And on the seventh day …

Actual conversation from Vent during an Ulduar raid:

Shadow Priest (upon returning to the guild after a lengthy absence):  Hey, whatever happened to Sundays?  Didn’t we used to raid on Sundays instead of Wednesdays?
Raid Leader:  We did, but people got lives — apparently. 
Shadow Priest:  Oh.  Right.  Must be all those churchgoers.   
Elemental Shaman:  … And on the seventh day God ended his work; and he rested, and said THOU SHALT NOT RAID.

I love my guild.

You know you’re a geekgirl when …

… retail therapy means browsing the Auction House!  Thirteen hundred gold pieces later, my mood is marginally improved and my baby tankadin has a new ring. 

I am such a girl.

Fish creep me out, IRL.

I have a dead fish phobia.  I don’t mind live fish — one of my real life friends has a salt water aquarium, which I find endlessly fascinating — but dead fish creep me the hell out.  Crustaceans are even worse.  I absolutely will not touch seafood, including tuna and breaded fishsticks, and while I’m much better about this than I used to be, I still have a hard time being around others while they’re eating creepy-crawly or flippy-floppy things from the Deep Blue.  (True story: my soon-to-be-ex boss once decided it would be cute make a lobster tail crawl across the table at a business dinner — all while crying “I’m gonna get you!” in a high pitched, squeaky voice.) 

Unfortunately, my real life issues with fish (which I blame on my Thai mother, who fried fresh fish in the house every single day while she was was pregnant with my brother, and then ingested them — heads and all! — with disgusting relish), extends to the World of Warcraft.  I avoided leveling fishing for the longest time because I couldn’t stand having an inventory full of pixelated fishheads.

Why, yes, I am neurotic.  How sweet of you to notice.

But, you know.  I’m a big girl with Dalaran Cooking Awards to burn … so I got over it.  Fake fish aren’t nearly as creepy as real fish (although the big bug eyes on some of the lower level catches are still fairly frightening).

Not too long ago, I skill-ding’d 450.  Now I’m half-heartedly attempting to fish up a Sea Turtle, and will occasionally spend an hour or two making the rounds of the Northrend fishing holes — usually while chatting on Vent or watching Law & Order, since fishing is comfortably mindless and my mind is otherwise occupied.

Last night, I found myself fishing with game sounds on for the first time … ever. 

And, lo and behold, every time I hooked a fish, I heard a delightful little splashing noise. 

Hey.  I wish I’d known about that 450 levels ago. 

A countless number of fish (and perhaps a Sea Turtle or two) have escaped my lure because I alt-tabbed to the blog or the official forums or Facebook … or because I forgot to watch the computer screen because Elliot Stabler is so much cuter than my Tauren’s backside … or because I typically only fish at night, when the reflection of the moonlight on the water makes the bobber almost impossible to see …

/sigh.

Oh well.  Better late than never, right?  In a way, I suppose I have The Sims3 to thank: I was playing with game sounds turned on to choose the perfect voice for my Buffy Summers lookalike (devoted geekgirl that I am, I’ve recreated the entire Scooby Gang with terrifying accuracy), and WoW felt a little too quiet and even lonely after that. 

Next up?  Elphaba and Galinda, of course,  In honor of my favorite musical of all time.  (Yes, you can make Sims green.  Who knew?!)

Also, on a more WoW-related note, here’s tip for any shamans attempting to fish a PvP server: abuse Water Walking!  Instead of fishing from shore, I’ll position myself in the center of a pond or lake so nothing can sneak up on me.  By the time that annoying ret paladin or rogue manages to swim over, I’m already zooming around, safely out of reach on my 310% mount, singing “Catch me if you can!” 

… Okay, so Death Knights can also walk on water and anything with wings or a flying mount can drop out of the sky.  But still!  It’s hard to use the element of surprise against a water-walking shaman — and without that, the fight will be as fair as it can possibly be.

Just don’t break out the 13-pound catfish.  Please.

I have never used those words together …

So I don’t know why your Google Search is bringing you here!  At least tell me you didn’t click I’m Feeling Lucky.  Please?)

>.>
<.<

… Oh, the words?  I said I’ve never used them together in a blogpost, and I don’t want to make a liar of myself (or disappoint anyone who might stumble across me searching for them!).

How about a riddle, instead?

1. Compound word, opposite of “casual”;
2. One more than single, one less than triple; and
3. Something I never gem for in PvP!  (Although if I really wanted to, I suppose I’d use a Stormy Sky Sapphire).

