One To Go and Plus One

Seona is at level 79. I'm actually really excited because this will be my second toon to level cap, and this time I know for a fact I won't get burned out. Seona's guild is big enough to keep me busy regardless of what I'm doing. On top of that, the roleplay opportunities abound, always, so each time I log in it's something fresh and new.

For example, a member of the guild did a very moving and interesting "sermon" for the guild on Sunday, followed by a pilgrimage to Uther's Tomb. I was actually touched, emotionally, by the words, especially since other members of the guild also got up and spoke (from their character's point of view, of course) which gave the whole thing a very "kumbaya" feeling. Seona listened intently, and so did I, as the whole thing gave me just one more way to understand the other characters in the group, along with the people behind the characters.

Real life has been interesting as well, with a new addition to my little family: Conner. He's a border collie mix I adopted today from a city pound. He had been running around my neighborhood for a couple days and was crashing for the night on front doorsteps; he's a real vagabond. When he crashed on my doorstep, though, we brought him inside, but ended up taking him to the city shelter in the hopes that any worried family that might be looking for him would finally be able to get him back.

Unfortunately, his family didn't come looking for him, or, if they did, they weren't really trying that hard, because he stayed in the pound for a week. I had checked in on him occasionally, as I didn't want him put to sleep, and decided that I'd adopt him. Yesterday was the initial visit, and the time when I told them I was interested in adopting. They got him ready for me by getting him to a vet for vaccinations, altering, and a heartworm test, and I was able to pick him up today.

He'll still need to go see my veterinarian, especially since my other dog is up for a vet visit as well, for a checkup, but all-in-all he's a sweet dog. I'm glad I got him out of the shelter before they euthanized him.

Remember to spay and neuter your pets to help keep pet population down so fewer animals have to be put to sleep in your city shelters and Adopt, Don't Shop! Buying puppies from pet stores only keeps puppy mills in business!

Dalaran

Seona, finally level 74, has made it to Dalaran. On Yrovi, it was this amazing, beautiful city that was entirely new and shiny and convenient. On Seona, however, it's laggy, crowded, and slow, though still pretty convenient, thanks to all those portals. The reason? I don't play on my parent's iMac anymore, just my 3-year-old MacBook Pro. On top of that, I recently upgraded to Mac OS 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, and I'm now getting some nasty graphics issues.

At first I thought my graphics problems were due to the upgrade, of course, since before installing Snow Leopard I was fine. Did a search on the official forums, in the Mac Troubleshooting area and found out that my problem was probably heat/hardware related. Totally true story, since my MacBook Pro runs crazy hot, always has. The small strip of metal right above the keyboard on my laptop gets hot enough to burn my fingers sometimes. So, after reading a few blue replies I downloaded some free software to control the fans inside my machine. It made an immediate difference of about 20 degrees and I can literally feel the difference. If my graphics issues were truly due only to heat, then this may have fixed it.

Obviously I won't know until later today, as it's Tuesday, and we all know that Tuesday means maintenance day. I'm glad for the break, actually, as I feel like I need to resort out my priorities and get some stuff done in RL, like updating my resume, doing some laundry, etc. On top of that, a couple of days ago, while visiting my parents, we were sort of "chosen" by a stray dog in the neighborhood. My mom is a total animal lover, so she brought him in the house and let him hang out with our dogs. We couldn't keep him at the time, plus his owners might be looking for him, so I took him to the shelter down the street. I checked their website and today is the day he becomes "available", I'm assuming for adoption, so I need to find out how long the city keeps a dog up for adoption before euthanizing. He was too sweet to allow something like that to happen, and I have plenty of room here, though my dog may get a bit jealous.

If nothing else, I'll get him into a non-kill shelter. Hooray for my good deed of the day, right?

Long Time, No Update

Wow. It's been awhile. You'd think I would have plenty of time to update this thing, but I end up spending all my extra time in WoW or doing chores... imagine that. In any case, I've been playing. Seona is in her low 70s and I've been messing around with a couple of my alts for fun, namely Leodry of Lordaeron and Brother Fandren.

Leodry of Lordaeron (Human Warrior - Emerald Dream RP-PvP) is at level 21 and is currently hanging out in the Wetlands, happy to be of some service to the dwarves of Ironforge. Eventually his (and his brother's) story will be up on my other blog, Ink & Blood. Still, I'm hoping to get him to level 80 before Cataclysm hits store shelves next year. It should be doable, provided I get Seona to 80 and running heroics/earning champion's badges/tokens/etc. for that lovely heirloom gear. With 20% extra experience, it should be cake.

