Baby's Got Back

I've been having a lot of aggro issues with the big blue Cat (multiplied by the respec to MM), which then spurs mana issues, more time spent killing stuff, more time spent eating and drinking, and more money spent on consummables, etc.

Anywho way back when I was 67 (last week? I don't even remember) I was questing in Netherstorm killing these. They are adorable and I just had to have one! At the time Petopia said they were levels 67-69, and after a while looking around I discovered no 67s. Boo. I emailed Mania to let her know, but I was a little disappointed.

Fast forward to level 69 and I'm still struggling with Cat. I mean really, what's his prob? Hold aggro, Arthas be damned! Don't make me manually click Growl every time it's up!

Five minutes ago I get the fantabulous idea to go get one of those raptors. They come with Dash 3 and Bite 9. Yummy.

Anyways, I love my new orange raptor! He holds aggro surprisingly well (my short test run still had me feigning proactively, of course).

And he's just so adorable!

It takes some of that raptor loving sometimes....





Still some weirdness, though (notice the last image), but I know those raptors to be a bit aggro silly with their charge and daze random person thingy going on.

I think I'm going to name him Booty cause he has a big butt. Any suggestions?

Welcome Back

I have a lot to cover today:

1. I'm done with school and graduating on Friday. /hold for applause

2. So Kryptonite (aka Biohazard) died when my friends and I left. We all joined Blue Pants Crew, but then got tired of being by ourselves. My good friend Ed joined Blood for Blood. Me and my healer made a new guild called Koopa Troop. Then I left Koopa for BfB, which then disbanded. Now I'm in Sword of the Horde with Z. Is that complicated enough?

3. I'm actually level 66 now. And I'm in all blues.

4. I ran around ZG the other day and solo tamed Son of Hakkar. Easy but fun. I've always wanted one, too. Back in the day, Kaliska was my hero. I had to abandon Fenrir to do so, however. He was falling behind anyways.....

5. I also got the Hakkar run on film, if anyone is interested in seeing it. Basically at my level you don't aggro anything.

6. My first MC run was a total disaster. I logged on and found Ed in a big raid group full of people going, so I hopped on in with Z and hit the ground running. Turned out that no one was attuned. So the couple of us that were (there were some CDG people that were obviously decent players and were attuned) zoned into MC, then promptly had to summon every single level 60-65 noob that we had gotten to fill the raid. Z wanted to kill something. Anyways, lotsa annoying chatter and demands of summons, heals, and resurrections later and we wipe for about the millionth time on Core Hounds. I was the only one that survived. I dropped the raid and hearthed out of there. Good riddance.

7. The above makes me realize how difficult this might be for me. My guild is a raiding guild, that's true, but they don't have time for a lowbie hunter that got in because of a good word from a friend. It's a little ironic, too, that my guild actually does an Ony run every week, but only the RL's friends get to go....

8. What happened to people? Lots of WoW bloggers I love have been dropping off the map. I'm puzzled.

9. The blue cat still needs a name. I know, right?

10. I've got some good stuff coming your way, so stick around!

Part 1 of the Secret Adventure Plan

Part one of my secret adventure plan involves attunement to the Core and to Onyxia.

Any guesses?

And You Thought Durotar Was Orange: A First Look At Outlands

You're in Winterspring grinding those smelly yetis for their [Pristine Yeti Horn]s for the best and worst quest chain in the game (yes, it really is both at the same time), when all of the sudden....

DING!

Congratulations, you have just reached level 58!
Your agility has gone up by 2.
Your stamina is still in the gutter.
Your health is still laughable, but we'll give you a couple more points just for the heck of it.
What the heck, we'll even increase your mana so you now have enough to change aspects when all your other spells are blued out.
You can now kill things up to level 60 if you are lucky (more if you are a hunter, loser).
You have now graduated to big kid land! Grats!

All right, let's go get ganked!

