Wednesday 28 August 2013

A Tale of Two Bears - Alt Appreciation Week


In the spirit of Laeleiweyn's Alt Appreciation week, I guess I should tell you about my druid Cassieopia but as she's been sitting in Honor Hold since the middle of Cataclysm, there's not much to tell really! So I thought I would tell you a story about my first friend in WoW.

It was early October 2009 - I know this because it involves my main character questing through the Quarry area in the Wetlands so she was only level 22-ish and I know she still only had a bunch of 6 slot bags because that's part of the story! It was early on a Sunday morning, maybe around 7am or so and as I was dying a lot to the dinosaurs in the quarry, a young Mage came & helped me out.

As is so often the case, we got chatting and continued to quest together for a while. I kept having to run to a vendor/mailbox to empty my bags & it was driving my new companion crazy! He told me to stay put, he'd be right back so I sat my Paladin's bum down and waited. A few minutes later, my new friend was back and immediately opened a trade window. I was gobsmacked! Four shiny new Netherweave Bags and all that space! I tried to refuse them but he wouldn't let me so I promised I would pay him back as soon as I could. We continued questing for another hour or so then we both had to log off to attend to real life stuff. He asked if he could add me to his friends list & I did the same.

Roll forward a couple of days & I hadn't seen my new friend online at all. I must admit, I was kind of disappointed as it had been great fun chatting & questing but I assumed it was just one of those fleeting moments. Then I got a whisper from someone called Cuddlie, a giant bear jumping around in front of me in Stormwind. He asked me how I was getting on with my new bagspace so I realised it was my friend. What I didn't realise when I first met him was that he was the GM of one of the largest, most successful raiding guilds on my server!

Our friendship continued and he would often take me & my husband through dungeons - boosting us, guiding us & generally being a really great mentor. I had no idea of loot roll etiquette until he told me, rather hesitatingly that rolling 'need' on everything was bad! He also had a Hunter called Elf as well as a whole bunch of other alts but it was his Druid that was his main & probably the one I remember best. It turned out the Mage I had met was his son's alt that had been abandoned but over the next few months, the Mage & I continued to level together occasionally.

When all the guild drama happened & I needed somewhere to go, I joined his raiding guild as a social. It was very very different from what I'd experienced so far in game & although it was nice enough, I never really felt comfortable there so I left to join a guild called Bloodthirsty Meerkats - I just loved the name but that's another story!

I don't know where Cuddlie disappeared to though - towards the end of Cataclysm, I know his real life intruded into his game time a lot more & his guild disintegrated as he couldn't give it the time it needed. He was the driving force and when he had to step back, no-one else either could or would take the reins. Last I heard from him he was struggling but he was quite a private guy & I never knew much of the story. I often wonder where he is now & hope he's ok.

I do know he was chuffed to bits when he first met my Hunter - I went all over the place looking for a certain colour bear to tame & of course, I named my bear Cuddlie, in honour of my first in-game friend. I still run with my bear pet - I could never replace him!

So that's my first Bear story. My second Bear story is a little shorter - a fellow Brit & gold blogger who lives not too far away from me, also runs a Bear. Gimpsgold was one of my first British WoW friends & one of my first Twitter friends too - he even let me practise my healing on my Priest in a few Cataclysm dungeons as I later found out, he knew he wouldn't die no matter how bad my healing was!

What is it about Bears? I've met & chatted to quite a few over the years & they have all been lovely. I've actually only really known two healer Druids - one was a complete bitch & wrecked the guild & the other was just kinda weird all round! Needless to say, my own abandoned Druid is a Bear too - I just hope that one day, I'll be one of the good Bears!




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Saturday 24 August 2013

Alt Appreciation Week - Death Knight

Riding Her Black Drake from Obsidian Sanctum

Laeleiweyn has come up with a great idea - Alt Appreciation Weeks - running for 11 weeks (or maybe longer apparently!) and as the name implies, celebrating a different class each week. This week is Death Knight week and better late than never I suppose but I have no idea how I missed this during the week! Being so late to the party, I can't really celebrate by playing my DK much but I can tell you a little of her story :)

Aww, She Blinked
I started the DK early in the summer before Cataclysm arrived. I got her to 75 around about November 2010 and there she sat for a few months. She was leveled to be my Scribe as glyphs were a hot market in those days and at 75, she could max out to 450 in Wrath. Then all my guild drama happened and I found myself pretty much lost & alone in game which is when I really turned to gold making and as part of that, my lovely gorgeous Draenai DK became not only my Scribe but my Jewelcrafter too.

