thistlechaser | Entries tagged with wow

Following the "three things make a post" rule:

- I slept five hours last night. While that's just a drop in the bucket after not sleeping the previous two nights, at least I'm only tired today and not 'oh my god, kill me now' level exhausted. I still hate the machine, it makes me feel like I'm being smothered. Nothing like the feeling of being smothered to help you fall asleep, huh?

It's way too early to know if this is just chance or if it's a Thing, but usually I remember at least one dream a night, and I haven't the past three nights. The first two can be explained by the lack of sleep, but I wonder about last night. To remember a dream, you need to wake up within (some number of minutes, I forget how many) of having it. If the machine makes me sleep sounder/wake up less, I guess I'll stop remembering them. That would be a really big negative side effect; I love remembering my dreams, I often spend much time the next day thinking about them. I guess we'll see.

- Still loving FFXIV. A side effect of that is how much schadenfreude I get from reading WoW news. I had been unhappy there for so long, and I wasn't looking forward to anything about the coming expansion, and I hated the graphics and so much else about the game, now I can sit here and read the news and snicker to myself that I don't have to put up with it anymore. I sure do wish I had quit sooner!

I'm so happy to be getting so much RP on FFXIV. I'm still getting it almost daily (the days I don't RP it's by my choice, not for lack of options). A new fellow just joined our FC ("guild"), and he writes long posts, like me. It's so nice to be able to flex my writing muscles and not feel like I'm making people wait for me.

- It's such a wonderful thing to read a book by a great writer after such a string of bad books. I just started reading BZRK, by Michael Grant (the same fellow who wrote the Gone series that I loved, and wrote all the Animorph books with his wife, along with tons of other YA books from that time). It's not just that his stories are great (they are), or his characters are realistic (so realistic), or he has a GRRMesque willingness to kill off his characters (*cackle*), but his skills at crafting a sentence and describing the world just blow me out of the water. I had to go back and reread this section a number of times (then continued reading the book only to keep flipping back to it).

Even though he was just seventeen, he wasn't really for girls. He was for women.

Women would look at him and let their eyes slide over his face and those shoulders, because you know, women don't stare the way men do. They just need a glance. And then, having memorized him with a glance, they would...

It wasn't until I read that that I remembered there have been studies that confirm just that -- women decide in something like two? three? seconds if they're attracted to another person, much faster than men do. Something about their general body shape (silhouette), the width of their shoulders, that sort of thing.

Unfortunately I accepted a book for review (Salvation, by James Wymore) from a publisher. Bad timing, I'm going to have to read it next instead of continuing on with the BZRK series. Oh well, hopefully Salvation will be good. It has good reviews on Amazon, for what that's worth...

Wow, this turned out to be an actual post! I worried it wouldn't be more than three sentences long. Heh.

Current Mood: tired

1) After being in the high 80s/low 90s for a couple days, today is beautiful! Supposedly it got up to 81 at some point, but I had my windows open all day and it never got too hot. It's cool and wonderful now, and I don't even mind the young kids being loud right outside my window.

I am, however, so envious of all the people going into the complex pool. I'm resisting until after my surgery; I can't risk getting more infections, no matter how low the risk.

2) I feel like a big slacker for "working" from home today, but today was free bagel/donut day at work, free unlimited pastries. My willpower isn't strong enough to resist unlimited free baked goodies. :/ Sure was a nice day to stay home though! (Edit: Having one wouldn't be a problem, but my issue is stopping at one. It really is unlimited, if you wanted a dozen donuts, there are plenty, you could take that many and have bagels, baked things, and other sweets as well!)

3) I know I have a lot of gamers on my friends list, so you might be interested to know that

jsciv works for Blizzard as a programmer for WoW (recent changes mean they're permitted to tell people that now). I'm hoping for lots of interesting stories!

Current Mood: hungry

I haven't posted in a few days, so here goes. Some number of unrelated things that have been happening lately:

* I don't usually rec things before I've read a significant chunk of them, but I was reading my friendsfriends list and stumbled upon

laniew1's LJ. She's writing a Teen Wolf/Avengers crossover. I've only read the first of 30 chapters, but I'm really liking it. The voices all work, both on the Teen Wolf side and Avengers/SHIELD side. I'm not really sure how Stiles/Clint will go, but I'm willing to ride it out and see.

* Much to my great surprise, I've gotten back into RP. I had gone so long (months) without it, I thought that was the end and I just never would again. Then suddenly I was RPing every day, nearly every waking, non-working moment. I think my long dry spell was due to a number of things: 1) I played the character too long. I was bored with him and his story had long since been finished. I should have let him die and moved on. 2) So much OOC drama. Gods above, so much. Dealing with people a decade or two younger than me, some with serious emotional issues, and just wow. Fighting and angsting and just who needs that. What a sap of my energy. 3) Maybe RP burnout. 1 + 2 could = burnout, or it could have really been burnout. Who knows.