Woah, waitaminute there, kiddo. Let's just see where we really are here.

First of all, ganked? Really? You should know better. It's not ganking when a 70 camps your corpse in Falcon Watch for a couple hours. It's a massacre. It's an exercize in futility. It's an art masterpiece of your corpses that spells "SOS." It's something we all do, so suck it up and learn to stop complaining. Unless it's a Night Elf druid. Please feel free to call in guildies for that one, cause more often than not it's gonna be a non-level-capped drood showing off their new flight form. Tadaa, I gank you from above!

Second of all, let's take a look at you. Your gear, no offense, sucks, so let's not be so hasty. We want to make sure everything else is up to snuff. The gear will fix itself.

Kay, you have some gold. That's good you'll get more. Your professions are getting there, good for you (don't do the Gal thing, where you waltz into Hellfire with now profs, first aid, or cooking, heheheh)! You can cook and clean. If you are a hunter your pet is—

What. the. crap.

What is that thing? A spider? dragonhawk? flamingo? crocolisk?! How could you?! Okay okay, some of those can be viable in certain cases.

(Not my crocolisk.)

But a crocolisk?

Step away from the portal and put your bow up in the air. Good. Now get your little butt back to Winterspring pronto. Next time I see you I want to see something a little more dignified next to you. Yes, a cat, owl, pig, or wolf would be great. Bear? Bears are for skinning. Ravager that has been sitting in your stable? Level him up! Even better.

Okay, that was a close one. Blizz should make it so people have to go through a noob inspection before passing Warlord Dar'toon. Just....kidding......

Anyways, next let's take a look at your build. I am totally okay with any of the three specs as long as they are built right. I know my way around MM cause I've been MM for a long time (I only repsecced to BM in my late forties, early fifties for Gal), and BM is pretty self-explanatory if you take BRK's cookie-cutter BM guide and customize it for your own play style. For SV I'd suggest you go take a look at Lienna's build, as she is the resident SV hunter around these parts. (One day I'll respec SV to see what she's always going on about.)

So let's look at what we've got so far:

1. 58. Check.
2. New spells. Check.
3. Profs around max. Check.
4. Viable pet. Check.
5. Viable spec. Check.
6. Money and a decent way to travel. Check.
7. Hearth set to Shatt you've probably had for a few levels now. Check.
8. Turned in as many Old World quests as you can. Check.

Now, I guess you are ready for Outland. In some cases I would suggest you wait to go to Hellfire until 60, but nowadays people are starting to grind in HF as early as level 56, so waiting isn't very realistic.

Let's hop on down to the Blasted Lands, nab Through the Dark Portal, and zone!



You get on the other side and LAG attack!! Tons of monsters, tons of NPCs, lots of pretty lights. Avoid those and head straight for the quest reciever and the flight path to Thrallmar. Believe me, if you run into the chaos down there you will get pummeled over and over.

Upon reaching Thrallmar, you should do a couple run-around-and-talk-to-people quests, stock up on some meat, ammo, and other consummables, and then hit the hay in the nearest inn for some rested. Believe me, you'll need it.

Hope you've enjoyed Part 1. Part 2 coming soon, with pictures!

Journey's Just Beginning

It took me like ten minutes to find the actual ding shot, but it's a good one.

A Post to a Pet

So the lovely huntress Gal dinged 54 last night. She would have leveled the night of my BRD solo run, but I was conflicted about which trinket to get from my Azshara hunter quest—hmmm, AP or longevity as a BM hunter??

Anyways. Went with the AP. I can (and will) always get something better once I hit Outlands, even if I want to pause at 59 to PvP before I do. It's been a long time since I was at the top of my bracket on Gal, and I dearly miss the hours I have spent in AB and even WSG. The funny thing is, is that I don't even remember what pet I used to PvP with. I mean, nowadays when I PvP I just pop in for a quick go with whatever pet I happen to have trained. Or I play on Zocks (who's almost 29 and twinked) or Saraii (who I PvPed on more when she was 19 and twinked).

