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.

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.

I was Feral tank-spec again by then, and was again very happy when the raid invite popped up.  I had only tanked Kel’Thuzad once before on Heroic, we needed a couple tries to kill him; the first time I didn’t have the postioning quite right and got hit by a chain iceblock when one of the melee DPS got hit, the second time I was hit by a Zoid Fissure that I didn’t notice in time, got a battle-rez from one of my fellow Druids, slapped on Thorns and Mark and picked KT right back up again.  We killed him that time.

Anyway, I was the add tank this time, which I had never done before, so once KT come into play I ran on over to my position in front of the right-back portal and stayed there.  I was watching the fight’s progress by targeting KT every once in a while when I noticed that I was at around half health, then shortly after KT iceblocked me and I dropped really fast.  You don’t live very long when an iceblock hits you at half health.  A few seconds after I died the adds started coming in, and the DK add tank managed to gather up all four and was keeping them away from the raid when he suddenly dropped too.  Then all hell broke loose as the bugs dashed about killing off healers and ranged DPS.  Better luck next try right?

Buff up and then scoot on up to the middle circle to start, kill the undead, okay KT is in play, time to get into position!  About halfway through phase 2 our Warrior MT died, luckily we got him rez’d again and he picked up KT soon after he was back up.  Other than MT death, nothing to really worry about until the adds came out.  We enter the next phase, and out come the bug adds, I pick up my two, the DK picks up the other two, and we’re both doing pretty well when suddenly…  The other add tank dies.  And now the two bug adds he was tanking are lose among the DPS and healers!  I managed to immediately pick up one that was running among the ranged DPS and pulled him over, still fretting over who the fourth one was going to kill while my Growl cooled down.  Luckily the little bugger went straight for the MT and started beating on him.  While it might be a little hard on his healers, at least it wasn’t running around 1-shotting players whose gear wouldn’t be able to handle it.  A few seconds later Growl was up and ready to use again and I called the little stinker over.  The raid leader reminded me in Vent to watch for Void Fissures when I had all four of them together, and I realized that they almost completely hid me from view, which would make spotting a Void Fissure before it went off fairly difficult.  I danced and Swiped them in a circle until they ran off when KT died.  I was real happy when that was over, I was burning mitigation cool-downs to make sure I lived and to give the healers a bit of an easier time, good thing the raid leader told them to pour on the extra healing!  There were a few times where I nearly dropped but was saved by a well-timed heal.

I don’t really know what would have happened to make the other add tank drop, and I don’t want to point any fingers, but I guess the healers weren’t paying enough attention to him.  Or the RNG was deciding to be evil that fight and made the bugs land a ton of hard hits.  Oh well, at least we killed him in the end.  ;P  I won the token for the T7.5 Druid helm, which replaced my Eviscerator helm(I was really happy about that since I was so sick of that helm…  >.> ).

After KT it was time for Sarth +1 Drake, we left Tenebron alive so that the add tanks could practice handling the adds.  We 1-shotted them and I walked out with the token for the T7.5 gloves.  Pretty good night if you ask me.

Heroic Naxx again on Friday, can’t wait!  :D

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!

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.

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.

Here There Be Fishin’ Advice!
I know that leveling Fishing is annoying, to say the least. I made my Death Knight the day that Wrath launched and have been trying to level his Enginering, Mining, Cooking, and Fishing to the level that they should be at for a Level 58 character… And honestly, I had forgotten about what a pain leveling up Fishing is. There’s just no getting around how boring the first fifty or so points that you have to spend sitting around in a major city trying to catch (mostly) useless fish are. I suggest chatting up a friend or listening to some fun music while working your way through the first fifty points. Get it up five points, then talk with your buddy for a bit or work on something else for a while. I’ve found that it’s a bit easier to tackle it little bits at a time rather than all at once.

After you’ve gotten fishing to 50, I suggest flying off to the Barrens to fish up something a bit more interesting: Deviate Fish. These are especially fun to fish for if you have learned or a friend has learned how to make Savory Deviate Delight. And even if you don’t know anyone who can make it, Alchemists use it in some of their potions and those who are too lazy to fish up the mats for Deviate Delight themselves will probably buy it on the AH if you have it up there at a reasonable price. If you get bored of trying to catch Deviate Fish, Ashenvale and Stonetalon Mountains have pools of Sagefish that you can cast your line into(and remember that lures are a big help!). The streams and ponds of Hillsbrad Foothills are usually swarming with Sagefish schools, so if you’re near that zone or don’t mind flying over there, it’s a very good place to find this fish. Sagefish can be Cooked into Smoked Sagefish, a useful food that has a nice Mana Regeneration buff for casters. (You may find it a bit easier to level Cooking and Fishing at the same time, since you can usually cook up the fish that you catch.)