If I weren't so exhausted I'd be all EEEEEE AAAIIIEE RP EEEE. Plus it's a little embarrassing that the one of the people I've been doing so much RP with is in my friends list. :) I mean, not like I haven't EEEEE'ed at her directly, but I try to look like at least a semi-normal adult in my LJ. :P

* After a number of disappointing eps, Homeland has gotten back to amazingly good. I swear, that show is everything that works for me, it's like it was written just for me. So many mental games! Out-thinking the other guy, forcing them to do something totally against their nature, brainwashing, training, breaking people and rebuilding them.

* I got my blood work back today, and I'm happy to say I won't have to jump out of a window. Because of the heart issue, all my blood work numbers on everything were really bad last time. My doctor said it was all because of my heart and stress around that, but idiot that I am, I didn't believe her. (How many times to I get annoyed at people who don't believe their doctors?) The numbers weren't perfect, but they went back to very close levels as they were before the heart stuff, so I call that good enough for now.

* Related: If I make it through the winter swimming outside, I'll be amazed. The pool is heated (supposedly), but it usually feels as cold as the air. At least this area of the country doesn't get too cold, but I tell you, swimming when it's 50 and cloudy is no fun at all. Soon enough it'll be 40s when I go. (Classes/free swim time is 10 AM, so nothing much has warmed up by then.)

* I'm still "playing" WoW. I'm at the point of hating the game, I resent the direction Blizz takes the storyline, I have little I'm looking forward to in the coming expansion, but through WoW I RP and have a collection of very nice people to chat with, so that's what keeps me there. The game is just a non-too-pretty chatroom to use for RP and chatting. (Irony is, the best WoW RP is done over IM...)

Current Mood: exhausted

I jumped right into Ghost Brigade after finishing Old Man's War. I suspect I'll finish it tomorrow (40% left to go), then put a review post up for both. Next week I have mandatory, unpaid OT at work every day (and half of the next week too), so the third book will be much slower to finish.

... You know, I had this long post written up about playing FFXIV beta all day, no real info on the game, just my opinions and such, but then I looked up the beta agreement to try to see if I would be breaking the rules by posting it or not. I wonder if the agreement would stand up in court? If I wrote "I (liked|disliked) it" and nothing else, that would be considered confidential information. It's odd that my liking or disliking of something could be confidential. Posting a screenshot of a mob? Sure, I could see that being an issue. "Oh, that mob is so cool!" doesn't seem the same.

Oh well, not much of a post without that section. :/ Well, to flesh this out a bit: I spent maybe a half-hour total on WoW today, and hated every minute of it. This morning I didn't do my dailies, and when I logged on in the evening a gold beggar was waiting for me and whispered me the moment I connected (and bugged me for the next 15 minutes, until I finally logged).

There's a RP opportunity tomorrow on WoW, but I don't think I'll take it. I need to get off my butt and look into closing my account.

Current Mood: tired

1) The local shop were all out of the bird seed I usually use, so I bought a new kind. Thistle (Nyjer) seed. c.c I had no idea thistle seeds were a thing! It's a very ugly seed, when spilled on the ground it looks like thousands of ants. Blech. I'm going to go back to sunflower cores as soon as they come back in stock. (There are multiple jokes in this, all of them dirty...)

2) I'm loving (L-O-V-I-N-G) Old Man's War. I'd be done with the first book already if my eyes weren't so old (heh). I wanted to read all evening last night, but I had to read for a half-hour, take an hour break, increase the font size, read for a half-hour, take an hour break, increase the font size... Eventually it got silly and, with a horrible headache, I forced myself to stop reading for the night. I'll finish it tonight.

3) Out of idle curiosity, I went back and looked at "this day in history" in my LJ -- the posts I made on 4/19 back to 2002. I noticed a couple interesting things:

- Today, back in 2006, was the day the ToAU expansion for FFXI came out. The expansion I loved most of all. It made me smile to read about how excited and happy I had been.
- I've been playing WoW a long time (since 2007, I believe), and on 4/19 in 2009, I noted how the game isn't fun anymore. I've been playing this game for four years while not having fun with it. (If I ever got married, I suspect I'd be the kind to stay in a loveless marriage since it's what I know and I'm used to it.) Very very belatedly, I've finally reached the final straw with the game. All those years I said I was staying for the people, for my friends and for the RP, now those things are mostly gone. I haven't RPed in weeks (months?), and almost everyone I know is gone from the game. My social channel is a ghostland -- less than one comment per hour on it most days. There's nothing left for me.

So the question is, what to fill my WoW time with. FFXIV beta is this weekend again, I want to give that another chance even though I really really don't want a new MMO in my life. I think I'm going to force myself to contact at least one person from

rp_me and see how that goes. The MU* is an option as well, along with... I don't know what else. If I had a string of really good books I could read a lot more (or at least as long as my eyes held out).

You know, that's part of what's kept me on WoW for so long -- I don't know how else to fill the time. Silly thing, isn't it? The world should be full of things I want to do. I just have to find them.

Current Mood: bored

1) I'm not a music person. I rarely listen to it, I have very little interest in it. Now and then I regret that. WoW has new music coming out in this patch, and I wish I knew why it catches my attention so hard, I wish I knew how it makes you feel things.

