Rare orcs and cooking softie

An orc rogue. That must be one of the most rare creatures in game. And I understand. There is something that does not feel entirely right with the combination stealth and orc. I didn't manage to find one for the Pilgrim's Bounty achievement so in the end I had my husband create one who I met up with in the Barrens one day too late (today) and turned into a turkey. So now I'm a pilgrim.

I must say I love Pilgrim's Bounty for the opportunity to speed level cooking. Cooking, like fishing, I think is easier if you do along the way to level cap because when you need to go grind low level items to use for cooking you make up all sorts of excuses to put it off until some other time. But now I'm 357 in cooking and yesterday I even did a daily cooking quest. That daily had me going to Borean Tundra to get some rhino meat. Now I know it's stupid but I just couldn't kill the rhino matriarchs and their calfs. It just felt very wrong and the D.E.T.H.A presence in Borean Tundra that make you all red and bloody when killing animals didn't really help. In the end I settled for killing the male rhinos which is probably very politically incorrect, impying that rhino dads are not as important as rhino mums.

Back (sort of)

I have been ill for almost a week now in what is most likely the swine flu. It was not a pleasant experience. I feel very much better now though even though I still have a cough that makes me think my lungs have grown a wish to see the outside world and is trying to jump out of my body.

I'm looking forward to do the quests etc associated with the Pilgrim's Bounty holiday. I especially feel happy about the opportunity to finally level my cooking since my cooking skill (ingame I hasten to add) is, well I wouldn't say non existent but you woudn't like me to cook your dinner either.

Motivation...hmmm....seem to have misplaced it

You would think autumn would make me more inclined to play WoW. I mean, when the rain pours outside and it's barely any light even at midday, getting lost in one's favourite game should be more than appealing? But no. I find myself raiding a little, questing a little (to raise my reputation with the capital cities) and as usual avoiding the Argent Tournament and Hodir dailies by inventing ever new excuses not to do them but my heart is not really in it. I'm sort of auto piloting through the game right now. I'm not bored enough to give up playing compleatly but I'm not motivated enough to play as much as I use to. Is it pre Cataclysm fatigue setting in already? I hope not.

The other day I decided to get my reputation to exalted with Stormwind so I headed to Elwynn Forest and Westfall and quested away. I have to say that Westfall is so much more bearable at level 80 than it is when low level. Even the kill-15-of-this-and-20-of-that-and-then-25-of-something-else quests are ok when you can blast the mobs with moonkin hurricane. Mwoaaahhaaa to all of the Defias Brotherhood who have killed my lowly rogue alt millions of times...

Want!

Yes, it's materialistic and yes, it you can argue if it's right to buy something to have ingame with real money but I do want a Lil' K.T!

What is there not to want with a mini Kel'Thuzad? The pandaren monk is very nice too but Lil' K.T. looks so...mean, with his glowing eyes and swirling chains he's just irresistable!

A more positive post

Ok, I admit it: I have been grumpy in my blog the last few posts, complaining on Trial of the Crusader and fellow raiders. But no more!

The Twin Valkyrs are my new favourites. We only had time to try the fight once but it was a very good try. And such fun, running around switching colours and catching orbs (and healing of course). The twins fight is really one of those fights that sound more complicated when you try to explain what to do than it is when you actually doing it. It is also a fight where Deadly Boss Mods really is your best friend since it tells you when you need to switch colour.

Since we got to see the twins we obviously made it past the faction champions too this time and that felt great too. I was so busy running around, trying to stay away as much as possible but at the same time be in range to heal so I didn't have time to see how the fight was going so when it was over I didn't notice att first. My first thought was "But how can it be? We are all still alive?"

A post involving Lord Jaraxxus but no tactis

One of the (increasingly many) things I find irritating about Trial of the Crusader is that if you wipe on Lord Jaraxxus, when you come back inside the instance for another try he is in chains (or maybe he is enslaved). Why is that? Because he is a demon who will uncontrollably charge and kill us all otherwise? To protect the tournament audience from demon wrath? I think it feels so stupid. If he could kill that little gnome who summoned him with just batting his eyelashes (sort of and admittedly the little gnome does seems too full of himself for his own good) how come it takes only the time for us to make our way from the graveyard to restrain him? My mental picture is a magic SWOT-team running in and wrestle him down on the floor, handcuffing him.

And then when we get inside again, it's like "Oh, they are back, let's let him loose again so they can kill him." Why not leave him like he is so we can be done with it faster?

Ulduar 25 with a mistake Leroy and a whining player stuck on repeat

A busy life (deadlines, deadlines) has made me play less WoW the last week but yesterday we teamed up with another guild to do Ulduar 25. Our guild is not a small guild but since it's quite casual it's hard for us to get enough (reasonably geared) people together for 25 man runs.

I think raiding with another guild is a good idea. I think it will be more fun when we get used to each other though. In my opinion last night's run was a bit of a struggle. Partly this had to do with me having huge disconnection problems on Razorscale which made me feel like the lousiest healer in WoW but it had also to do with our guilds behaving diferent from each other. For example the players from the other guild were constantly speaking on Vent. They discussed this and that and before boss fights and even in between mobs it took forever to get going. It sounds boring when I'm writing it but in our guild we don't tend to chat that much all the time.

To be fair I think things dragging out in time partly had to do with the raid leader not raid leading very much. I think this was due to him not knowing tactics very well but in my opinion that actually might be okey if there are other people who can explain to the people who don't know what to do. But as a raid leader it is important to ensure that the raid stays focused an keep the pace up so you don't just stand around in 20 minutes before a fight waiting for everyone to voice their opinions about he best way of doing things or asking yet again who is the tank and who is going to heal whom.

At the end of the night I also got seriously annoyed with one person's attitude. We had (surprise) been standing around in the antechamber of Ulduar for quite some time discussing yeat again which mob in the group of four to sheep, banish etc and then changed to kill one of the tall guys (an overseer?) walking back and forth first. In all the talking one of our hunters thought he heard someone say to pull so he did. Noone was ready and we wiped.

I admit this was clumsy and as someone pointed out, you should only start when the raid leader (or possibly the main tank) tells you to but it was an honest mistake, due mostly to I think the late hour and maybe all the waiting made him hear only the things he wanted to hear and he apologized from the bottom of his heart for his mistake.

But one person in the group just couldn't let go. First he said he didn't like wiping because of stupid mistakes like this (fair enough, who does?) but then he kept going on and on saying ovber and over again how stupid he thought it was pulling like that and that was not a mistake to be done in a 25 man raid and that he really hated when people pulled just because they thought it fun....and that was the point when I got really pissed off because the hunter pulling by mistake is my husband and knowing him, he would never, ever wipe a raid for fun. Also the complaining player kept saying he wasn't complaining just because he was mad or grumpy but he just thought it was so stupid and how could a person do a thing like that he wondered but seriously he wasn't mad if it was a mistake so be it but well he just didn't understand how someone could have been doing such a mistake really, it was so stupid....In fact he went on about in the same fashion on and off until the raid was called off and the last thing I heard when signing off vent he was telling everyone that he couldn't understand how anyone could make such a mistake (if that's what it was), he didn't want unecessary repair bills because because people were stupid and shouldn't you expect more of people in a 25 man raid group?

It's always a joy to raid with players who are perfect. Not to mention tolerant to us non perfect human beings.