Here's where I get to the point of this post:

Now that I am actually moving up in levels, I once again find myself lost and petless. Well, partially.

My stable consists of three pets.

Luca, formerly Humar the Pridelord, who I trained with Shammy many a month (year?) ago. He stopped somewhere around 39-40 when I got my tiger Sarai in STV. Now out of all the pets that have come and gone, Luca has been the one that I can't bear to part with. And I would level him, but I have two issues with him: one, I should be focusing on leveling myself instead of worrying about my pet; two, everyone has Humar, and although on occassion I enjoy being just another hunter in the crowd, I like being unique, too. I am a troll hunter, and female no less. I need a pet that matches my play style and my personality. And although Humar does fit the bill (black or white pets attract me more than almost any other skin), he is so unique that now everyone has him. I love Luca, though, so maybe he will be reborn in a new skin one day (blue tiger from Winterspring? That would match my hair!)

As another note, I love cats. Tigers are my favorite animals!

Nem the boar, a piggie covered in mud that Z trained for me in the Blasted Lands. You all know about my issues with Nem. I dislike boars as a family. There are some really cute boar skins, dun get me wrong, like the ones from Loch Modan. I adore those reddish brown and black ones. I even like the armored boars! I totally would have gone for one of those. And I do accept that they are awesome for both PvE and PvP. But I don't like Nem. However, I'm not stupid. I kept Nem anyways, because he is my level and he is well trained with full loyalty already. And I will eventually find some use for him. But he replaced Sarai, my tiger, and that was not fun for me. And that makes me a little bit bitter about using Nem.

It's just that, well, I've been having issues sticking with pets, as I've talked about on numerous occassions before. I have tamed almost all the rare pets or special skinned pets. I have all the proper ranks of spells, etc., just from going out and finding and taming and then, sadly, getting bored and dismissing. And now that I have to take into consideration the needs of my party for instances, or my guild, or even my PvP career, my old pets have to go. One by one the pets that I used to really care about are disapearing, being replaced by my ADD pets, like Nem, or the wind serpent I used to have, or even Fenrir. One by one the pets that I used to really care about are being replaced by pets that are more useful to me as a hunter.

And now I have problems attaching to any one pet on Gal, because I have had so many. I don't have this problem on any of my other hunters, and that this is happening to Gal, to my main, makes me so so sad.

Which brings me to my last pet, Fenrir.

Fenrir gives me hope. He is a fine companion for Gal, and she is starting to fall in love with him. She loves every time he turns blue after proccing Ferocious Howl. She loves how he runs, sort of lopsided, but totally cute. She loves how he appears every time she dismounts. By the time I land from a flight and get over the lag, he is there waiting for me, like he got there even before I did. He is the first (and only) pet I've taken to Outlands with me, and he knows Shattrath well. He's gone to Sunken Temple and now has solo'd Blackrock Depths. I have no doubt in my mind that he will be there, or at least close by, when I finally finish all my quests in Un'Goro, or when I do PvP in the future. He's gonna be by my side in one way or another for a while to come.

And even though he isn't a rare pet, he is unique. He is a gorgeous beast, and there are days when I wish I could just lie down on the soil of the Burning Steppes and sink my hands and face into his warm, soft fur.

Fenrir is becoming Gal's saving grace.

But I also have to consider the future, and the other pets that I will need.

And I hope that wherever that takes me, I will find a pet that inspires me to love again, just as Fenrir is doing now.

I remember every pet I have ever tamed. I remember my first pet, my raptor Domino. I remember Vale the wolf from Ashenvale. Then Humar. Then Sarai. Those are the pets I really loved and will always hold close to me, even though most of them are gone. And I think Fenrir will one day join them.

But I still need to find others that captivate me as much as Fenrir does now, and are just as beneficial as companions, which is why I before said "petless."