It feels slightly "off", darker than it should. It's surprising to me that music could make me interested in something, but the first part (the first 44 seconds especially), feels almost like it's telling a story. How does something without words tell a story!

2) It's rare for me to watch an advertisement, let alone rewind so I can watch it again, but I love this Baileys Irish Cream commercial. (No idea why there's no apostrophe in Baileys...) The song is great (I remember roller skating to it as a kid!), but it's the women and the graphics that make it:

I actually like the shorter 30 second TV version better, but either way it's a really nice watch. I love the women, they're so pretty and look like they're having fun, love the dresses, love the coloring, love how they all move.

Edit: There's a too-short Making Of video for the commercial.

Current Mood: okay

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, that applies even to alarm clocks. My clock knows daylight savings time exists, it knows it has to move forward an hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall. It just doesn't know what exact day to do it. It helpfully changed my clock back an hour last night...

Nothing like waking up, checking your watch, and finding you need to be at work in 15 minutes.

Sorry I've not been posting much lately! Life is BUSY. Or rather, my job in the new group is. I haven't taken a lunch break all week, which is depressing as heck. I need to write more about job foo behind a locked post.

I saw my second Romney political ad last night. I swear, if he believes the things being said about him in them, someone should lock him up in a mental hospital. This one claimed that the world hated Obama, but if Romney was elected the world would love America again. (How exactly would that work? "LOVE US OR WE'LL BOMB YOU!!!"?) Reminds me of my favorite bumper sticker: American flag background with the words: Do what we say or we'll bring democracy to your country, too.

I'm feeling less nervous about the election. Most polls/experts I'm hearing are saying it's going to be pretty hard for Romney to win.

WoW is slowing down for me. Less/no time in the morning to play and not going home for lunch to check auctions = I'm getting reamed in the AH game. BUT! I keep telling myself I don't care. I'm crawling slowly towards gold cap again, I'm back at a comfortable (for me) level of gold. I don't like dailies. I'm back to not enjoying the game in general very much (outside of RP). I keep telling myself there's NO reason for me to begrudge putting time towards my paying job over putting it towards WoW. Most days I actually believe that, too.

Speaking of, time to get to work! Even if I'm not posting as much, I do make time to read my friendslist. It's often the bright point of my work day. :)

Current Mood: rushed

There's an insult I don't understand. "Mouth breather". Ever since I was a little kid I've had allergies and sinus problems, so it's rare I can breath through my nose (usually only after multiple medications). So perhaps, as a life-long mouth breather, I'm missing something. I'd rather breath through my nose, it's nice when I can, but why aren't both ways valid? Or is it just that one is "different" than the norm? Or is it more along the lines of "gay" as an insult and most people frown upon it being used as an insult?

Book #24 of 2012: Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge. Book #24! I was hoping to hit 25 books this year, half of the

50bookchallenge goal, and I'm going to make it for sure. Woot!

Gullstruck Island is an odd book. Fantasy, it was about a population of people spread across islands, so they had to use the "Lost" to communicate with each other. The Lost are the rare members of their population who can send their senses out elsewhere. One could send his hearing towards the moon, his vision under the sea, his sense of touch into his neighbor's house, all at the same time. Then boom, one day all the Lost fall over dead. The book is about what happened to them, what might have been behind all the sudden deaths, etc. It's a mystery!

It should have been a wonderful match for me. I loved the world-building. The "magic" was subtle. There were different languages used in the book (which were well done and made sense). The characters were mostly believable. There was nothing wrong with the book. Yet it put me to sleep. I can't explain it, I should have loved it, but instead it dragged page after page, for 500+ pages. Never once did I have the "Can't stop! Just one more page!!" feeling.

Yesterday I started book #25, The Enemy by Charlie Higson. It's fun going into a book knowing nothing about it other than seeing a thumbnail version of the cover. I must have heard things I liked about this book when I bought it, but that was a year or two ago and I long since forgot. Being an ebook, there wasn't even a back cover to check.

Turns out it's a young adult "end of the world" type story. Something happened and every adult either died or turned into a flesh-eating monster. Unfortunately the writing isn't very good, the author never learned the "Show, don't tell" rule.

The Amazon blurb says: "Full of unexpected twists and quick-thinking heroes, The Enemy is a fast-paced, white-knuckle tale of survival in the face of unimaginable horror." That's opposite of the book in every way so far. Everything that happens is telegraphed (one character is described as the smartest kid ever, the story says outright that they always do what he says because he's right 100% of the time... yet when they go into an abandoned building and he says five or six times that it's a trap and they should leave, they don't listen. And guess what, it's a trap!), the "heroes" are stupid thus far, it's not fast-paced, it's about as white-knuckled as drifting off to sleep is, and "unimaginable horror" is the biggest laugh at all: as the author doesn't describe anything, just tells you the adults are all monsters, there's not a single bit of horror to it. Hopefully it'll get better, but I suspect I'll be moving on to something else before I finish it.

(I google image searched "It's a mystery!" and Paul Ryan came up. His expression amused me, so I decided to go with that image.)