/cough

Some other recent searches that make me /boggle:

crazy rabbit lady
hot vyrkul
do not want
smurfette cry
paladin shirt rank 11
blood elf naked
omg drama killed my guild
eh? canada
your subscription to life has expired
…is a jerkface

And my personal favorite!

kologarn want hug

I’d never thought of him quite like that before.  Poor Kologarn.  He’s starved for affection and we’re walking on his face.  😦

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight …

I wish …

• That I could prevent Chain Heal from jumping to anyone on my in-game ignore list.  I can’t be the only shaman who has healed an entire Heroic Old Kingdom PuG using only Riptide and Lesser Healing Wave (to ensure that the supremely annoying ret paladin from <Ye Ol’ Ninja Guild> died on every other pull).
• That my female feral druid could look forward to one day becoming a mini Nala rather than a mini Scar.  (Although the fan art I found via Google Images is pretty awesome!)
• That I knew one — one! /shakesfist — emotionally stable Holy paladin.
• That my enhancement gear matched.  WTB T7.5 chest, PST.
• That our hunters (who stumble into roaming patrols at least once per raid) would learn to feign death to drop aggro before I heal them, rather than after.
• That fire was green.
• That Megan would come back to blogging.  Those mages are getting mighty uppity in her absence …
• That just once, Hodir would drop something other than Phaelia’s Vestaments.  Don’t get me wrong — I loved Resto4Life, too!  But as of last night, I have four sets of leather robes that no one wants collecting dust in my guild bank.
• That Keaton could craft my Blue Belt of Chaos.  I hate having some random leatherworker’s name on my BiS crafted gear, especially when it’s something stupid like … I don’t know … Tankwifmahface.
• That Larisa‘s new domain wasn’t blocked at work.
• That I was certain I would have work after August 28th.
• That I knew what the hell Heartgrinder was talking about with that whole “mind controlling aquatic mammals for max DPS” speech.  He keeps rambling on about commanding seals, or some similar nonsense…  Ha!  He’s just jealous that I figured out how to use Crusader Aura to make my attacks faster — all by myself. I told him I didn’t need his sage paladin “advice.”  /scoff

Kologarn ain’t got nothin’ on this…

When I dream about WoW (and it happens often enough to cast some serious doubt on my mental health), I don’t dream about playing a video game.  That would be far too prosaic for my overactive imagination!  No, I dream that I’m actually in Azeroth, either as one of my characters or as a slightly “recustomized” version of myself.

So.  The other night, I dreamt that I was a human druid (allied with the Horde, of course, because even my subconscious refuses to play Alliance).  A guildmate — an Undead warrior named Bob — and I were attempting to complete our daily herbalism quest, but for some reason the flowers we needed kept despawning.  We could see the sparkles that signify a bonafide Quest Item, but anytime we actually tried to pick a flower, it would dissipate between our fingertips.

It was a little frustrating.

We eventually realized (by checking our iPhone-like Quest Logs) that we had never actually accepted the quest.

Okaaaay …  Slightly embarassing, but no big deal.  We’d just go back to town and pick up the quest from the herbalism trainer — who, in my dream, was a neutral NPC.

In a chapel.

In a meadow.

In the heart of Stormwind.

…. Guarded by cats and dogs wearing Alliance-blue and Horde-red t-shirts.

(Don’t ask me.  I was asleep.)

Fortunately, I was also a druid who could stealth through town in my unbearably cute Siamese-kittyform, and my companion was a fury warrior who could shift into dogform and do the same.

Together, we crept through Stormwind’s trade district.  Well, I crept — chanting sneakykitty sneakykitty sneakykitty under my breath the entire time for improved stealth.  Bob ran around like the lovable Labrador-flavored spaz he is, wagging his tail, /sniffing things and being generally dog-y.

Canine antics aside, we eventually made our way to the chapel and managed to sneak around its four-legged guards to talk to the herbalism trainer.  We accepted her quest, had a quick bite to eat (there was a neutral innkeeper in the chapel, selling ham and scrambled eggs) and finally decided to hearth out of Stormwind …

… by beaming aboard our starship.

(Yes.  I am completely horrified by the level of geekdom that my subconcious has attained.)

We shifted out of our animal forms and /w’d the transporter room, but the Stormwind chapel — which, unbeknownst to us, was also a starship — launched itself into outer space, thus disrupting our allies’ transporter lock and trapping us on board.

And that’s when things started to get really weird.

You see, it turned out that the entire scenario had been engineered by two villains aboard the Stormwind chapelship, who had some kind of personal vendetta (I didn’t dream up the details) against my warrior friend.  They knocked him out and took him away, while I hid in my catform — unstealthed, because I couldn’t re-enter prowl in combat, but cleverly disguised by all of the other guard-cats from the Stormwind meadow.

I distinctly remember batting a rubber mouse all over the chapelship while I searched for Bob.

>.>

<.<

Unfortunately, that’s about all I remember, because the the dream started to fade at this point.  Shortly after I found the warrior … I woke up.

I’ll save him another night.

