Warlords of Draenor & Other Games

It's been a full & exciting few weeks for me since I got my new PC and the super duper graphics card that came with it! Just last week, the NDA was lifted on Wildstar so I can reveal that it was that game that had me so fired up to get the PC! I've been playing it a fair bit but I am struggling with some stuff.

It's not an easy, stroll through zones, collect XP type of game by any means! Oh heck no, this game is making me work for almost every single thing and I'm actually enjoying it! It's taken me a few tries with different characters to find a class I like straight off - strangely enough, given my problems with melee in WoW, it seems the Warrior in WS is my best class so far! I've pretty much decided to buy the pre-order for Wildstar in the next week or so but I won't be giving up on WoW either!

Blizzard announced 20th December as release date for Warlords of Draenor but have set-up the free level 90 boost as available with pre-orders now. I won't be pre-ordering for a while yet as I have plenty of other options to be playing in the meantime. Maybe I'm in denial or just straight disbelief but December? really Blizzard? You rushed us through all those patches so fast, I got burned out & totally discouraged because I couldn't keep up and now you're going to make us wait almost a year for new stuff? And you have the nerve to ask me to pre-order now? Yeah right! We all know my answer to that although I'm too polite to type it out here!

You may have noticed my last few posts have been about free iPad games - this is linked to the One Minute Gaming segment I've been doing - and I have to say, I'm having a blast playing all these 'silly' little games! I've got a few really good ones coming up, thanks to some suggestions from Mike & Scott plus I've found a few myself.

Also this last 2 weeks, I've been in St Louis and the first week of my visit, we enjoyed the excellent company of Selltacular & his wife, Goooomba - they popped over to St Louis to see us & we pretty much spent our time eating or trying to decide where to eat! It was great fun though & was wonderful to finally meet some twitter friends for real.

I've also been having a little dabble in League of Legends - it's very different from anything I've played before and my first impression is that it's all my WoW PvP nightmares built into one game but I'll give it a bit more of a try before I decide for sure!

Another game I played quite a bit before my trip to USA is Path of Exile - it's a bit like Diablo 3 but it's totally free. I haven't played much Diablo 3 but if PoE stays free then I don't think I'll be worrying about buying D3!

I also managed to get into an  Elder Scrolls Online beta just before my trip - I think I managed a couple of hours before I had to do something else and the game grabbed me so much, I haven't even been back! I will give it another chance if I can but I won't be paying for it on my current impressions.

So yeah, lots of new games on my horizon, all opened up by the new PC but also by the possible really long wait for Warlords of Draenor - Fall? Really? Bah!

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Still Here, Still Talking!

oh to fly away again!

Last time I posted, I was deep into Neverwinter & enjoying my holiday. Now I've been back a couple of weeks & it honestly feels like I've never been away - work was kind of backed up when I returned & this week I moved desks to start my new position. I've just signed a 12 month contract to cover maternity & sick leave for the Accounts Assistant.

Timing wasn't the best though - the boss lady is on vacation herself this week so I had 2-3 days with her last week & spent most of this week pretty much trying to work out how to do stuff from what they did last time! It's nice to be using my brain again, that's for sure!

As far as Neverwinter goes - I'm still playing although not so much. I was playing my Cleric with Cold of Cold's Gold Factory and as he is on massive overtime at the moment, we've not been able to match up our schedules! So that's left me with WoW again - I actually did a dungeon this week - Heroic Scholomance with my favorite guildie. He was surprised I didn't know my way around until I told him I'd only been through there 1 or 2 times ages & ages ago!

I'd prepared him for my rubbish DPS but he'd made a couple of suggestions before the queue popped & I think it helped because my DPS wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it was! After we got out of there, he joined a group for Nalak & dragged me along there too - I got the ilevel 522 legs from the boss loot & got them again on my bonus roll - how frustrating! So now my item level is 467 and I'm running out of excuses to not do LFR!

I also reached exalted with Shado-Pan at last so now I'm doing the August Celestials & Shieldwall Offensive work orders on my Tillers farm. I will get all the reputations eventually - I only need 3 more for the 45 reps achievement & I have 5 Cataclysm factions at revered so I should probably go back & sort those out too!

I also guested on not one but two podcasts this week! On Monday evening, I joined Phatlewts, Goblin Raset, Manthieus & Novitsh for the Happy Hour Roundtable podcast to discuss the upcoming patch 5.4 and some of the PTR notes. It was great fun and nice to hear some non-US accents for a change.

Then this morning, I joined my fellow Brit goldmaker extraordinaire Marcus Ty for episode 7 of his podcast - The Journal of Marcus Ty. When I tell you the skype call was 3 hours long, don't worry, we didn't record the whole time & Marcus is great at editing! It was great fun & I hope you can hear how much we enjoyed putting the show together for you - it's not published yet but if you're feeling curious, I was also a guest on episode 3 so you can hear my crazy Brit accent!

So I have promised myself to get more time in WoW next week - I have pets to collect & battle, gold to make & achievements to work on even if I don't really play any alts! With the Midsummer Festival XP bonus though - now might be a good time to push my 3 level 85/86's towards 90 - at least that will give me more choices of what not to play at end game!

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School of Hard Knocks - Oh Yeah, Well-named!