WoW: And the last horse crosses the finish line! I finally hit 90 day before yesterday, the last person of everyone I know. My first thought was "YAY now I'll never have to quest again!" which later made me laugh, as there are endless dailies to do. I'll give it to WoW though, I haven't been bored since then.

I'm focusing on just the Tillers for now. Everyone and their brother are on the new mounts, and I like my stone panther mount, so I don't need to push for the new ones. My farm makes me happy though, along with cooking stuff for NPCs, so I'm going to stick with that. I'm dabbling with the raising your own mount folks, and even lighter dabbling with Nat the Fishing Guy. (I'm more interested in fishing than mount-raising, but Nat is more out of the way, so I stumble onto him less often.)

The AH is going well and poorly. I've not sold one of the TCG mounts yet (EEEEEK), but I've also doubled the amount of gold I had since MoP dropped, so I'm back up to a comfortable range. I'm not where I was before buying all the TCG mounts and 13 Deathchargers, but I'm getting there. When/if they ever sell it will be a nice bonus.

Current Mood: tired

It's getting on towards a week since I last posted, which seems odd. I keep writing a post in my head, so I feel like I'm keeping more updated than I am. It's the same post I keep mentally writing. I don't know if I'll ever get it down "on paper" or not, since unfortunately it would be rather pointless. (Political in nature, so everyone on my friends list will either already agree with me or be highly unlikely to change their base beliefs based on my one post.)

I can't believe how stressed I am over election stuff. Never before has it been this bad. In the past did I not know how high the stakes were? Or are things worse now? Whoever the next president is will likely pick new supreme court judges, which scares the poo out of me. With half the country wanting to make women into second class citizens (plenty of them women wanting to take rights away from women!), I just... can't. I just don't understand. If you don't believe in something, don't do it. Where do people get off forcing their beliefs onto others?

People against gay marriage: Doesn't want ANYONE to be able to have one.
People for gay marriage: They are not forcing you to marry someone of the same sex.

People against abortion: Doesn't want ANYONE to be able to have one.
People pro-choice: Not going to force you to have one.

I've gotten so depressed and disappointed with this country. It's so ultra-religious and becoming more so, yet religious folks are crying out that they're bullied and repressed.

ANYWAY! I wasn't going to write that rant.

WoW: Blah and yay. I failed on my Panda Project: I had 40 levels to grant from RAF, so I wanted to get my panda girl to 40 so I could use the levels to bump her up to 80, but I ran out of time and will. I ended up hitting 28 on her last night and tossed the levels onto her. Pre-MoP I could have hit 40 on her without problem, but post? I was using all my time and leveling energy on her when I really wanted to be leveling my mains to 90.

Thistle hit 88 last night. I did nearly every quest in Jade Forest! I never do a whole zone like that. I think I missed one quest (it was still open in my log), but I got the zone achievement and mobs had turned green, so tonight I'll move on.

I tried to read quest text, really I did. It slows things down too much though. But, even without reading most of the stuff, I really liked the storyline. (There were enough cutscenes that I could follow it just fine.) I loved the end of the zone's storyline, I actually almost cried over it. It was silly, I don't know why it hit me so hard, but it did.

It turns out this is quite a good expansion for me. Ever since I started playing WoW, I've been against this whole Horde-Alliance war. Coming from my FFXI background, I'm used to all PCs working together towards a common goal -- I do NOT like PCs working against each other.

Surprisingly, I don't hate pandas anymore. I still think they're silly, I wish they had been some other race (non-animal based or not), but at least I don't hate them. (And my panda girl is cute as a button.)

Even with good storylines and better-than-Cata quests, leveling still feels so so so slow. It's pissing me off that all the things I want to do I can't because I'm not 90. Fly? Expand my farm? Do reps? Get mounts? NONE FOR YOU! BACK TO LEVELING!

Books: I'm having the oddest experience with Gullstruck Island. It seems like it should be the perfect book for me: It has tons of great world building. The characters are realistic and 100% believable. The writing and dialog is great. The story is interesting and there's a mystery.

And yet I'm not enjoying it.

I don't hate it, but I'm not liking it. I don't know how the mystery will be solved, and though it's interesting, I find myself not caring what the answer might be.

I don't understand it at all. This book should be a great match for me. When I'm reading it I'm okay with reading it, but I have no drive to read it. (Does that make sense?) It feels soooo long too. I feel like I've been reading it forever and I'm only halfway done.

The most interesting thing about the book is my reaction to it. It really should be a perfect match for me (fantasy with a great new world, good characters, plotty, well-written). What's missing from that list that anyone would need to love a book? Why isn't it clicking with me? I can't put my finger on one thing that I don't like about it, and there's lots I do like. Odd...

Current Mood: tired

The following statement is not exaggeration: Outside of RP, I had more fun in WoW over today's lunchtime than I did in all of Cata.

I didn't want to love you, ~~Pokemon~~ Pet Battles, I've been in love with things like you before. Oh, I don't regret my affair with Pokemon itself, but FFXI did pet battles years ago, and after that I promised myself I wouldn't get burned on a Pokemon knockoff again.

But I really, really, REALLY like WoW's Pet Battles.