Blue cat from Winterspring? And Olm the Wise?

Fenrir, welcome to the family.

If This Doesn't Say "Leet Skills"

Today I solo'd BRD.

I cleared the whole thing up to the first boss.

No short cuts cause I don't have the key.

All I had left before I called guildies to help me down the boss was one pat, one four-pack, and one two-pack that I was just too lazy to do on my own (lol).

PUG my ass.



That's the proof.



It's a great exercize, actually. I really had to concentrate on pulls and strategic fights. There are tons of cc opportunities as well. It was a hunter workout!

It probably would have been more impressive had I completely cleared the Detention Block and downed the first boss, but, eh, what I did was pretty cool. And as it was I was met with a lot of disbelief, skepticism, and even some hate. Some people thought I was stupid and a newb.

But I have no doubt in my mind that I've come out a better hunter and a better player.

So, nyah nyah!

*EDIT: Guildie who came to help me wiped with me twice on Hedrum before calling it quits. I feel bad, and I didn't get to thank him enough. Kinda the whole deal with my guild made me feel like an idiot and a newb. They made me feel really alienated. Something about them being a little condescending to me the whole time.... Well, another post.

Zocks and Saraii

Here are two of my babies:

Zocks and his Ghost Saber, Lazura







Zocks wants to be a male model.



Saraii and Esteban!

Omg, where haz you been?!

I sorry! I been so busy! I been applying to college and dealing with friends and teaching newbs and I just been so busy!

I start out with story:

Along the lines of BRK's 'Hunter Horror in Redridge' videos, I myself found a young hunter being a complete and utter newblette. But mine was probably worse.

I was on Drenden, in fact, on a priestly alt in Loch Modan. I'm leveling her with Z to help him survive his burnout. Poor thing.

Anywho. I'm running around the Loch leveling and grinding and skinning and herbing, when I see a young hunter assaulting kobolds in a kobold village. He's level twelve, and looks a little overwhelmed. His pet has died, too. Awww....

I run over after he is done killing his little group of kobolds. I give him a Blessing of Fortitude. He thanks me. Then he keeps killing. I stand back and watch him run up to the mob, fire one shot, run closer, then start wacking at it. Huh. Curious. I help him burn down the mobs.

"Where is your pet?"

Silence.

"Hey, where's your pet?"

"I don't have one."

"Why not?"

He looks at me. "I dunno."

I give him the lecture on being a good hunter and an upstanding citizen. I tell him to go grab a cat from Dun Morogh, then to go from there. He thanks me and hearths away.

Later I found him sitting with a new bear by his side. Well, at least he took some of my advice!

Anyways, that's story number one of where I've been this week.

Numba two explanation: Financial aid forms as well as insane amounts of homework.

Numba three: Z's boredom with WoW is starting to rub off on me, but that's another post.

Numero Cuatro: Hah, I got my first rejection letter!

Five: Having shammy back makes me avoid WoW like the plague some days, hahah.

Six: War Party is still dead, so I thus have no motivation to level Zocks and Saraii, though I guess it has been officially decided that Zocks is gonna twink himself at 29, which I guess means I'm not longer going to level him once he hits the bg cap. I'm also debating upon whether I should go have him train a ravager while he still has room for more xp. The other day when I was doing AB with Solusek almost every hunter had a ghost saber. It makes me want to shoot something, hahah. Also, even though Zox has bad gear right now, he still completely dominated, but I think I already mentioned that once....

Seven: I am obsessed with rerolling Alliance. There must be something wrong with me! I'm also absolutely dying to get back into ST on Gal, and into STV on any character, I don't care which! I want to be in Booty Bay! Now. And I want a panther.

In other news, I know, I'm sorry, this post is getting long: I went to go visit Hawk from One Among Many! We had an interesting discussion, or rather, we began an interesting discussion, on hunters vs. warlocks and their different pet relationships, but we got sidetracked by our funky hair and awesome style. We rock. I have to go back soon so we can continue our chat.

