Children's Week 2010, or "Preparation, Preparation, Preparation"

I will be trimming the older posts to reflect updated information for this year, so if you want achievements and all that, use the links provided.

• Alliance Azeroth
• Horde Azeroth
• Outlands
• Northrend
• Achievements

This post will be about preparing to take advantage of opportunities.

BattleNet Chat, or "Cleaning Up Your Friends List"

I have a long friends list.

Very long.

But I don't have many people on it.

You see, my brother is an altoholic; my husband switches his main every expansion; and my husband's best friend has 9 level 80's so that he can employ every profession in the game -- including all three tailoring specialties and all three alchemy masteries.

I have all these alts in my friends list.

NSFW, or "Well, Not Really, But I'm a Prude"

I seriously can't keep this to myself. I think it's hilarious, but it'll probably make my brother feel very awkward, so I'm putting it after the break.

White Polar Bear, or "Still Proving You Can Solo The Mount Grind"

This makes 91. I've been able to follow my own 100 mount solo guide, and I expect to be done before Cataclysm.

When I got this, I entered the living room where husband and his best friend were watching movies. Husband is still farming this mount. I wrung my hands and said, "Now, don't cry . . . but I just got the White Polar Bear on my fourth try."

Husband's best friend rolled his eyes and said, "Of course."

Husband glanced up. "So you Beth'd it."

"Yeah."

"That's awesome. I do hate you a little, though."

Then he high-fived me, smiled, and I giggled and puttered back to my computer.

"Beth"-ing something is getting an item ridiculously easily. Phoenix in 3 tries, Deathcharger in 59, White Polar Bear in 4.

Please take a moment to just sit and hate me.

Done? K. You should also be aware that WarcraftMounts has put up a new site design and it's incredibly awesome. I especially love the changes to collections, which used to be mount icons but now has the actual mounts shown, and had a previously clunky user interface that they've fixed. In the main browsing sections, the images of mounts are smaller for faster loading, the navigation is more streamlined, and the new layout looks fresh and inviting.

And while I'm on general mount news, you should have heard by now that Cataclysm will let you train 310% flight speed instead of it being limited to only a few mounts. If there's a pretty flier you don't use because another is faster, this is good news because they'll scale up.

Kalu'ak Derby, or "To Share or Not to Share?"

I had an interesting experience while at the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby today. I was, indeed, one of those people who landed next to someone else and started fishing from the same pool. I know, I know, I hate it when it's done to me, but it is a contest and if that's the only pool nearby...

One of the other fishermen whispered me and said that the time wasted traveling vs fishing when you share a pool slows you down.

I replied that sharing a pool is better than no pool.

We discussed it briefly, he mentioned that it's true for the Stranglethorn Tournament (someone did the math on El's) but perhaps not so much for the Kalu'ak (which is more random). Looking at the Kalu'ak page, El still recommends not sharing pools, though I don't know if there's any math attached.

My husband's best friend says that it doesn't matter if you arrive late to the Derby. As long as you arrive before someone else wins, you're still as much in the running as you would have been otherwise because of some weird "chance to catch goes up as contest goes on" thing.

One thing I do know is that Alliance has an advantage in a race to the turn-in. It's much closer to that side of Dalaran, and if Alliance and Horde hearth at the same time, the Alliance will win (unless their loading time is pure crap). It's not something Blizz thinks is a problem, but if you've ever lost by moments as Horde, you know it really is.

To help your hearth go faster, El says to set your graphics as low as possible except for Spell Detail. Also, Engineers can make X-Ray specs which make everyone nude, so you don't have to load anyone's gear.

Now, what do you think about all this? Practicality, ethics, tips.... have at it.

Winterspring Kitteh, or "Bit of a Grind"

I thought I wasn't going to get this mount just because of the rep grind, but then I did a little and realized I could grind it while watching really bad movies on Hulu.

The nice thing is that, as a rep grind, you don't have to wait on RNG to smile on you. For me, it's been a few days of grinding. I did most of Revered in just one day, hitting it as hard as I could, and that's the longest part. (Also, you can get Timbermaw rep at the same time if you do the prerequisite quests to get the drops.)

The hardest part for me was getting through Friendly and into Honored to open up the third quest. There's not much of a flow to the first two quests, but once you have three you can get into a solid farming groove -- run southeast to the Ursas, kill the camp; run south to the giants, kill the giants; run back up to the Ursas and kill what's respawned; run north and kill the bears and chimeras; turn everything in; repeat.

Yes, it takes time. But 2-4 really dedicated Saturdays should get you there. You'll only need patience and dedication and something to entertain you during the mindlessness.