Alas something about my setup is bugged and I don't see pet dots on my minimap (tracking is enabled, I can be standing right on top of a battle pet, but no dots). I'm going to have to disable addons to try to figure out what's causing it, because if I can find pets to battle faster, it will be even better.

I can't even put my finger on what I like about it. I don't have to interact with other people to do it (though I do want to try battles against another trainer sometime). It's nice, it's calm. It's easy to find wild pets to battle (even without my minimap tracking)! It's just nice and calm. (Edit: I noticed I said "nice and calm" twice. Isn't that an odd thing to want out of a game, especially a MMO? But really, that is what makes me happy in games: No stress, not too hard, not frustrating -- I get enough of those things in RL, I don't need them from a game as well.)

I think there's an issue with it, we were supposed to get XP for the character through it (through the dailies, maybe?), but I've gotten no XP yet.

I've done nothing else in MoP yet. I've not set foot in the new lands, not leveled any professions, nothing. And I wonder if I ever will. I could happily play at World of Pokemon and never level up again.

And know what? Having done archaeology on ten alts, eight of them being Professors, has paid off. Literally. I can sell all the extras of the pets!

I really hope I don't get bored of pet battles or finish with them too soon.

It's so odd to be enjoying WoW again. To not want to go back to work after lunch not because I feel I have to sit and camp the AH because otherwise I'll be undercut, but because I'm having fun.

Current Mood: pleased

Wow, it's been almost a week since my last post. To be fair, I did write one a couple days ago, but made it private an hour or so after posting (it was a whine whine whine one).

Book #18 was The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold.

(Note: I often use Amazon links for the books I read. I don't have one of those deals where if you click through my link I make a couple cents, it's just that often that's the best source of an official review as well as reviews by readers.)

I couldn't believe she wrote Warrior's Apprentice. After reading the Sharing Knife series and the Curse of Chalion books, I was so in love with her work. Then I remembered something. She said she only writes a book every other year, and there had been more than a dozen books in the series. Googling, I confirmed that this was in fact one of the first books she ever wrote.

I'm afraid I didn't enjoy it hardly at all. There was a moment in the middle of the book I liked (couple pages long) and I liked the end more than the rest of the book together. But the characters (which currently are her strong point in writing) were so boring that even at the end of the book I couldn't remember who they were. More than that, I didn't care.

The whole book was way, way, way too light and fluffy for me. The one moment I liked was a sole dark moment (when his bodyguard/armsman was discovered to have been a torturer and raped women and was raising one of their babies as his own daughter). I don't need a book to be totally dark for me to enjoy it, but chances are I won't enjoy one that is 100% (well, 99.9999%) fluff.

I'm not giving up on the series, but I think when I return to it, I'll read one of the later books. I hate to read a series out of order, but I'm done with finishing books I'm not enjoying. My reading time is too limited to waste it on things I'm not enjoying.

And speaking of not enjoying... The sorry excuse for a MoP "opening event" (not an opening event) was released on WoW. ( Cut for spoilers, just in case. )

I just... I'm so burnt out on WoW. I wanted MoP to be fun. I do want to like it. But... Why couldn't there have been some fun world event? Something EVERYONE could take part in (not just 85s with the gear to do heroics or whatever). Even the sucky Cata one where we had to run around the world doing something with portals was better than this one.

I'm so tired of being disappointed by Blizz. Unless 1) Blizz gets control of this dupping situation, and 2) MoP is fun for me, it's going to be time for me to move on from WoW. Well, I should add on 3: Unless I get back to RPing and have fun with that.

Blah, see, this is another all depressing post. I hate writing those. To end on an up note: The high point of my day is when I rewatch an episode of Homeland. I'm so glad I bought the DVDs and am rewatching it. There are only 12 eps, I'm trying to restrict myself to one ep per day, but sometimes I fail.

Current Mood: down

Well, I certainly picked up the pace there! Books 14-17 were the four in the Sharing Knife series (Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, Horizon) by Lois McMaster Bujold. SO GOOD. I'm hoping so hard that she writes more. (There's room for more! Honest, there is!)

Usually I hate romance mixed into my stories -- most of the time, in my opinion, it takes away from the tale. In this case, I loved it so very much. The characters were so real and the relationship felt so perfect (imperfect!).

She's such an amazing author. I kept logging off WoW just so I could read more, which is a rare thing. She built such an interesting world, with a unique "magic" system (not really magic). But it was the people, the characters, that really made the book. Main character or tiny background person, they were all so realistic. I really, really need more of these books. D: She has to write more!

#18 will be His Majesty's Dragon. I started it last night. It's going to be a tough, slow read. The story seems fine, the characters seem interesting, but I have not a single clue as to how the book made it through the editing process. It has nearly as many semicolons as it does periods and commas. Every paragraph (most of which are short paragraphs) have 2-3 semicolons in it. Nearly every sentence has one. It makes the book nearly unreadable. Seriously, how did an editor give it a pass? Didn't anyone in the publishing office raise their eyebrows? Don't get me wrong, I like semicolons, they're useful things, but you should not be using them in every other sentence.