Brother Fandren is, you guessed it a priest (Human - also Emerald Dream). He's slowly leveling himself up, currently at level 16, and is the second time I've considered leveling a priest (the first was the lovely Eruza, a troll on Gul'dan that, while still in existence, definitely doesn't hold my interest). I'm leveling him as shadow, naturally, as any other way borders on severe masochism. So far, so good, but it's slow going. I'm so used to plate-wearers that leveling a squishy clothie is more than different... it's actually quite difficult.

Seriously. The highest-leveled characters I have are a Warrior and a Paladin (not to mention a couple Death Knights). Notice that they all wear the heaviest armor class in the game and my warrior was even a tank, complete with 540+ defense. Being able to take a few hits before worrying about my hit points has been a typical aspect of my playstyle for a long, long time. Every time I try to level up a class that wears cloth, I get terribly frustrated due to the flimsy nature of the toon. I've had a Mage - got bored by the time she hit level 15. I've had a Warlock - never managed to break level 20. I'm finally retrying a Priest, but he's definitely more of a "hey, I have free time and don't feel like smashing faces in with Seona so let's go do some leveling in Westfall" kind of character.

Still, now that I've figured out some tactics and have a decent wand from enchanting, I think I might be able to stick with this guy. At least till level 20. ;)

P.S. I also finally managed to Recruit-a-Friend with an actual friend of mine who lives far away. It's both a great way to spend some time together (talking over Skype) and getting her addicted to this wonderful game we all love. She's running a Shaman and I've rolled a Druid for the flexibility (hooray healing/tanking/dps'ing!). She's only got the trial and we've already managed to get to level 16 with just a few hours of messing around. That 3x experience is crazy-insane good. I couldn't have imagined just how fast you eat through the levels this way, and while she isn't sure she'll be buying the game, I'm temped to get at least vanilla for her to expand our playing for a month. $20 for a great way to spend time with her doing something I really love? Yes, please.

Faction Change Now Available

Wow. Didn't see this coming this fast.

Faction Changes are now here and ready to go. FAQ can be found here. Very cool, as I've been thinking about moving Poloma, my tauren hunter, over to ED and changing her to a draenei. Blizzard has made the service pretty simple and straightforward, it looks like. The biggest drawback, though, is the cost.

Good gracious-bodacious, $30? And it doesn't include the server transfer. That's hefty. $55 for a full transfer and faction change is too much, especially for me right now due to RL woes. I mean, that's crazy-expensive. Of course, plenty of people will use the service regardless, so the price probably won't come down anytime soon. I guess that means Poloma will be staying dormant for awhile longer.

Otherwise, though, my World of Warcraft life is peachy-keen. Seona is rolling right along in Northrend. The story is fantastic, the quests are fun, and the gear is good. Her 2H Sword skill is up over 320 so she's not missing every single time, although I've got to see what I can do about getting her a decent 2H Mace for the racial bonus.

On top of that, Ziir has about 20 mails full of Outland greens and leather from Seona's swift romp through those zones. I'm going to take the time tomorrow to get it all sorted out and put up on the AH in order to make some more gold. Hopefully the greens will be bought up by enchanters or something (One day I'll have an enchanter so I can shard all this stuff, but damn, it takes forever to level that profession...).

I popped over to Leodry this morning to check on him (the beginning of his story is up on my other blog...) and he's doing okay. His mining and blacksmithing are at the same level (around 120) and all the gear he's making is at his current level. I'd love to be able to continue that all the way to 80, though that might become difficult if/when he gets the heirloom gear. Right now he's in all "rough bronze" stuff, very dashing, very nice to look at since it matches. I've got him as arms right now, but I'm wondering if that's the best route to take.

I've heard that the best way to go as arms is with Poleaxe specialization, adding damage to axes and polearms. Human's get an expertise bonus with maces and swords, though, and I'd rather go a more RP route with him than min/max. The current plan (once he gets that far along) is to go sword specialization and have him always carry a giant 2H Sword of Doom.

I've also considered leveling him through PvP, but the experience gains in Warsong Gulch are terrible and his survivability right now is pretty poor. I was hoping to do this at least until Seona hit 80 and could get that badge gear. I might try again with Arathi Basin in about 10 levels, as the experience gain there is much, much better. I was planning to do this with my hunter, but discovered a huge flaw in that plan... the pet doesn't level with you, just you. So, hunters are actually screwed a bit by pure PvP leveling.

Still, it'll be fun. I want Leodry's story to really come out over the next year as he slowly levels from 18 (where he's at now) to 80 in time for the Cataclysm. Seona will be 80 in a couple weeks, at the current rate, so she'll be busy with endgame stuff, earning badges and, hopefully, finally seeing the raids.

Northrend, At Last

Seona has finally made her way into Northrend.

