P is for Podcasts & Podcasting

I've been listening to World of Warcraft podcasts since about 2010 when I first got interested in gold making and started widening my horizons by joining Twitter. I'd never even heard of podcasts until then but there they were, enticing links plopped down into my Twitter feed which I just had to go and check out! I have a small list of my favorites on the left hand side of this blog but there are loads of others to check out.

My consumption of podcasts is sporadic and my tastes have definitely changed over the years. Initially I listened to general WoW ones like Twisted Nether and All Things Azeroth which were already established at that time but I stumbled over Girls Gone Wow, Auction House Junkies and Rep Grind Radio fairly early too. They were very different in style with explicit tags and I soon found that their irreverent comments and humour suited me better. Sadly Rep Grind Radio and Auction House Junkies are no longer produced but Rez (RGR) teamed up with Cold (AHJ) and later Nonmail to become EGP.

I love guesting on shows and have been lucky enough to be invited to quite a few shows now too - most recently, EGP, Girls Gone WoW, Behind The Avatar, The Chaos Portal and the Journal of Marcus Ty. In fact, Marcus and I hit it off so well, I kind of invited myself to be a co-host!

Working with Marcus is always fun and when I started writing this, I had to go back & check - I started on Episode 8 and we are up to episode 26 already! We're a fortnightly gold making show which is just as well because Real Life is kicking our butts timewise at the moment. I'm not sure we'd manage a weekly show.

We cover any news that relates to gold making and try to find gold making angles to other news as well. Then we go back and chat about various established gold making ideas and methods - we both feel strongly about helping or teaching newer gold makers rather than being cutting edge experimental types!

I even had an idea for my own show but the timing wasn't right for me and like all good ideas, someone else came up with it too and actually got it going. I'm still kicking myself over that but I felt I wouldn't have been able to maintain it properly and with hindsight, it turns out my gut instinct at that time was correct.

Medical and financial constraints hit hard just after I had my idea - I didn't have a decent headset for starters and my PC was too old to handle audio file editing. I know I would have wanted a proper recording set-up, including a suitable microphone like the Blue Snowball everyone seems to use. I still only have a headset but I've upgraded it from the grocery store one I had before! I bought the Creative Fata1ity headset as it had good reviews and was much more in my price range. I like it and can wear it for 5 hours at a time without getting uncomfortable.

I'm still toying with the idea of doing my own show (Podcasting for Dummies anyone?) but I need a good idea first! In the meantime, I've been asked to do a couple of bumpers - it seems my American friends love my British accent! I'm also thinking about joining Fiverr and doing some voice work! I might as well try & earn a few dollars whilst I'm learning, right? I'm definitely continuing my One Minute Gaming segment and learning more about editing and producing decent audio too. Will I ever do my own show? I really don't know but I think I'd like to, maybe, one day!

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Level a Pet to 25 Quickly? Yes Please!

Pet Dragon? Yes please!

Hmmm so I promised myself more WoW time & somehow I managed to spend about 4 hours in game yesterday & lost most of this morning there too! Yesterday was spent sorting out banks and crafting lots of things to sell after I bought a whole bunch of stuff of the Auction House but that's a story for my other blog AH Addict!

Today I popped in to just do my auctions & use my cooldowns on my various alts. I had no intention of really playing anything as I have a long list of stuff I should be doing. But when I logged my Hunter to make my living steel for today, she was over in Deadwind Pass & there was an Arcane Eye pet just in front of me so I just had to try to get it!

I was a guest on EGP about 3 weeks ago but it seems like much longer (sad face here) and Rez is just a wee bit addicted to pet battles. One of the subjects he talked about in that episode is how to level a pet to 25 quickly. By capturing level 16-18 Arcane Eyes with lowish level mechanical team then jumping to Dragonblight with the Arcane Eyes team to get the level 21-22 Condors, you can skip a lot of the in-between leveling. The forum post that explains it in more detail reckons you can do it in an hour but it's taken me much longer just to get 2 uncommon (green) quality Arcane Eyes and just as I was getting fed up & had promised myself just one more, I snagged a rare (blue) quality one too!

So that kind of got me buzzing again but I couldn't be bothered to drag an alt all the way over to Dragonblight. I had my DK over there just 3 days ago but had decided I wasn't going to need her for a while so hearthed her back to Half Hill just yesterday! I decided to try for the Eastern Kingdom Trainers quest - the one where you have to beat 5 trainers? Yeah that one! My Clockwork Robot is level 16 now because it took me so long to get those Arcance Eyes & I have a level 17 rare Arcane Eye and my Mr Grubbs is level 14ish and I thought I could do it. I did manage to get the first 4 done but that nasty dwarf Durin Darkhammer has some horrible tricks up his sleeve!

I've found a helpful bit on Wowhead in the comments though and apparently I need a level 17 magic/aquatic/beast combo so I guess I need to do some more leveling before I can tackle him & his pets! I think I'll focus on getting at least one to level 25 first though - that will let me capture some higher level wild pets & hopefully that will make fighting him easier! Guess I'm off to Dragonblight after all then!

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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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