I hope.

You know you’re obsessed with Ulduar when …

… you dream that Kologarn guards the train tracks that you cross every day on your way to and from work. 

/whimper

In lieu of real content, I present …

My real life felpuppies!

Rollo is the bat-eared Boxer-mix and Nala is the cheerfully irreverant GSD.

… Sorry, Rollo m’boy, but I don’t think she’s impressed with the Dracula-face.  >.>

 

In other news! (A random updates post.)

Ulduar 10

After an afternoon of frantic, don’t-you-dare-respawn-on-us-now-you-interminable-trash-mobs (/shakesfist!) style attempts on General Vezax, only Yogg-Saron remains in Ulduar 10.

I’m sure this will change as our raid gears up, but as things currently stand, General Vezax is a fun fight for healers.  If you haven’t encountered him yet, Vezax (Insect or crustacean? You decide!) has an aura that negates virtually all mana regen.  My water shield, mana totems and even mp5 are rendered utterly useless on this fight.  The only way to recover mana is to stand in little pools of The Bad®, which function a little like a stacking AoE Life Tap in that they restore mana at the cost of health.  Raid healing becomes a delicate balance between mana conservation and careful coordination among healers (whose turn is it to the regen?, who is watching the tank?, and who can quickly shift focus to cover roles if the active healer is knocked out of range by a Shadow Crash or forced to run out by a Mark of the Faceless?).

Still, I have to admit: once the euphoria faded, I was a little disappointed.  Defeating General Vezax may well have been a raiding zen moment, but we blew through everything preceding him so quickly that there was little to differentiate the bosses from the trash mobs (other than an abundance of spellpower leather we couldn’t use.  WTB tree druid or critchicken, PST.)

Even eschewing hard modes as we were, it seems like it should take more than five hours from start to finish to clear 12 bosses in a brand new raid instance — including a first kill on the second-to-last boss of the tier.

Ah, well.  The Blues tell us that the glory days of TBC and vanilla WoW are well and truly over.  Sooner or later, I suppose I’ll have to stop longing for another Lady Vashj and simply come to terms with accessible being just another a synonym for pushover.

For the record, I don’t think that makes me an “elitist.”  I think it makes me someone who started playing one game, and now feels like she’s playing another game entirely — and isn’t quite sure that she likes it.

Ulduar 25

Thankfully, our last two Ulduar 25 raids have been much improved — not merely in terms of focus and performance, but also (and more importantly) in atmosphere and attitude.  We’re currently working on Mimiron, our last obstacle before heroic General Vezax.

Thorim was actually a bit of a challenge for us.  It took two Saturdays for us to figure out the right balance between DPS and CC in the gauntlet and add-management in the arena.  Granted, Thorim wasn’t as hard as some of the TBC bosses that have me waxing positively nostalgic these days, but it was still nice to wipe on an encounter and have to invest some of our precious raid time in strategizing.

When this happens, our entire raid gets involved in the discussion, which is refreshing.  Rather than have a raid leader call all of the shots (in his sexy, Canadian-accented voice), everyone contributes in some way — either through their respective role channels, or by offering feedback and suggestions over Vent or in raid chat.  Thorim eventually clicked for us, and I’m expecting Mimiron to do the same this weekend.

Holiday Achievements

It took a bit of time, but I managed to complete the Noblegarden meta-achievement for both of my level 80 characters.  I also farmed up a pet rabbit for my druid alt, before remembering that she only collects birds (compulsive role-player, remember?), and a Tome of Polymorph Rabbit that my magelet can use in exactly 54 more levels.

As for Children’s Week … ugh.

I’ve never complained about a meta-achievement before — call me crazy, but I think a 310% mount should be rare! — but …  someone needs to pull a Dalaran on the School of Hard Knocks.  Only with more smoking crater, less Les Mis castle in the clouds.  >.<  Seriously.  I would rather suffer through another RNG-ridden, love-me, love-me-not style quest like Be Mine! than run battleground after battleground with zero resilience and an unhealthy mix of achievement hounds and dedicated PvPers (with mutually exclusive goals and testosterone to burn).

I finally managed to win the minigame that is Click! Faster!, so Elleiras could be a Matron if she so chose — to her abject horror.

Also, I feel compelled to point out that I was an orphan for the first four months of my life, so if I want to joke about setting some Orcish-shaped pixels on fire, I should be able to without feeling guilty about it.

… Of course, the fact that I’m the only one who has attempted to make me feel guilty for an obviously tongue-in-cheek post hints that I might not be the lock4life I thought I was.  /sadface

Clearly, I’m going to have to go abuse some mages to compensate.

Wait, what?

flying cats on a farm

I’m not sure what scares me the most.

The fact that someone actually typed these words into a search engine …

… or that they brought them to my blog?