And from that we decided to post pictures of our characters. She started it off with Tigershark, her little troll (<3) alt hunter.

And, uhm, I think that's all I'm gonna cram in this post. To be continued!

A Most Frustrating BRDay

I think I've been avoiding doing any instances on Gal.

And today I remembered it's for a good reason.

*

I started out my WoW day on the auction house because I had nothing to do. Shammy shows up and makes me port to Shattrath (Gal's first step in Outlands!) so I can set my hearth there. He tells me I'm lazy because I haven't done it yet, but really hearthing there only because of the free ports sounds even more lazy, but who am I to complain? Shammy leaves, and Z and I are gonna run BRD since he just transferred here and had time to spare before his first run with his new guild Over the Line (Gruul's for the curious).

Well we didn't actually get to do BRD because I had to go and he had to go, etc.

I log in a bit later and decide, well, since I am here already, why not? I queue up for a group. Find a full one with a 50 pally, 57 healer, random lock, and 52/53 rogue.

Coolies. This is good instance karma. I run to Kargath to stock up on arrows and clear out my bags. Decide my boar just isn't going to cut it even though my group doesn't care. I hate the boar and the only reason why I have him is because of Z (although he was pretty handy in the 2-minute match of WSG my shammy and I totally smashed). I stable him (byebye to tiger kitty). I offer to go grab a wolf.

A few minutes of Petopia later and I come up with this beauty:


Plus, he is a short run away! Dealy-o, Howie Mandel.

In case you haven't noticed, I have a rather large attraction to white, black, or orange pets. Well, maybe I gotta do a pet timeline one day.

I train my pet but now my ui is freaking out. My joy for addons is fading. I spent fifteen minutes logging then relogging just to get my freaking portrait to show up on the screen.

By the time time I finally get it to work half of my group has left. Seriously, I told them what my problem was and that I would summon people in between. They were all doing AV and such while I waited around for them to show up.

Alright, patience is a virtue. Z promised me another run later anyways, so it's all gonna be okay.

I get a whole 'nother group together with the remaining rogue (who I have to give a shout-out to later for being a great tank....you'll see). The 50 pally returns and we have a tank. We get another rogue. I kick him. Sorry, man. We get a 55 healer who doesn't know what BRD is, but he's good anyways. We get a new warlock (who is not demo spec because demo is "nubsauce"; Z agrees).

My wolfy is falling in love with me while we summon people. My graphics are a little funky (remember the kablooey post?), but it's nothing I can't handle. I redo all my spell bars because they have been moved around by friends while I wasn't playing. We are good to go apart from the rapidly decaying amounts of meats we've gots due to Mr. Wolfy.

We go in we wipe on trash before zoning (except me). We rez. We zone. People lag. While people (and by that I mean pally) lag, rogue tanks like a freakin' feral druid. Priestie heals. Wolf attacks. We dps. Warlock....warlock....warlock has imp out.

Pally comes in.

"Let me pull."

Now I was letting the rogue pull before cause I was lagging a lot and he knew what he was doing. He was marking mobs and taking charge. I should have friended him and saved him for a rainy day.

But now when the pally asked to pull because he couldn't, and I quote, "get aggro" from us, I was starting to get a little worried. I told him to get a threat meter, first of all. Then I stood back and shut my eyes.

Pulled a group. BAM. Pulled another on top of that. Healer's hands must have been flying across the keyboard. And you know how those packs are: they've got the elite and then his doggie minions. I was multishotting the Bloodhounds off the priest and the warlock, and then tanking them while alternating DPS on the elite. There's no point in freezing them at this point, I'm healthy and not taking very much damage. Plus we need all the DPS we can get on the two main mobs.

We barely take down the first pull. The pally dies in the middle of this and suddenly the elites are running all over. Priest gets bashed a few times before I catch one and then send it the rogue's way. We eat through the second pull slowly.