Once your Fishing skill is safely above 125, you’ll want to sail or fly on over to Booty Bay to visit Old Man Heming and pick up your very own copy of Expert Fishing – The Bass and You. Once you learn what this book has to teach you and load up on lures, you’re ready to venture out into Stranglethorn Vale and seek out schools of Firefin Snapper, Oily Blackmouth, Greater Sagefish, and Stonescale Eels! Firefins, Blackmouths, and Stonescales are used in crafting recipes, and should fetch a reasonable sum on the Auction House. The Greater Sagefish, however, can be cooked into Sagefish Delight, another caster-friendly food which restores mana and health all at once and gives you better Mana Regeneration when you get the Well Fed buff off of it. So if you’re leveling Cooking and Fishing at the same time, these fish should offer a great way to level your Cooking very quickly, as well as being a useful snack if you happen to be a caster class.

Remember that as your skill in Fishing increases, it will take more an more fish caught in order to get one skill-up, so be ready for a lot of time spent staring at your fishing lure. Many fish later, you have maxed your current Fishing skill out at 225, and you have no idea where the trainer or book seller might be. Don’t fret. If you’re Level 35 or higher, you’re ready to go visit Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh. He’ll give you the quest Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme, which will send you to the Feralas for Feralas Ahi, the Swamp of Sorrows for Misty Reed Mahi Mahi, Desolace for Sar’theris Striker, and Stranglethorn Vale for Savage Coast Blue Sailfin. Once you’ve caught all these fish and brought them to him, ol’ Nat will reward you with the Artisan Fishing skill, which will allow you to keep Fishing until you hit 300.

If you’re Horde and you’re around or above Level 50, you should stop by Revantusk Village in the Hinterlands to pick up the Snapjaws, Mon! quest. The reward is a very nice fishing pole that gives you +25 to Fishing, very handy for getting the most out of your Fishin’ trips! If you’re Alliance, you’ll have to either win the Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Tournament, do the quest Rather Be Fishin’(the reward is a pole that gives +20) in Shattrath City, or search Shellfish Traps in Desolace for a +20 to Fishing pole(looks like it has a 1.5% drop rate).

Once you’ve hit 300, you’re probably at or above level 60 by then, so it’s time to ride over to Cenarion Refuge to pay a visit to Juno Dufrain, the Fisherman who’s going to sell Master Fishing – The Art of Angling to you. Now you have a max Fishing skill of 375! Woohoo! But you’re still not done yet. I suggest hanging around Zangarmarsh for a while in order to do your fishing – you’re gonna be around there for a while if you’re questing there anyway. Or, if you’re stocked up with lures(Aquadynamic Fish Attractors are best – especially if you’re an Engineer – unless you have a bunch of Sharpened Fish Hooks on you, these both give +100 to Fishing when applied to your pole) and are the right level, you can go over to Terokkar Forest and fish in the schools found there. Most of the fish you will catch can be cooked, so be sure to save them if you plan on leveling Cooking later or just Cook them all up right then and there if you’re able.

Grats, mon! You been fishin’ and runnin’ around like a crazymon and finally you got to 300! If you’re Horde, you can visit Fishy Ser’ji in Warsong Hold(Borean Tundra) or Angelina Soren of Vengeance Landing(Howling Fjord). And if you’re Alliance, Old Man Robert of Valliance Keep(Borean Tundra) or Byron Welwick in Howling Fjord will be the guys to learn it from.

Finally! Your Fishing skill has been trained to the highest that it can be and now you can fish your heart out anywhere in Northrend! :D And good luck on getting Mr. Pinchy if you’re a collector like me. ;) Those baby Crocolisks that you have a chance to get from Old Man Barlo‘s Daily, Crocolisks in the City, are also pretty dang cute, might as well try for them too now that you’ve got your Fishing so high! Good luck and… Try to have fun with it. ;P

A Pinch of Cookin’ Advice…
Compared to Fishing, Cooking is easy to level in that most of your mats can be found on the AH. The only bad news about this is that the prices are probably going to be ridiculously high for some ingredients, so it wouldn’t hurt to do a little research and go out to get the mats yourself. ;) If you’re an accomplished angler, it should be relatively easy to get mats since you can ride over to any ol’ body of water in the right zone and fish up some good eats for yourself! A good chef is a good chef, but a good chef who is a good fisherman is an even better chef!

