Ann and the Grand Black War Mammoth

I dunno, I guess today was just a really good day, cause I ended up winning the Grand Black War Mammoth off of Archavon after I tanked him on regular.

Let me just say that never in my right mind would I have thought that I would even see one of these things drop, let alone win it.  I ran up and took a look at the loot that Archavon dropped, wondering if he may have dropped some Druid gear when BEHOLD!  There it was!  I didn’t really pay attention to what else was happening, but the looting went smoothly and when the time came to roll for the mammoth, I rolled an 88 and then watched with growing excitement as everyone rolled under me.  I was pretty excited.  Okay, not just pretty excited, really excited.  I was flipping out from sheer joy, I had always thought that Grand Black War Mammoths happened to other people, who then unfairly ninja’d it from the puggers that they needed to come along to kill the boss.  That’s part of what I love about my guild, everyone in the raid rolled, everyone got a chance to win this mount.  I just happened to have the highest roll, and I  had been so sure that someone was gonna roll a 90 or something.

Well, nothing that could happen that day was gonna top me getting that mammoth(well, save for the Ashes of A’lar magically appearing in my mailbox, but we all know that’s never going to happen), and I was still kinda stunned that this had all happened, so I kinda hung around Dalaran for a while, gave my Aunt and Uncle a ride when they logged on to see what I’d won while my Aunt took video, then went to do the rest of my Sons of Hodir dailies.

And to bring my day to a really fun end, I spent about an hour messing around on my mammoth with my guild mates.  Nothing quite beats hi-jinks in Orgrimmar when there are two passenger-carrying mammoths involved(one of my guild mates has the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth).  There were even ninjas, pirates, and gnomes involved.  :P  I really haven’t had this much silly, light-hearted fun in a while!

Today was a good day.

Heroic KT and Sarth+1 Fun

After a bit(okay fine, a lot, more than I’d like) of drama guild-wise I have found myself in Run to the Door of Arathor.  It’s great–nice people, usually someone online to randomly talk to, and I get to tank in Heroic raids.  :D  Yeah, it’s been really fun so far.

So Friday I was Boomkin and got invited to our weekly 25-man Naxx run, which just made me the happiest little Druid ever.  <3  Unfortunately they thought I was still Feral when they invited me, so after that little embarassing incident I have decided to stay Feral until dual-specs come out.  >.>  We cleared all four wings in a few hours, were going for our second try on Sapph when, as my luck would have it, the router shuts WoW off.  It’s kind of embarassing to have to explain in Vent that my router turns WoW off at 10 and that WoW is the ONLY thing it shuts off, allowing me to stay on Vent but not rejoin my fellow raiders.  At least they beat Sapph’s face in before I left Vent though.  I guess they decided to call it a night after that cause we had Kel’Thuzad left to kill on Sunday, which I was happy about cause I’ve been eyeing the T7.5 Druid helm for a while now.

All I Want for Christmas…

Is for the Patch to come out!

Seriously, that would be like, the most awesome WoW Christmas present ever.  Tauren being able to ride whatever they want!  That was completely unheard of back when WoW first came out, we were lucky that they gave us the Kodos eventually instead of that weird Plainstriding ability.

As to the Druid changes that are coming with the patch, I think that the Feral Attack Power change will be pretty interesting, and it will be nice to have more than just staves available as viable Feral weapons.  Primal Tenacity is getting a nice added buff since it’ll be reducing the mana cost for shifting into Cat, Bear, and Dire Bear form by 17/33/50%; really nice to have something cutting the cost of shifting, since our tiny mana pool as a Feral can be a real pain at times.  The buff to Survival of the Fittest is the Druid buff that I’m most excited about, and for good reason, it’s going to give a bonus of 22/33/66% armor in Bear form.  Good!  Something about the Boomkins having the same armor contribution as Feral Bear Tanks struck me as being a bit weird, since Boomkins are supposed to be the casters and all.

And I just noticed this:  “Swipe: Swipe (Cat) has now been added at level 71, dealing 260% weapon damage, costs 50 energy with no cooldown. All talents affecting the Bear Form version affect the Cat Form one as well.”  Wow.  That is just…  Awesome.  Not that I’ll be using it outside of Instances, though.  Bear form is really the only group-fighting form for me, the reduced damage and incredible crit-happiness is just fine, Cat Swipe or no.

The realms are going down for maintenence tomorrow, so I hope that Blizz decides to surprise us by releasing the patch!

The Big Eight-Zero

Just hit level 80 today while questing in the Storm Peaks, and, as is to be expected, fell prey to the “I’m at the cap now so what should I do? I’ve been leveling all this time and what’s the goal now?” syndrome, otherwise known as Whatnowitis.

I already have my Mysterious Egg courtesy of the Oracles, so I’m set in the way of trying to get those pets and the mount. I just love the Oracles so much, with their way of adoring you just because you exist in the first place.

I’ll probably figure something out. Heroics should be a good way to pass the time as well as being sources of some excellent upgrades, though with my DK friend leaving WoW, that’s probably not gonna happen as often as I’d like it to.

Luckily WoW has a massive abundance of things to do when you hit the cap, and it’s about time that I get my hands on that Drake… And of course, with the Tauren mount restrictions being lifted next patch, I’m hoping that they’ll get that out as soon as possible. :P I’ve been wanting one of those Raptors for myself since the beginning.

Cookin’ and Fishin’ in Northrend

Cool new shoulders, still the same old ugly hat. Here’s to hoping for a replacement soon!

So it’s the Sunday after the launch of Wrath of the Lich King and I hit 71 just yesterday. I must say, my stay in the Borean Tundra has been quite fun with all the leather rewards, large amounts of skinnable critters everywhere, and a variety of new fish to catch and cook.