During Cataclysm, I spent more time on her than on my main Paladin. I hated the changes to Holy Power & just could not get my head around the new rotation for Pallys. I also lost a lot of my confidence when I tried my first heroic dungeon on my Paladin - Heroic Grim Batol - never was a dungeon so aptly named - 45 minutes of the others bitching at me before I finally left the group and to this day, I still haven't completed that achievement!

So I turned to my DK - dual wield Frost spec at the time, I felt like I was doing ok mostly and I loved the whole Path of Frost thing too. Between milling herbs for inks to make glyphs and prospecting ores for gems, she did most of the dungeons in Cataclysm. I almost mogged her too and if you've been reading here or over at AH Addict, you'll know I don't really mog much!

Tidy Tidy!
I took her to Molton Core to farm for Blood of The Mountains - determined to make her the Dark Iron set - until I found out there were replica pieces available from Shattrath vendors! So I sold the Blood of the Mountains for a nice profit and now she's just wearing quest drops again.

So Mists of Pandaria arrived and out came my Paladin again - always my first love, even if I can't play her very well anymore. Oh man did I struggle to get through to 90! I died so many times I felt like she was wearing cloth armor or something. So when it came time to choose my 2nd alt to level, the gold maker in me made me chose the DK - Jewelcrafting & meta gems from drops meant she had to be out in the world but I let my friend talk me into leveling in Blood spec!

Just to try it out, I took her to the Trogg farming place in Deepholm - oh my! that was so much fun! It turns out she's a very neat DK - she likes nice tidy arrangements of dead bodies but sometimes she attracts a little too much attention! She survived though which is something I was never able to do on my Paladin!

She's In There Somewhere!
What a totally different experience that was! She was virtually unkillable in tank spec - slow for sure but I saved so much time not resurrecting every 5 minutes it didn't make that much difference! I  love questing on her now but I still haven't braved any dungeons! I have no idea how to really tank on a DK and I'll be honest - I don't want the nasty people found in randoms to spoil my enjoyment of the class.

I'm planning on dual spec back to Frost though - I want to do stuff on her, just not tank dungeons! She's also my richest alt as JC is still churning in the gold! I should probably treat her to a nice shiny new weapon or something, I think she's earned it!

She's also named after a character in a book - I wonder how many of you recognise it? I thought the ghostly pale skin & the fact that DK's are kind of bad guys was very appropriate so she became one of my 3 alts named after fictional characters. You know me as Nev but that comes from Nevyn - another book character and my priest is yet another but I'll leave her story for her week :)

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Friday 23 August 2013

It's a Holiday Weekend To-Do List!


So last time I made a to-do list was at the end of July and if I'm honest, I haven't actually done any of the things on that list! I'm really quite cross at myself for that but somehow I log in, do my gold making stuff then get distracted by Twitter, Facebook, Candy Crush (shhh! I know ok?) and Magic the Gathering so I never actually kill anything in game!

But having spent a chunk of last weekend installing the new TSM2 (a complicated Auction House addon!) and using it to craft & sell lots this week, I have been spending more time in game & some of my old guildies are back too. So I've promised myself a WoW heavy holiday weekend!

I have 2 new TCG pets to play with too - The Gusting Grimoire & the Eye of the Legion as well as a Vicious Grell to level up. I'm also thinking of swapping my herbalist to be my second Leatherworker ahead of the patch changes & I need Engineering at max level too so my 2nd Tailor may have to start swinging a hammer instead! I really want that new Engineering mount - the Sky Golem!

I was going to level up my abandoned Warlock for the Engineering but to be honest, I've just never connected with her! For some reason, I hate the way she looks and even with a lil bit of transmogging, I still can't seem to make myself play her! Once I've levelled Engineering on my Hunter, I think I'll delete her once & for all and start a new Warlock - if I don't get sidetracked first of course!

So that's my weekend kind of sorted - level 3 pets to 25 on my Hunter so she gets the xp too, drop Tailoring & Herbalism on my Rogue & Hunter & level Engineering & Leatherworking! Still not really proper playing I know but my Paladin will be busy skinning for materials for my new Leatherworker & my Warrior will have to leave the city to go mining if certain stuffs aren't available on the Auction House so maybe I'll actually get around to killing some stuff this time!

I'll let you know how it goes and to be honest, I really need to uninstall Candy Crush! It's a stupid game but I'm the kind of person that doesn't let a stupid game beat her so yeah, it's caught me in its' net! Level 100 could be the final straw though - after 2 days of playing that one level, I could happily throw my ipad through my monitor & I really don't want to do that now do I? lol

have a great weekend everyone xxx

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