…I honestly never expected this post to be so long… 0_____o But I hope that everyone found it useful! :] And if I happened to get anything wrong, please point it out to me. I want this to be as correct as possible.

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.

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

*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 Emaciated Look

One of the things that we notice about Kael’s new look is that he appears to be thinner than normal. I believe that due to the crystal’s position, it keeps him from consuming real food but doesn’t interfere much with his ability to breathe(because it looks like it blocks off his esophagus just below his lungs).

This food-related “starvation” would cause one of his body’s survival instincts to kick in: the body halts the growth of hair and nails(which may also explain why his hair is so thin now. He’s probably wearing that hat thing to cover up a bald spot or something as well) and begins to cannibalize itself, first burning away any and all fat and then dissolving away muscle in an attempt to keep itself alive. This process may have been magically halted in order to keep Kael’s body from literally devouring itself, and Kael’s inability to consume real food would make him even more dependent on magic than he ever was before. Remember those stacks of mana cells you find in his room? He probably has to consume them in order to stay alive.

The Clothes

Come on, clothes don’t spontaneously rip themselves up. Something had to have happened that totally destroyed his clothes. The first thing that we probably notice about Kael’s clothes is that he has no shirt and pretty much everything else that he’s wearing is tattered.

Now if we support the Fell-into-a-spiky-crystal-pit theory, it’s probable that he fell in and then started thrashing around in pain an agony(as would be expected of anyone who accidentally impaled themselves on a spike. Ouch. Especially after having your butt royally kicked by some guy and 24 of his friends), catching his clothes on other crystals and ripping them off as well as shredding his shirt in an attempt to pull the crystal out. And he could have ruined his shoulder pads and head frill thingy, well, by thrashing, actually.

If we support the Jammed-it-into-himself-in-order-to-stay-alive theory, yeah, he could have hurriedly torn off his shirt in order to stab himself with it, but that doesn’t explain the tattered cape, ruined shoulders, and smashed frill thing. …Wait, if he was near death and stabbed himself in order to keep himself alive, how did he find the strength to even pick the crystal up in the first place? And even if we say one of his minions did it, Tempest Keep was completely cleaned out(with the various smaller wings cleared earlier because of their relatively lower difficulty), so how would anyone know what happened until a while after unless they heard the adventurers bragging about it right when the got back to Shattrath?

We also notice that his clothes are much more darkly-colored than they were before, but the only thing that could explain this is the fel crystal leaking energies onto his clothes, or that he somehow got drenched in a substance that left dark stains on them.

The Gray Complexion

Yikes, at least he doesn’t have a horrible zit problem on top of how ghastly his skin looks! The only way I can think of to explain the skin color is, well, the crystal. It might be leaking fel energies, or something, which would badly contaminate Kael and make his skin look downright ugly. And the leakage might be contributing to his apparent hair loss as well, cause that much fel energy absorbed the wrong way can not be good for you.

But Some Theories Don’t Match

When adventurers turn in the Verdant Sphere to A’dal, Kael appears declaring that he is not dead and challenging adventurers once again, which eventually leads us all to Quel’Danas. It looks like(from what I have seen and been able to dig up) that the image of Kael that we see is the regular version(please correct me if I’m wrong and you’ve seen the event after this quest has been completed yourself). So if he was so close to death after the adventurers left, why doesn’t he look like he’s begun his descent into what we see in Magister’s Terrace? And where exactly was he when the adventurers turned the Sphere in? It’s possible that he yelled at them while he was still in Tempest Keep, and then fell into a pit as he was leaving, but I’ve never seen any green crystals anywhere in Netherstorm, though it may be possible that he fell into the pit and then the demons corrupted the crystal into something that would keep Kael alive.