Arena Tournament, or "No New Pet"

"While it would be cool to provide a new pet, we're not necessarily trying to encourage as many people as possible to pay $20 and sign up for this tournament ultimately because they want a new pet. It's a nice perk to encourage people, but we don't want the Arena Tournament to be a more complicated version of the Pet Store. We want players who are serious about competing to sign up for the tournament, not just a reason to take in more money through offering a new vanity pet with each new tournament." (Source)

I heartily approve.

LOL, or "Buy My Guild"

I showed husband the 30 or so mails from Birdfall to my bank alt for materials to disenchant before Cataclysm. I have 3 full guild bank tabs on my bank alt and don't want to spend 1,000g for a fourth just in case they give us account-wide banks in the xpack.

So I started running an alt to Stormwind to use alt banks, since I have some free alt slots on my server.

When I get in there, I see in Trade "Selling guild, 10g."

I whisper "Any bank tabs?"

"Two."

I mentally rub my hands together and offer to buy.

Death Horsie, or "Kill Number 59"

Squee! I injured my husband when I got this. From squealing too loud. >_> Whoops.

Directions for the grind are here and have been edited to include the tips I've learned along the way.

Better, or "Not As Good As You Think You Are"

I might get in trouble for talking about this, but I'm going to anyway.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is summed up pretty easily -- people with low skill (or "competence") don't realize that they have low skill. They don't have the ability to understand that they're not as good as everyone else. (This can be fixed by raising their competence level, which will allow them to recognize that they were previously incompetent, but until that time they are unable to recognize skill in others or lack of skill in themselves.)

People who have high skill (or "competence") tend to think that they have average skill because they assume other people have "equivilant understanding." That is, they think other people can grasp the same things they do.

Thus, people who are utterly incompetent believe themselves to be average and people who are very competent tend to put themselves just slightly above average.

Celestial Steed Buyable

Heavy edits on this post because the news has broken very quickly.

The Celestial Steed mount that everyone thinks is super-pretty and I theorized would fall off of Arthas's Mom is actually being sold for $25 from the Blizzard Store and will be account-bound like the pets -- thus it will go to all of your present and future characters -- and is usable as a ground mount in no-fly zones. (I guessed that the Steed would be $30 and sent to all characters.) I love things that are account bound.

Also the Lil' XT pet is up for the normal $10. He has the voice of that silly Ulduar boss, so if you like that boss you can hear him anytime with the pet.

Personally, I'm excited about these. The Celestial Steed is an exquisite mount, and plenty of people would get enjoyment from it. As my Guild Leader said, "Very affordable. It'll be all over the place, but @#$% it's awesome."

Husband wants one, and I told him to go for it. He's sad that it'll be everywhere, but he's going to "Enjoy this for me, and try not to care about who else has one." I told him that when they put a new mount up on the store, everyone will start using that and only the people who really love this one will keep using it, and he agreed that I'm usually right about this sort of thing (I love it when men say the woman is right).

General Update

I haven't been posting much, so I thought I'd let everyone know what's going on.

I'm still working through my Vitamin D deficiency. I didn't want to mention it before, but one of my symptoms was depression. I'm taking it seriously and taking meds, exercising, getting sunlight, and eating leafy greens, but part of depression is that you're less interested in fun things. A major component for me is that I'm stalled in my writing, and even though I'm much better (I've stopped crying every day, I'm more cheerful, and I'm even doing housework again and enjoying WoW), I'm still pretty paralyzed about my work. I don't know what it should feel like to be "cured" but I'm working hard at it. :)

I'm expecting a nephew in July. Nephew = babysitting = getting peed on = eep! I'll still be around, but life is changing.

Husband's Best Friend (who I've mentioned in more than a few posts is a raid leader and someone we consider family) is moving to our town (from across the country) on Monday. Most of our free time will be spent with him irl for the next week or two, though I still have some free time during the day.

The most influential delay in me posting, though, is that there's not much new to talk about WoW-wise. All the class-specific blogs are going nuts with the class changes, but until we start getting some pointless fun things announced, I'm a little "meh." I'll keep up with the news, though, and blather when something makes me giggly.

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Thank you all for being so nice and continuing to read! I started this blog to just jot my thoughts down, keep memories from the game, and maybe explain WoW to people who hadn't played MMOs before. I never had aspirations to get any sort of regular readership, but I'm happy if I've managed to entertain people along the way. :)

Here's to another year of pointless pretty things!

Dark Talbuk Farming, or "Massive Grind Meets Fun Group Activity"

The Dark Talbuks, aka PVP Talbuks, aka Halaa Talbuks.

Cataclysm Yay, or "What Are You Looking Forward To?"

Flying Mounts in Azeroth

The moment I started dreaming of the phoenix mount, I had this vision in my head of Dustfire on it in Orgrimmar. At the time, it wasn't remotely a possibility, as back in Burning Crusade we'd just gotten flying and Blizz was discouraging in their responses on taking it to Azeroth.