So I took a week or so off Wow, not realising it was Children's Week - which is a bit of a nuisance as the Children's Week achievement is the last one I need for the meta-achievement & more importantly, the Violet Proto Drake. So yesterday morning, I woke up promising myself a day of PvP if it killed me!

That was at about 8am but by 11am I still hadn't logged in to game - I actually did some long-overdue housework as a way to delay the PvP experience! Now I know you guys don't know me very well but let's just say, housework is really not high on my list of priorities in life so I was grasping at straws by using it as a delaying tactic!

Eventually though, everything was shiny & clean & I couldn't find anything else to distract me so I logged in & went & found my Orphan. I've done a bit of PvP over the last few years but usually on a lowbie or on my Hunter. This time around, my hunter is still sitting in Halfhill in level 85 Cataclysm leveling gear so I figured my Paladin was probably my only option for this attempt.

The annoying thing is when everyone says PvP is easy or just got to keep trying - believe me, I have tried, many times but the four objectives required for the achievement have never happened in any PvP battleground for me, let alone when I really need to do them for the achieve!

I eventually managed to assault a flag in Arathi Basin - I thought I had it on the 4th battleground but it seems I clicked a little prematurely & merely defended the base instead of assaulting it! In the 5th AB, I just missed the Gold Mine flag as some nice person used a speed boost/sprint gizmo & beat me to it. That battleground was a whitewash almost - the Horde team had us hemmed in at the stables & were camping the graveyard. It felt totally useless to keep trying but I managed to slip away & raced to the Lumbermill, around a big fight at the edge of the road there. I was super lucky & all the Horde had gone to join in the huge gankfest happening below so I just sauntered up to the flag & finally, after so much annoyance & fruitless efforts earlier, I clicked the flag & the cast time happened without getting sapped or dazed or insta-killed!

I think I'd have kept this orphan!

So next I thought I'd try Warsong Gulch - I love WSG as a lowbie but although I have managed to carry the flag there a few times, I usually either heal or protect our flag carrier from range. I was advised to camp the flagroom & hope I could return a dropped flag but it seems the Horde had their strongest PvP teams out yesterday - our flag carrier never even got to their base & their flag carrier arrived with about 3 healers & 2 rogues as his escort. I did manage to slow him down but I'm no match for 2 rogues - ever! Even bad rogues have fun with me, I'm that bad at pvp!

So three attempts at Warsong Gulch & no glimmer of returning a flag, I thought I'd try Eye of the Storm - it's about the only place I have ever managed to cap a flag previously so I was a little hopeful. I had three more attempts there before realising that Sunday afternoon at the end of Children's Week, is probably not the best time to try. I didn't even queue for Alterac Valley - I usually just follow the masses there & if I die, I get lost. I hate that place so after all my failed attempts, I just couldn't face it.

I did manage to pick up 2 more of the Children's Week pets though - I was hoping to take more than one alt around the quests to get the remaining 3 that I don't have but I got sidetracked (which is another post) again & never logged back in last night!

Not the best of my weeks in WoW but I've needed this achievement for 3 years straight now & honestly, this is the first time I've even tried it! As one of my favourite podcasts have a habit of saying - I guess I should put it on the board - under long term goals & take steps to practice a lot harder before this time next year!

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Yet More Changes at Casa Nev!

Last week I mentioned that I had a job for the next 10-12 weeks & here we are on a Sunday afternoon & I'm just waking up from a much needed afternoon nap! My body clock time keeping has changed drastically over the last few years to the point that actually getting to sleep before 2am is near impossible which hasn't been a problem whilst I've not been working!

Now though, I'm awake at 7am & by 4pm, I have no idea how I'm staying awake for that last hour of work, let alone driving home! I have been able to sleep by 1am though so I'm guessing another week or two & I'll be back to a 'normal' sleep pattern.

So what's the next lot of change coming to Casa Nev, I hear you ask? Well, I started this blog originally to talk about WoW stuff that wasn't gold related. It turns out I don't have as much non-goldmaking stuff to talk about as I thought but I do have lots of other stuff going on in my life so I think I'm going to change the direction of my posts here.

I have an Etsy shop & a couple of Zazzle shops for my photography & fractals, I write pages at Squidoo on all sorts of stuff, I have WoW stuffs, I'm learning new cooking styles & of course, I have my new single life stuff. So I thought rather than start yet another blog, I'd just re-purpose this one! Luckily 'She Rides Dragons' isn't an obviously WoW name so I don't even have to worry about changing that :)

The only WoW stuff I've done in the evenings this week is to relist my auctions & do the Tailoring & Leatherworking cooldowns to get the new PvP patterns.

I did get my priest moving over Easter weekend - she's almost 86 now :P Yeah, I may have forgotten how slow leveling a priest is even with almost all ilevel 415 blue crafted gear! It's almost as if I've lost the ability to quest for hours or even do anything productive in game. Again, I'm sure I'll settle down again eventually so I'm not going to stress it for now.

I'll still be doing some WoW posts here - especially the to-do list ones as I find they help me stay focused in game but with everything else going on, sometimes I just need to get my other thoughts out there too. I'm not totally sure quite what will end up here but I hope you'll tag along out of curiosity if nothing else!

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