My Take On What Happened Between Tempest Keep and Quel’Danas

~This theory is based on the assumption that Kael may have been planning to betray the Burning Legion after he succeeded at whatever he was going about in Tempest Keep.~

Okay, so the adventurer dude and his 24 friends beat down Kael’thas and his advisers, steal his epic loot and Verdant Sphere, and then after a few pictures next to Kael’s “dead” body, they head back to Shattrath. Meanwhile, Kil’jaeden has decided that Kael has gotten a bit too independent for his own good and wants him to be directly controlled so that nothing will go wrong during the Demon’s entrance into Azeroth(and maybe even use Kael as a doormat for not going with his plans…), and seeing that Kael has been weakened by his fight with the adventurers, he sends Priestess Delrissa(who I’ve heard is the one responsible for “saving” Kael) over to either Mind Control Kael or find some other way to get control over him.

Kael is just waking up as Delrissa and her crew of demons(she’d probably have at least a dozen or so in case Kael turned out to be unpleasantly stubborn) show up, and just as our little adventurer is turning in his sphere to A’dal in Shattrath. They see the portal or whatever that will show Kael to all those in A’dal’s room in Shattrath, Delrissa throws a MC spell at Kael and makes him scream his defiance in the face of A’dal and all of his buddies, “Your monkeys fail at killing stuff, yadda yadda yadda, succumb to the might of Kil’jaeden and stuff.” Once the vision/portal thing goes away, the MC wears off before Delrissa’s demons are able to grab Kael, or maybe they were being stupid and watching him yell at everyone instead of doing what they were brought for or whatever, but Kael manages to get loose.

After that they start trying to grab him(which would explain the tattered clothes, Kael may have recovered enough to get away from them by letting them rip his clothes) a big fight ensues in which Kael picks up a sword and starts taking swings at the demons(is demon blood able to stain clothes?) but eventually they get him pinned and decide to use a control crystal in order to keep him in line. The crystal could have been damaged during the fight(Kael could have smacked it to the floor upon realizing what they might do with it), a flaw which might explain the apparent serious leakage of fel energies into Kael’s body.

So they stab him with it and move him to Magister’s Terrace where Kil’jaeden uses Kael as a meat puppet to order his incredibly-loyal blood elf minions around with. So in controlling Kael, Kil’jaeden secured a relatively large force to do his bidding in Azeroth. The demon was probably directly controlling Kael during his final fight with adventurers(heh, wouldn’t you consider letting them kill you if you were just some broken meat puppet that a demon used to get his way?) and was obviously very cranky when you killed Kael, which resulted in him yelling at you upon his death.

Hahaha… Crazy stuff, man. So what do you guys think? What’s your take on what happened to Kael between Tempest Keep and Magister’s Terrace?

(My opinions have changed a bit since I posted this…  Don’t know whether they’re worth noting, though.)

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.)

A few close-ups of the Spirit:

In my brief experience with the BGs, I’ve found that we usually win then we have someone to give the team direction and also when we have a good Flag Carrier. Both of the WSG matches that we won had someone who was willing to step up, take leadership, and tell us what to do. It’s definitely better when the combatants are given direction.

During the last fight that I attended, I actually managed to help kill the Alliance FC, which made me feel like I was actually helping, unlike the first few times that I did BGs where I just wandered around wondering whether I should be in Defense or Offense. I also kept killing this one Gnome Warlock that I kept running into. I expect that he(or she, it’s hard to tell when you’re running around Mangle-spamming things to death and all the Warlocks are wearing robes) really doesn’t like me very much now. I got killed plenty of times, too, but mostly when I was ganged up on. Being ganged up on stinks, but that’s the way of the BGs: you stick around in the wrong place long enough, and you’ll get mobbed.

The Alliance had a pretty good Defense going on the final Flag, too. A team of two Hunters makes for a great guard force, especially when they’re in full range of the opening that we have to come through to get to them. Great strategy, guys! Way to use the classes to your advantage. ;) We almost didn’t get through. In fact, we failed the first time we tried to get the FC. The Hunters seemed to know their class pretty well, and so did the Shadow Priest who was holding the Horde Flag. But we were persistent, and we won in the end.

So, I have the item that I went into BGs to get(even going so far as to sacrifice time that I typically use for earning gold for my Artisan Riding training), but was that the last time that I’ll be in the BGs? I don’t think so… I got used to the fact that when you BG, you’re gonna die a lot and that in order to win, you need direction. Plus I got better at PvP just from those BGs(I think. I know that I REALLY used to stink before…) and I’d like to try my hand at it again sometime. But for now, it’s back to the gold grind. I’m more than halfway to flying faster, and I am not giving up now.

Heh… Not bad for my first post. I hope that I have something just as interesting or even more interesting to post next time! :)

~Annderia