Okay, phew. That was good. We're out of mana, but the pet is up and happily chewing on some Bloodhound flanks.

Pally comes back.

Let's try this again.

Same thing. Two packs pulled. We are dropping like flies. I am the last one standing and my pet and I take down the second pack by ourselves while everyone watches.

We so had that!

But then yet another pack that had chased the fleeing healer out ran back and I had no mana left to pop a heal on the wolf. I watch in horror as he falls and then one elite and one Bloodhound run for me. My feign is on cooldown. I have no pet. I have no mana. I am a broken hunter.

"Should I start rezzing?"
"No. Just wait for her to die."

At least I put up a fight!



We stop and reasses as we drink and eat. Meat is getting ridiculously low, but more is dropping off of Bloodhounds and people are donating.

Alrighty. First boss, or whatever, in the big room. The bat-dragons go down and I think the pally almost died again. I yet again found myself tanking the bats I pulled off of the healer and lock.

Then the second part of the battle begins. Sa-weet. This guys is gonna go down easy. He's gonna be butter on toast, baby.

And then I lag. I am calm. This happens all the time.

Okay okay, I mentally anticipate my cooldowns and fire shots while nothing happens.

Then the music stops.

And I DC.

Sh*t-monkies!

I zone as fast as my poor little PowerBook will let me. The boss is down. I go to see the loot that I missed out on.



[Savage Gladiator Leggings]



.......Oh...my...god.

"Who took my leggings?"
"No one has rolled yet."
"Who took my friggin' leggings?!"

I'm lagging.
They've already left me there.

"Who won those?"

They roll for another item that I don't care about.
I stop lagging enough to run and find them.
They are all dying. What the crap?

"Who took my leggings? I wanted those. I just want to know who so I can mentally bash them in the noggin."
Warlock: "Dude, this f*cking sucks. Priest why weren't you healing? Pay attention, noobs."
Warlock: "I am so out of here."

The warlock leaves. Good riddance. He wasn't doing much but pulling aggro anyways.

"Who won my leggings?"
Pally: "I got them lol."
"........"
"I don't even want them." <--(aka my leggings are gonna be vendor trash!!)
"They're BoP, right? Are you sure?" <--(because everything awesome has to be BoP.)
"Yeah, man, I would totally give them to you if not."
"*Sob*"
"Yeah sucks I'm not even going to use them. I don't want them. Anyone here an enchanter?" <--(aka let's disenchant Galileyo's pants, bwahahah!!)

Everyone is dead except for me. I am mourning the loss of my pants. The pally takes my loot and runs. He says he's done for now, too, but if we group again later to PST him.

Yeah right. You were a sucky tank anyways!

My pants! Vendor trash!

I hate paladins.

I bid farewell to the excellent rogue and super healer. They agree. We'll try again another day. I hearth back to Shatt, crushed on the inside. WoW quits like five times while I run around.

But I had enough time to snag a shot or two of me and my wolf:

Of course I can't for the life of me find said screenshot in the large mountain that is my collection of random screenshots. (Did you know they go away after a while? I have so many that they start deleting themselves to make room for more. Curious....)

But this will do:


Boars is stupid. Shammy (on mage twink) agrees with me.


As usual: I apologize for the longevity of this post.

Khuza @ Level 10

Need I really say more?

Khuza @ Level 9

Introducing Khuza, my new alt (she took the place of one of my favorite alt mages, sigh)....

Here you see her running through Durotar toward Razor Hill, quite drunk off of the voodoo charms she got in Sen'jin (one of my favorite villages—if there was an innkeeper there I would set my hearth regardless of the lack of flight master). And you also see she made a new friend, a nice shammy who, in the screenshot, is a frog. They did many a quest together!


Here's her closeup. She's a lovely thing, isn't she? Not many female orcs running around.

This is a better shot of her standing in the doorway of the Razor Hill inn.