WoW: SIGH. SIGH, I say. The duppers are back. Why is Bliz not shutting this down? Taking the dupped items back? Fricking 30K deathchargers are flooding the AH. I want to cry. I'm 100% willing to take the blame when I make a wrong guess about the AH, but how in the world was I supposed to foresee this? *I* bought my horses at fair market, pre-duping prices, now I'm going to lose 100K each on 13 of them? 1.3M gold lost, though no fault of my own.

While looking up dungeon info yesterday, I came upon an interesting blog. He wrote about his first time in Northrend, before wiki had a single bit of info on the area. Such a fun read!

Also, he pointed out that Northrend is Australia:

Ha!

Current Mood: blank

It's been quite a nice Sunday. It feels like fall. It's so nice and cool! Our high was 68, and there's a nice very cool breeze blowing. Even better than that, the days are getting shorter. I know I'm the odd man out on this, but I hate it when it doesn't get fully dark until 9:45 PM. I like it dark in the morning when I get up, and I'd love it to be fully dark by 5 PM. It's 8 PM now and only starting to get dark out, but what an improvement that is over the past months! It gives me hope. :)

I've been thinking about that for a few days now, why I'm not like most folks and don't like longer daylight days. All I can come up with is that it feels right to get dark by 5 PM -- that it getting dark was the sign to come home when I was young, that it was dinnertime and time to come inside.

Not to make net jokes, but: "The sun! It burns!" It hurts my eyes. (People with blue eyes are more sensitive to the light and get eye damage a lot easier from it.) The dark feels peaceful to me. Wonderful. There's nothing like having it be dark outside and my whole apartment dark, other than a desk light on. A pool of light in the middle of the shadows. So nice and calm and restful and cozy.

Anyway! I hadn't intended to go on and on about that. The second happy thing was a video Phinny linked me to. It's titled How World of Warcraft Could Save Your Business and The Economy, though it could be any MMO, not just WoW.

This fellow speaks so well! And it's so nice to see someone acknowledge the skills that gamers have. I wish more business folks did.

And lastly, my icon! *points* I had intended to use it only for my book posts, but I love it so wanted to use it before that. :)

Current Mood: happy

For you all: I'm in love with this gif. So peaceful.

For cats tossed into the air: Bad dreams are one thing. Everyone has them, they're normal. I just hate it when my brain comes up with a bad dream so stereotypical that it's laughable. Last night I had a dream that I was an act in a small circus. I juggled. Cats. We were about to go on, I was standing just off stage, and I realized I didn't know how to juggle. (Let alone juggle cats.) That's right up there with showing up in the school classroom without your pants on!

For non-flying cats: I had to go to the pet store today to get more food/litter, and of course the adoption group had a bunch of kittens out for adoption. The one I had been considering (the one with a missing front paw) got adopted (YAY!), but the other ones were darned cute and sweet and... sigh. Now I want a second cat again.

I've been going back and forth on this issue for months now: I want a second cat, I'm happy as-is with one cat, but if one is good two are better! Etc. I decided to move across the country with a tiny fraction of the thought and stress I'm putting into this second cat issue. I just don't know how I'm supposed to decide on something when I don't have basic facts. I'm happy now. Will I be happier with a second cat? If I could answer that, I could decide on this issue, but it's impossible to know without having that second one to see. (But the kittens are SOOOO cute!)

For me/WoW: It's finally hitting me. Two weeks until MoP. My to-do list is unreasonable.

In a perfect world, before MoP I'd:
Level Sedgegrass to 85 (80.5 now).
Level Meadowsedge to 85 (80.5 now).
Level Icerime to 85 (61 now).

Level Meadowsedge's mining and herb to max (both 300s now).
Level Sedgegrass's mining and herb to max (herb 82, mining 300-something).
Decide on professions for Icerime, level both to max.

Cap honor and VP (selling honor for VP) on my two PvP alts.

Organize my mats and things to sell. I have three six tab guild banks and a crapton of personal banks full of things for MoP drop. When am I going to start selling them? How?

That is an amazingly unlikely list of things, especially since I'm reading a good book now and would rather read than play. (And notice RP isn't on that list, I haven't RPed outside of Twitter for ages. D: )

A more reasonable list:
Icerime to 68 so he can fly in Northrend (and thus be a better bank/AH alt). That's about four dungeon runs from one of my 85s. Doable.
Level herb and mining on both Sedge alts. Likely doable; doable on at least one.
Organize mats -- this is a must.

Two weeks to go. Arg! I'm so not ready, but it sure will be nice to have space back as things sell. (Edit: Apparently my dates are off!)

Current Mood: stressed

The Mists of Pandaria Cinematic Trailer was released this morning and it's just... not good.

There I was, sitting watching it:
"Okay, a third of the way through the video and all we have so far is a misshapen human and an orc fighting."
"...Halfway through the video and it's still just the two of them fighting."
"Oh look, a panda... now all three are fighting."
"Wow, it's almost over and still nothing but fighting. I guess PvP is all this expansion is going to offer."

Compare that to the Wrath of the Lich King Cinematic Trailer where there's storyline! Introduction of the bad guy! And, to use current net slang, all the "feels" anyone could want out of a trailer.