So what I'm looking forward to is being able to fulfill not only that vision but also to keep my characters in their home cities. I'm excited about the cities coming back as useful hubs, since it just seems right.

New Mount, or "More Reasons to Level Alts"

The Recruit-a-Friend Zhevra is going away and being replaced with that 2-seater rocket that got datamined a while back.

Recruit-a-Friend was great when I had characters I wanted to level quickly, and the Zhevra was spiffy, but now I'm not sure if it's worth it for me.

If you have an alt you've been wanting to race to 60, though, a passenger flier has a ton of utility for your main and Recruit-a-Friend is just a little extra money. I would not suggest doing this only for the mount, but it's a great way to get some alts up fast.

Noblegarden 2010, or "So Easy A Level 1 Can Do It"

Am I joking? No. My husband's best friend decided that his bank character, to be as swank as possible, needed a title. "The Noble." I'll be interviewing him after the break.

I rabbit costumed Husband's Best Friend's Bank Alt in Un'goro for [Hard Boiled] and decided to teach a level 52 the foolishness of killing a level 1 with two 80 escorts. Final score: 4 me, 1 his rogue main with a full 5 minute chase where he tried to up his score to 2 (he was angry that I ruined his escort quest) and a wacky aftermath where I hid and my druid friend came back and encouraged me to yell random 4-letter words such as "Hiya!" and "Pink!" to lure the rogue out so he could pounce him.

(I conspicuously left all the other alliance in the area alone, waving and smiling and letting them get the thorium I wanted if they reached it first.)

He didn't come back to try and kill me, but I did get whispered and asked for help with a quest because I'd made my presence known with all that yelling. I didn't reply because I didn't want to go back out with a homicidal main parked in the area and gunning for me. I also had gotten all the kills on his alt that I wanted, so I hearthed.

Moral of that story? Violence begets violence which begets more violence.

Polymorph Rabbit, or "The Best Spell Icon EVER"

Seriously. Have you seen it?

Bask.

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While you're at it, you may want other polymorph spells to round out your collection. I made a pig and turtle guide in 2007, and the Black Cat is 2k gold if exalted with the Kirin Tor.

I made a polymorph macro for my character, settling on a simple one after tinkering with focuses:

#showtooltip Polymorph(Rabbit)

/castrandom Polymorph(Rank 4),Polymorph(Rabbit),Polymorph(Black Cat),Polymorph(Pig)

/emote turns %t into something delicious.

The result is that my polymorph button shows the rabbit face (because it's awesome) and chooses a random poly to use.

I also auto-emote "[Character] turns [target] into something delicious." This is because she's a Draenei who will become a Worgen when I'm able to race change her, and I think a Worgen would like to eat all of the available polymorphs. Don't you?

Noblegarden Tomorrow

Which is, like, 2 hours from now. I stay up late. >_>

I don't think there's anything to add this year, but I'll try to come up with a little something.

See my Noblegarden 2009 guide for your holiday needs.

And mages, don't forget to get the [Polymorph: Rabbit] this year!!

Rant, or "When You Can't Escape"

This is a rant. This is venting. This will be neither logical nor happy.

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I get husband to do heroics with me, he's a healer, he's awesome, his gear is a little on the low side, but s'okay. We get stuff done.

I start asking for achievements for the Red Proto Drake meta, just collecting 5-man heroic achievements when and where we can, and for the most part people are willing to try and if we can't do it we say so and do stuff the normal way.

We get a couple solid achievements done, all of the ones in Drak'tharon Keep, and then joy of joys! We get into OCULUS! A random Oculus!! It has a MOUNT CHANCE! Add to my collection, GO!

I'm super-excited even though the tank and dps drop group immediately, and we wait for another tank and dps and it's cool, everything's good, because we're in OCULUS! Wheeeee!

Outfit of the Month, or "Mix and Match Your Nature Look"

I spotted this on Moon Guard on a druid in the bank. (As usual, please don't replicate verbatim if you're on Moon Guard alliance. If you really like it, tweak the outfit with a cloak, gloves, or headpiece.)

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Requirements

• Leather
• Druid
• Level 66

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• Cloth Chest: Greenweave Robe
• Leather Shoulders: Cenarion Spaulders

Jeweled Pole, or "Theming It Out"

I've been farming for the Jeweled Fishing Pole since Wrath came out. Not every day, but off and on. It's the only thing aside from 25-mans I still do on Dusty.

Today, I finished my daily quest and thought "Yaaaay, let's get my boring bag full of deviate fish and grey junk."

JEWELED FISHING POLE!!!!

Squee!

/dance