Anywho, I'm going to blog a bit about her adventures every now and again. She's planning on taming one of the Durotar Tigers off in Echo Isles when she hits ten, which will be exciting. Granted she'll have to level it two to three levels depending, as they only come in seven through eight. She'll also have to run around taming other stuff to get the extra skills. The tigers in Durotar are basically a blank canvas, so take that as you will. I guess for me, since I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of experience with pets, it's kinda a nice thing to be able to start from scratch.

And I also have to decide whether I want her to just go BM like the rest of my hunters, or spec her in Survivalist (which I've tried before, but only at a high level, never starting from the beginning, I mean). I dunno, I guess it will just depend when I hit ten. I can pick then. And it never hurts to try something new, right?

Although, I have to admit, the tiger would look awfully smashing in a big, red sheen....

A Post About WoW

I started playing WoW when I was a wee....

No.

I've been playing WoW since it first came out....

No.

How I Started Playing WoW

Uhm, okay.

Our Daddy bought us a copy of WoW at the Apple store when it first came out. Yay. We loved it. We were so excited.

Anyways, Dad bought me copy. We brought copy home. He helped me instal said copy on his super nice, super fast, super tricked out computer. So three or so hours later I had WoW. But Dad and I decided we were PO'ed about the +fifteen dollars a month dealy-o. I shelved the game, thinking I would return it.

A few months later (maybe three or so) and my great grandpa passes away. We go to his funeral, then go chill with the extended family for the day. Lo and behold: my cousin/aunt (don't ask) and her husband are sitting on laptops playing WoW. She on a gnome in Elwynn (or was it an orc in....?). She decides she's gonna teach me the basics. I listen patiently, make a mental note about how incredibly boring standing there smacking buttons must be, then forget about my family's big guild of Hordies (their server name started with a 'C', I think).

Yet more months later. I had been switching around schools and friends rapidly. I met this guy. I went over to his house with all of his friends and witnessed the wonder and glory of that which we know and love. It was the birth of a WoW junkie.

(I made a Night Elf rogue on his account and smacked things around for four levels. Yay.)

It took him a few weeks to convince me to actually reinstall the game, but I did, mostly as a pleasant surprise for him. We made many NE alts and ran around for hours in the newb zone (my record time from 1-6 in Teldrassil is half an hour). At the time, I had no idea what the Horde was, I was playing on a normal server, and I pretty much only played druids because everything else confused me. It was not until he asked me to reroll on his server, Ner'zhul, that I saw the light. I saw the light, man!

Behold the fully-epic'd orc hunter.

He had a snowy owl named Hedwig and a huge wolf to ride around on. His sword was bigger than he was. His bow was the coolest thing I had ever seen. And his guild tabard had beer mugs on it.

He one-shotted me and I knew I was in love.

My first Horde-ling was a female troll shaman, who regrettably only made it to level six. So he suggested I try playing a hunter. He could take me under his wing and teach me a thing or two about what ranged DPS really meant.

So thus came Galileyo (I wanted Galileo, really I did, but it was taken at the time (and is now taken by me) and the -yo makes me sound way more ghetto anyhow). She was the first character I ever leveled past fifteen. It was such an achievement! Her first pet was a red raptor named Domino, who until very recently still sat in his stable munching on treats.

He rolled a tauren shaman to accompany me on my adventures, and we made the best duo this world has ever seen. To this day our greatness astounds me. /modesty

Soon after we were gallavanting all over Azeroth together. We'd PvP together, we'd instance together, we'd quest together. We always shared XP. If he sent money on his alt over from his main, I'd always get some, too. If I wasted that money on non-combat collectable pets, I'd buy him one as well and drop it in his mailbox for a "surprise, look what I got you for five gold!! it's a white kitty cat to go with ur cowness!!"

This is how I got spoiled. This is why I level so slow.