Not to mention, watching it again, the voice acting and the music is so much better than the MoP one. Even after all this time and so many views, the WotLK one makes me grin and gives me chills, it excites me, it makes me want to play the game. The MoP one? Makes me want to go back to Northrend.

Sigh.

This is on top of more MoP bad news: Alchemists will no longer be printing money, unlike every expansion before this one. And I have 10 maxed alchemists. What in the world will I do with them all now?

Hopefully MoP will be better than Cata, though even with that low of a bar, I'm not holding out much hope. The trailer just comes off as so silly and pointless to me.

On a related note, since I have a second account, I was able to roll a second DK. The DK starter quests and zones are still so amazing. One of the best experiences in the game. So cool.

Current Mood: blah

kishenehn mentioned missing his 2,000th post, which made me curious if I was coming close to one.

5,096 Journal Entries

Bah! 5,000 posts would have been a big milestone, too. Oh well! Hopefully I'll catch the 10,000 one. :P

My comment stats always surprise me:
43,356 comments received
43,697 comments posted

Look how close those numbers are!

Game of Thrones: While this is in German, it's still really cool to see:

I love seeing how all the computer effects are done! Especially how they did the direwolf.

WoW: I'm down to the lowest amount of gold since... I don't remember. 500K, down from 1.3M at my highest point. (But I'm up to 12 deathchargers!) The... "good"? news is that all the Crimson Deathchargers are duped nearly for sure, which means Blizz will hopefully do something about the price soon.

See, this is the availability and price of the deathchargers across all (US) servers:

Compare that to the charts for the music box, the locket, the tabard, and the favor. All of those are going up slightly, but none like the horse.

As a refresher, when you kill the Lich King with Shadowmourne, he'll drop a box that has an equal chance of turning into one of five items, the horse being one of them.

So why would the number of horses be increasing so quickly, when the other four items are not? Either something went wrong in the code and the horses are now dropping more often than the others or they're being dupped. (Or Blizz changed the code on purpose, but why? On something old like this?)

Thoughts on it being dupped vs caused by some other issue?

Current Mood: okay

The Saga of the Stray Siamese Kitty is finally over for good. After a week and a half of not coming around, he showed up today, with a new collar and tag on. So either he was owned all along and just lost his collar, or someone took him in. I think the latter, since he wasn't starving this time (he turned up his nose at the dry food!) and looked better. I really, really wish whoever took him made him an indoor cat, but at least I can worry a little less now.

With him taken care of, I'm pondering getting a second cat/kitten. I really want one (I always want one!), but I watch Ellie run from one end of the apartment to the other and I think about how much more fun she might have with a second cat. (Or maybe she's like me and happy she's the only cat...) I wish there was a way to know for sure which she would like better.

TV is annoying me, or rather one show is. Sit Happens. A gameshow based on musical chairs. Seriously? Musical chairs? Watch the preview, the show looks like a bad joke.

WoW: Oh woe is my wallet. Two crimson deathchargers went up for 70K-80K each, so of course I snagged them. All the progress I made to recover from the last pair of horses is gone. I'm up to eight deathchargers now, which will be great IF I win this gamble. With mounts going account bound, TCG mounts have to go up in price, right? No one will need to buy a second one, but more people should want them since you will get more bang for your buck from them. This is the MoP gamble I feel the most sure about, but it's also my biggest one. I really hope I'm not wrong.

Current Mood: hot

The Romneys are rich. Very, very rich. So when Ann Romney said she didn't feel rich, a lot of people raged.

I didn't.

I just bought three Crimson Deathchargers today, and now I feel dirt poor. I currently have 677,458 gold on Horde side. On one level, I know that that is a lot of gold, but to me? I feel broke. I was working so hard to get back up to a million, I was at 940K, then one deathcharger was up cheap (120K), and then two more got listed cheaper (77.5K). It's really interesting how brains work. I walk up to a vendor and wonder if I have enough to buy something (which is really, really silly, I know).

I have quite a herd of them going on in my guild bank:

(Other items are the two TCG rocket mounts, the two TCG hippo mounts, all the Lich King drops (except music box), and the Gift of Arthas scroll that is no longer in the game so was a bitchkitty to get but I wanted it for my LK collection.)

While I love love love the new RAF mount (easily my favorite mount by far), I have buyer's remorse at getting a second account. I'm not making anywhere near the gold I thought I would be (seriously, "pennies"). And how did I forget that I don't like leveling? I love the new mount, but I don't think it was worth $50. Once I can, I'm going to let my second account expire (four months, one free one plus a three month gamecard).

I'm leveling a mage on the second account with a hunter on my main. The mage I wanted over there for portals on my main account (easier archaeology when MoP comes), and I don't mind leveling hunter, so I picked that as the "master" character. The mage is on /follow and does nothing as we level. They're up to 25 or so. The XP is nicely fast with RAF.

I hit 100K HKs on my account, so when MoP comes, I'll have that achievement and my "of the Horde" title. I got it early on Saturday... only to find I couldn't stop TBing. I felt like I HAD to go. This morning I uninstalled the addon, so I don't see the countdown timer on my UI all the time, and now it's really easy to forget it exists. Today was a very nice day without having to queue and wait every two hours. :)

Ha ha, perfect post for this icon! That's supposed to be Thistle in the box, though it's hard to tell.

