 7-14, which is Children's Week.)]

No, they're saving the REALLY cute pets for people who shell out more money than everyone else. "You were obsessive enough to pay us gads of money for the exact same product," says Blizzard, "so here's a little consolation prize. We're sorry we screwed you. . . . Well, okay, not that sorry."

See, my problem isn't that collector's edition people get little extras, like uber-cute pets. It's that us ordinary folk DON'T get really cute pets. They don't even have to be as cute as the C.E. pets, as long as we just get something that's cuter than what we have now. Like maybe a sheep. I would definitely buy a sheep. It's no sleepy baby panda or baby murloc, but I do like sheep.

Montage at 19, or "Do I Like Screenshots Too Much?"

These are pictures taken from an email thread with my favorite people ever. So I have a collection to choose from, and you get the best of the best.

Have fun!

(Tip: Click on any of the images to see the full version.)

Duel, or "If You Ask Me One More Time, I'm Putting You On IGNORE"

Non-Gamer's Guide to This Post

Ignore is a command in your social panel. You can add someone as a friend in this panel, which means you're notified when they log on and off, or you can ignore a person who is harassing you or just being annoying.

A duel is when one person on the same side (Alliance or Horde) asks another person on the same side to fight. Neither character dies, but the characters fight until one is down to no health. Then the duel is over and the players go their separate ways.

When someone is invited to duel, the invitee has the option of accepting or declining. Sometimes a player will ask the same person to duel over and over again, hoping to annoy them into an "accept duel."

Yoink, or "Taking What You're After While Your Butt is Being Kicked"

Everyone has experienced it. You're running along, minding your own business, when a small yellow dot appears on your mini-map.

You think "Ka-ching," let out a /cheer, and head straight for it.

A yellow dot, for you non-players, is a mining or herb node. It means there are useful things that you can scavenge in that spot -- sometimes really expensive or rare things. Once a node is scavenged, it disappears for a certain amount of time and then reappears so other players passing by can get it. The time it takes to reappear is just long enough to discourage players from sticking around and waiting for it to come back.

The Armory, or "Stalking Warcraft Style"

The official website has a new feature in beta -- The Armory. You can now spy on any player you want to. Gear, skills, talents, reputation.

So if you wanted to watch my progress, you'd go here.

Or if you wanted to check on our old pal Zulox from the "Taurens are BIG" post, you'd go here.

Happy stalking, everyone.

Snowshoe Rabbit, or "For the Love of God, STOP!"

The Snowshoe Rabbit vendor is at Amberstill Ranch in Dun Morogh, north of the road between Kharanos and Ironforge.

This is what the ranch looks like from the road:

Profiles, or "What is Your Character Doing While You're Out?"

Birdfall (Night Elf Rogue)

Birdfall is a no-nonsense kind of girl who goes by her family name rather than her embarrassing first name, a name she would kill me for telling you. She's tough, quiet, and doesn't let her guard down with anyone but her close friends. Brought up just outside of Darnassus by her wise, moon-loving grandmother, she would rather spend an evening sharpening her knives in a shady corner than dancing on tabletops in the local inn.

She has no current romantic interests and mixed feelings about children. As a rogue, she would not be a good role model for her children, and her own life would be constantly in the balance. But as a woman, she would like to have a family some day with a sensible, responsible man.

Addons, or "I Know I Left That Mining Node Around Here Somewhere"

Addons are programs that help with Warcraft, such as a program that keeps track of the things you and your guild have gathered (mining, herbs), or another program that keeps track of auction prices.

General Addons

Feel free to suggest something you've used or heard about.

• Gatherer: (wiki) Permanently marks herb, mining, and treasure nodes on your map.
• Auctioneer: (wiki) Remembers what has been sold at the AH and for how much.
• Titan: (wiki) Panel that gives you the correct time, your location on the map, bag space, etc.
• Decursive: A cleaning mod to help a debuff class remove status ailments, etc with ease.
  
• Party Quest: Keeps track of all party member's quests.
  
• MonkeyQuest: (wiki) Keeps better track of quests.
• Flight Timer: Keeps track of flight times.
• Easy Casting Bar: Nicer taskbar.
• Social Mods: Allows player notes. (requires Sea)

Class-Related Addons

• DruidBar: Bar for druids.

Addon Sites

• World of Warcraft @ Curse
• Cosmos UI
  

Official Forums, or "Run Far, Far Away"

I had a bad experience on the Warcraft official forums recently. I wrote a post here about it, but I deleted it because if I dwell I'll just keep crying. In the end, it was a guy making a joke that I called him on, and people got mad at me.

The moral of the story is, if you need something, don't go to the forums. Just ask me for help, or a friend. I'll do my best if it's in my power -- I really will. But nobody needs to go through the kind of trash that I did today.

My husband made me promise I'd never go back to that forum, ever. I agreed, but went on while he watched to delete all of my posts and links to this blog. I didn't read any of the new posts or any of the old. Part of getting past something is learning to let it go.

As a happy ending, my friends are going to rally forces to help me with what I wanted: getting a Bombay cat. So I never have to ask strangers for help again.