I forget to level my professions because we always had money. I'm still learning what gear to buy myself on the auction house because he'd always send me stuff (I've been twinked out for fifty levels in a row now). Because he already had a sixty, he let me play in a very RP-esque style: meaning less grinding, more let's-go-exploring or let's-see-how-many-hits-it-takes-for-that-elite-??-to-smush-us!! I spend a lot of my time wandering around. I spend a lot of my time rerunning instances. I get ADD about my quest log and I'd rather spend hours PvP-ing that leveling. I indulge in having alts and rare pets. I'm probably going to grind every faction so I can have every mount before I hit seventy.

But I digress....

At level 48 it changed. I was running out of steam on Galileyo, and he on his shaman. The Burning Crusade was about to come out and we each had different goals for the expansion. And he got a girlfriend. She wanted to play a blood elf rogue on a server far far away from me. Understandable.

So Galileyo and her pet shammy were abandoned, and the hunter and his trainee parted ways in the WoW world for good.

At that point I wasn't playing at all. I went four months without a drop of WoW. When I did start playing again, it was only to indulge in my need for alts. Many many alts. I went on alt-overload and since then have not been able to stop. I sucked at every class, and I was frustrated that I couldn't level Galileyo on my own....



Part II coming soon....

No Mouse for You

Decided that the blog needed something more appropriate than Hunter Stew.

Sure most of what I talk about will be completely random—like chunks of potato and mushy carrot floating around in beef juice—but really, the thing that differs about how I play is that I play on a laptop. I typically play with no mouse. I am portable. I am subject to huge amounts of lag. My graphics can suck. Org is a dangerous place to /AFK. I am still learning how to kite with a touchpad. I actually find it hard to PvP with a mouse now.

I'm not saying I'm the only one of my kind out there—far from it.

But out of all the random things I do, the weird alts I level, and my strange play styles (if you tell me to roll on an RP server, I'll probably gut you), being a hunter on a laptop is one of my favourite things. I'll probably never go back.



So, point: changed site name, changed url. I don't expect this to affect anyone. No one is reading this anyways as it is all entirely for my benefit and pleasure.

Carry on.



Now back to Hamlet essay.

And....this.

Board Games, Biochemistry, and Beasts

Guess what. We leveled today.

....

Two days ago....

We sighed. We respecced. We farmed for some gold. We tamed ourselves a worg from the Hinterlands because they are multipurpose pets, and we feel stupid getting the pets we want cause they look pretty.

We headed to Un'Goro and ran around, ticking off as many quests as possible. (We've only turned two in. We would have had three, if we had checked to make sure we had that last mob out of the twenty we needed.) Okay, so starting as many quests as possible.

Then last night we upgraded our poor little Mac PowerBook G4 laptop to the new OS. We backed up all our WoW files, too. Twice.

This morning the laptop was ready. We logged in.

Kablooey!! Our graphics were all over the place. The new wolf pet had exploded and was salavating all over the computer screen. We were being attacked by dinos in Un'Goro and couldn't for the life of us see where we were going.

We hastily closed WoW. We breathed. Something was seriously wrong and we didn't know what.

The laptop was restarted. We updated all the new software.

We logged back in.

Yay!

Four mobs dinged us (maybe three). We were very happy. We cleaned up some quests, turned them in, and hopped on a gryphon to Tanaris to pick up the gold our bank alt had made on auctions. Very nice. Very good. Very happy.

Zocks hasn't been touched since WSG the other night, though, but we have tons of homework and an essay to do. And a boatload of college applications to turn in Friday. We're not supposed to be playing WoW or blogging or playing board games with family, but we're very content and very relaxed. We feel good. Our heart is racing and we feel good.

Okay, I respecced. Happy?






I am.

But I miss trueshot aura.

And other things.

Moved to New Blog (Finally)

So, uhm, some of you may remember me from my old random hunter blog I had a long while ago.

Well pet and I decided to start fresh!

Enjoy!