If you haven’t leveled your Fishing or Cooking at all, I highly suggest that you do, since the foods that you can cook the Northrend fish into are very useful out in the field, especially now that the Well Fed buff on these foods lasts an hour instead of a mere thirty minutes. The two sea/fish foods that I have tried so far are Baked Manta Ray and Grilled Sculpin.

Grilled Sculpin gives a nice Attack Power bonus(an additional 60 AP to be exact) and of course, 40 Stamina is nothing to sneeze at, especially when 400(approx 640 for Tauren Feral Druids) health could be what seperates you from successfully fighting off a large group of mobs or getting overwhelmed and having to make a corpse run. Another nice thing about this food is that it restores mana as well as health when you eat it, saving you the trouble of having to go and buy more Pungent Seal Whey when you get back to town. Not only is this food very useful, the one mat that you need to make it, Musselback Sculpin, can be found in schools all around the lakes and pools in the Borean Tundra, and you’ll come across quite a few of these schools if you’re questing around Lake Kum’uya(right across the road from the D.E.H.T.A. camp).

Baked Manta Ray gives you an additional 30 Haste Rating and 40 Stamina when you gain the Well Fed buff from eating it. I compared the frequency of my auto attacks after getting Well Fed off of this food and the frequency while not Well Fed and found that the increase in Haste Rating is actually noticably faster. Not by much, but I was able to notice it. And as always, 40 more Stamina is helpful for survival.

Flamestrike

Shameless art plug, and some random thoughts. :P (And I mean random. And yes, I really did make this picture and yes, I also posted it on deviantART.)

Looks like a phoenix-y version of Frostmourne cause I thought it was appropriate for it to look like a flame-based “duplicate,” cause of the whole Fire VS. Ice thing…

It’s kind of a bummer that we never got to see Flamestrike in WoW, since it was Kael’thas’ sword and we got to steal Illidan’s Twin Blades of Azzinoth. So why didn’t we ever get to loot Flamestrike? I mean yeah, it would have been outdone by the epic weapons in Wrath if it had dropped off Kael’thas at any point in BC, but it would still be cool to have such a shiny legendary.

Maybe someone found it after Kael was dead and we’ll get to see someone bat Arthas around with it after all. :P A shame it won’t be Kael doing the smacking, though, since he did have a big score to settle with Arthas, you know, the whole stealing Jaina and destroying most of Quel’thalas thing. I’d say that would be pretty big.

Addons: Bejeweled

This is my first time at reviewing something, so here it goes.

Last month, PopCap games released a new addon for WoW: the Bejeweled addon. Now I’m not a Bejeweled fanatic of any sort, but I had really enjoyed playing the game in the past, so when this came out, I was determined to try it out.

All in all, the addon is extremely well-made; the graphics and sounds are awesome, and it’s as if you were playing the real Bejeweled, but inside WoW. The only annoying bit was the default settings that it had, one of which would spam up Guild chat by saying something along the lines of “I have be come a (insert rank here) at Bejeweling” in guild chat. And a strange bug that didn’t allow me to match jewels in a specific area of the “board,” but it was fixed when I started a new Bejeweled game and it hasn’t occured again since then.

Other than that little bug, the addon is fantastic. Nah, scratch that. The addon is just flat-out fantastic, the bug doesn’t really count as a serious flaw because it only happened once and didn’t do much to effect my play anyway. This addon is especially awesome if you hate using the Flight Masters to get around. Remember the flights where you had to fly from northern tip of the continent to the southern tip? Well, if you were ever annoyed at how long it took to fly from point A to point B, with this addon you’ll find it hard to really notice anything other than which jewel you’re going to match up next once this addon is running.

One thing to remember: this addon makes an already-addictive game even more addictive then before. I’ve found myself going on the verge of AFK just so I can finish up a combo that I’ve had my eye on. So, just a warning, you might end up spending a lot more time Bejeweling than actually WoWing. ;)

For more information on the Bejeweled addon, check out WoW Insider:
WoW Insider Bejeweled Preview
WoW Insider PopCap Interview

And for the addon itself:
Bejeweled

LOL, It’s Lore. :P

Just my take on some WoW Lore…

*Nervously slinks in and takes a seat*

This is probably a very old subject matter by now, with Wrath coming up and all, but I just wanted to put forth my theories for you guys to see.

*Ahem…* Okay, first up, the crystal that we see implanted in Kael’s chest when we meet him for the final showdown in Magister’s Terrace: how did that thing even get there? A lot of people say that it’s to keep him alive, and that’s probably part, if not all of its reason for being there. As to how it got there, I’ve heard that he fell into a spiky crystal-filled pit while escaping Tempest Keep, and that he put it there himself in order to keep himself alive. I’m going to analyze the information we know(and info that we don’t know) and how his physical appearance changed from Tempest Keep to Magister’s Terrace. And then I’m going to present my take on what happened to him. Beware, for this wall of text may crit you into oblivion if you’re not careful. ;P My sincerest congratulations to those who survive all the way through! :D

The Spirit of Competition

For the past 3 days or so, I’ve actually been doing Battlegrounds (this is unusual because I used to loathe any and all PvP with a passion) in order to get The Spirit of Competition, which is an adorable little Chinese dragon that is awarded to players on the winning side of a Battlegrounds match in honor of the Bejing Olympics.

After 1 loss and 1 win in Arathi Basin and 3 losses and 2 wins in Warsong Gulch, I had my Spirit.

(And no, that’s not the Black War Wolf that I’m riding, that’s the Swift Grey Wolf that you can buy when you get to Exalted with Orgrimmar. They look pretty similar at first glance.)