The best part: she ding'd level 68 on the quest from Toshley's station that flings you over the terrain. It was both fun and productive! As soon as she hit 68 I hearthed to Shattrath, then took the portal to Stormwind. Seona emptied her bags and her quest log, ready for a totally new start in the cold North.

It's funny, how excited I was, even though I've seen Northrend before on Yrovi. I've even taken a quick jump up there on Seona for profession training. The Alliance quest-lines are totally different from the Horde ones, and on top of that, I did Howling Fjord the first time around on Yrovi, so Seona did well landing in the Borean Tundra. She's already uncovered the work of the Cult of the Damned, is helping a woman find her brother, and feels like a total hero. I mean, the people here know my name! It's exciting!

As great as it is, though, I've got to set aside some time to level up my professions. My skinning is fine, as it has to be the easiest gathering profession to level, but my mining, cooking and fishing are all in desperate need of an update. I managed to get First Aid leveled up as well, and used up the rest of my Netherweave to create heavy bandages to sell for the little bit of extra gold. It'll take a great deal of time to level these professions, though, so I better look for some guides.

Mining will take the longest, unfortunately, but there are tons of guides out there for it, complete with maps. It really just requires tons of patience and the willingness to run around the same zone a few times ad nauseam. Much as that sucks, it has to be done. I went through all of Outlands without being able to mine, and that's just stupid.

Cooking and Fishing go hand in hand, and El's Anglin' has a great guide to level them both together. Plus, fishing is much less terrible to level now than it used to be. It's still not what I'd call "fun" but I have some lures stashed somewhere that'll help. Cooking is just a good skill to have, for the buff food more than anything else. I remember leveling it up on Yrovi, and it's doable.

Still, leveling mining, cooking and fishing will take hours, and some of it may have to wait until she's 80. Mining takes priority, for the gold-making aspect. I mean, I eventually want her to have epic flying and she'll need to buy cold-weather flying when she hits level 77. Doable, but the more gold I have, the better it is.

Oh, one other thing... Seona got a brand new weapon from one of the first quests she did. The only problem? It's a sword. Great! You're probably saying. Sword's are cool. Yes, they are, but I hadn't had Seona use a two-handed sword since her 20's. Her skill was so low, it was embarrassing. Lucky for me, paladins are so damn hard to kill and powerful against the undead, because for a while she was straight up missing her target. I think she'll be okay now, since I finally stuck with it and got her 2H Sword skill up over 300 points, but, man that sucked.

I hope Blizzard looks at the way we level up our weapon skills after they finish messing with fishing. It needs something to make it suck less. Maybe let us level our skill up on a training dummy... that would make logical sense, right? *sigh*

Extended Maintenance

Emerald Dream (RP-PvP), Seona's server, has extended maintenance today. Supposedly, it will help with the "Additional instances cannot be launched" issue that I know plagues us, as the Kingship has actually had characters RP'ing the fact they can't get into dungeons. I realized that I've had this issue only once, for Shadowfang Keep.

It was back when Seona was working on getting Verigan's Fist. Part of that is going into various old-world dungeons for materials. Shadowfang Keep was one of these and I ran Seona all the way there. This was months ago, mind, and I was ready to go in there and kick butt solo to get to the stables, and sure enough I jumped into the instance only to get that error. It was the first time I had ever seen it, I was in enemy territory, and I was only about level 27 or something. Maybe level 30. It wasn't a huge deal, though, because one or two jumps later and I was in and I didn't give it another thought.

I can't imagine what people are doing now. I guess it's just as well that I don't bother to run older instances for gear since I level fast anyway and the greens are perfectly acceptable for what I do. Questing is serious business, amirite? Exactly. Northrend Greens will blow what I've got on right now out of the water anyway. I intend to slow down just a bit in Northrend, but not by much. Part of it will be sightseeing, but the other part will be for the story. I haven't seen the Alliance side of it, yet, and supposedly we get to witness Arthas's change in all its glory. It's something I want to savor.

And, in true altoholic form, as soon as Seona is level 80, I'll be working on another toon: Leodry. If you check my other blog (Ink & Blood, my fanfic site) soon, you'll see the beginning of his story, along with another toon that will premier after Cataclysm goes live. I revamped his history, changed it up a bit, making Leodry the younger of two brothers whose story starts during the Second War.

I figure I have just over a year to get Leo to 80. Should be cake, especially with Seona eventually at 80 and getting badges for heirloom gear. Hopefully I'll be able to deck Leo out in both the shoulders and the chest. Each part (for PvE) is 40 emblems or 60 champion seals. That's interesting. It means that I could just deck them out without having to begrudge Seona her own badge gear. She'll definitely be jousting for seals, so there shouldn't be any problems.

Look at me, all excited again. God, I love this game.