Current Mood: okay

Three things make a post!

Teen wolf is the slashiest show on TV, and I love it. (For many reasons! Not just that they openly write for the fan base!) You wouldn't think a show based on an old movie and running on MTV would be good, but it's my favorite show of all currently running.

How slashy is it? Look at this short (less than a minute) clip:

Ha! :D

RP:

segoryder's character ICly drew a picture of mine, and it's the best thing ever. :D Thistle doesn't smile much, he's always looking serious and... well... *snickersnort*. :D

WoW: After much thought (seriously, I've been considering this a year or more), I got a second WoW account. I could list the pros and cons of my decision, but I don't think it would make for interesting reading. The three expansions were on sale for $10 each, and I won't miss an extra $14 per month. I didn't figure in a $25 fee to move a character from one account to another, but that's a one-time thing. (I picked someone I wouldn't miss, so if I ever close the second account down, I won't be moving him back.)

To aid in cross-faction moving of things over the neutral AH, I rolled a level one. As I was going to use the recruit-a-friend summoning feature, I could do any race, there was no need to run them to an AH. The creation screen started me on a Draenei woman, and I fell in love. So pretty! Face and skin! So I made one. Meadowgrass. I love how she prances. I feel like a pretty, pretty pony when I'm on her. Why did I hate them for so long?!

Now having an open slot on my main account, I rolled a new level 1 there (Sedgegrass, hunter #5 for me) and on the second account a level 1 mage (Meadowsedge -- Meadow Sedge, to continue my plant theme, though I expect everyone to read that as Meadow's Edge.) I'm not sure how much faster RAF leveling bonus is than full heirlooms + guild bonus, but it's at least a little faster, plus you're doing two alts at the same time.

Now I'm happy I own every heirloom in the game. I can put them to good use!

Related to that: Having every heirloom, there's nothing left to do with my honor, so I'm TBing on a new alt. (Clove has everything TB-related already, the mounts and such.) It's SO HARD to go from PvPing on a ranged caster to a melee. Right now I'd say I like doing it on warlock a lot more than paladin, but Reed has no gear yet, so it's not fair to compare.

Current Mood: tired

I love rare items. Usually I don't write about AH stuff, but conversation with

felknight last night about the pricing of rare things in game made me think about all this.

I just sold an alchemy recipe for about 19,000. (I actually listed it at 11K, but she paid me 7K gold, 12 white kittens (she priced them at 300-500 each, but they're moving right now at 1K each), a fancy weapon, and a couple stacks of the Dream Vision potion itself. The gold and the kittens alone come to about 19K, the weapon and potions are just icing.

(Dream Vision potion lets you explore zones in your "dreams" -- your body, but you can't get aggro and you can jump really high/can't die from falling damage. Perfect for MoP coming!)

...ha ha. As usual, I forgot about the neutral AH cut (which the damned magical rooster should have made me never forget). I lost about 1K in AH fees. D: Oh well, still ahead.

Anyway! The only reason the recipe was that price was that I listed it as that. I actually bought it for 120 gold. I would have sold it for 7K straight (though 8K was really as low as I wanted to go, there was still wiggle room since I got it so cheaply). I really enjoy how the seller sets the value of the item.

felknight has an old item to learn some first aid skill from, no longer needed or used in the game. But the item still has value! What value? HE decides that. And you need only one buyer to agree with you on the value to make the sale.

I love the AH. :)

Edit: Oww, my pocket. Bought a X-51 Nether-Rocket X-TREME and a X-51 Nether-Rocket to flip in MoP, 130K and 120K. D: Hopefully they should sell for a whole lot more later!

--

Kitty news: I got the humane trap this afternoon and set it up, but Mr. Stray didn't come around until just now. :/ My vet closes in an hour, so I had to not catch him. Er, not TRY to catch him. He's a clever little thing and had little interest in walking into the trap.

The more I look at him, the more I see how beaten up he is. I had seen some kind of injury on his inner foreleg, but now I think he has a big scar on another leg. Something probably tried to chew him up, they look too big for cat fight wounds. :/

I'm going to try to get him tomorrow. I'm going to work from home so I can scurry him off to the vet as soon as I catch him. If I do. Hopefully I will.

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thistlechaser

September 2023

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Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Entries tagged with wow

Dribs and drabs

Three things make a post?

Some amount of things might make a post

FFXIV, reading, WoW

Three things make a post?

Two (or three, or four!) videos!

I need a new alarm clock...

Insults, books, WoW.

WoW, books, politics

Gotta beat 'em all! (WoW)

Book #18 and WoW

Books 14-17 and WoW

Happy things! (RL)

For me, for you, for cats tossed in the air...

Pandas... (WoW)

Random things (LJ, GoT, WoW)

Stray cat, WoW, TV

A WoW post, or: A small understanding with Ann Romney.

Teen Wolf, WoW, IC fanart

The first rule of Fight Club... (WoW, stray kitty)