/Yawn – A World of Warcraft Blog

Sick of giving Blizzard my money and wanting to show, once again, my deep love of all things troll, I created Caille (the troll hunter) on Burning Blade instead of transfering Arco (the blood elf hunter) from Eonar.  I know this is going to be a long-ish grind (or maybe it won’t…  it IS a hunter afterall), but I miss those big ugly blue feet damnit!

Posts obsessing over pets probably to follow shortly.

In other news, I continue to be impressed by my mage Eau and how few upgrades add so much DPS.  Looking back on the blog a few weeks ago, I was happy to be pulling 3k on bosses in Naxxramas.  Now that I have a mainhand, offhand, belt, and -something else I can’t remember- from 10-man Ulduar, I did almost 5k on Patchwerk the last time I ran 25-man Naxx!  (She also became Eau the Seeker recently…  still can’t decide if Loremaster Eau is a better title though…)  Plus I am super excited about the news that living bomb will be able to be applied to multiple targets with the next patch, so it’ll be a big boost to AoE DPS and function probably a little more like seed of corruption.  Speaking of the patch, when the hell is it going to come out?  I have heard rumors of early August, and I’m not sure that the druid I made can stand being level 1 much longer!

Anyway, I haven’t been playing much lately because I am currently in Hawaii for a family vacation! 

I am now the proud owner of a new iMac (2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM).  It makes everything run beautifully!  I have all of the settings on ultra (except for shadows) and it only lags a little bit in Dalaran…  Suddenly, I feel the urge to screenshot every part of WoW.  Tonight was the first time that I ran 25-man Naxxramas on this computer and it was a completely different experience (I didn’t even need to pull away from the group for Patchwerk!).  I also was able to get my 7.5 shoulders finally using the emblems, since I can never roll anything more than a 25 on them.  Now I am wearing the full set!  Woo!  I was also pulling around 3.5k dps today in Naxx (including all my AoE damage), and hitting 3.0k somewhat reliably on bosses.

In other news, I transfered my paladin from Eonar to Burning Blade, since I wanted to do something other than dps for a little bit.  Because the name Acalarra was already taken, I named her Jour (to keep with the Frenchie names, heh).

Sorry I have not been updating this blog very often!

My hunter (Arco) is now level 80 and still beast mastery.  She can sustain about 2000-2200dps on heroic bosses.  Thank you Blizzard for making heroics easier to run and more worthwhile; I hated having to farm instances in TBC for heroic keys and having the heroics be too difficult without at least some kara gear.  I think this is a good change.  A lot of little things are fun, like all the random achievements for bosses in instances.  I don’t really keep up with achievements, so it’s always funny when we down something and I randomly see that I got some points for it!

As of last night, my guild officially full cleared 10-man Naxx.  I haven’t been in there yet, though I have been signing up for the raids ever since they have been put on our php raider site.  There has been some drama in the guild about raid signups.  Apparently, all the people in my guild who liked to heal decided they liked something else better in the expansion (mostly death knights).  So, though we have a lot of DPS and quite a few tanks, we don’t have enough healers for a second Naxx group every week.  I think this will work out eventually as people level up their healer alts/ex-mains (I have my pally, Acalarra, for instance, who is still 70).  There does seem to be some elitism and some people are always getting approved while others are being passed by.  To be honest, this is not really seeming like it’s based on DPS output either; it seems like the core group of people who dinged 80 in the first week or two of the expansion have some sort of priority over others (even though dinging 80 in the first week or two is probably more of a reflection on your free time than ability in the game or in a raid).  It also appears to be easier for officers to get into runs than anyone else.  Who knows…  I would worry about and start bothering people, but I know nothing will come of it and this will all seem stupid when we have Naxx on farm a couple months from now.  Hell, it’ll seem even sillier when Wrath of the Lich King is a year or two old and we’re all so sick of raiding that we’re pulling our hair out (haha, like a month or two ago at the end of TBC).

Personally, I don’t feel like I need to argue with people and I don’t care if I’m there for the guild “firsts”.  Ideally, I would like to be a part of it all, but the last thing I want is to be taken into a raid because I bitched.  Also, if I go in for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc clear, more people will be geared, it’ll be easier, and probably more fun.  Not that I don’t want to be challenged and not that I wasn’t there for every guild first other than Kara in TBC, but why would I complain and piss off all of these high-strung officers just to get no love and a potentially huge repair bill?

Speaking of high strung officers, I don’t get what is going on with the ones in our guild.  Everyone seems so pissed off all the time.  It’s a game, and it’s there to be fun!  My guild isn’t ‘hardcore’, so why are we trying to rush through content?  It seems like everything these days is about downing stuff and max/min-ing everyone to see who is best.  Screw that!  Run with people who are fun!  And if we don’t have enough healers to run stuff, then we just need to sit tight.  It bothers me that the guild is already attempting the next tier of raids after Naxx when we haven’t even gotten people out of greens and blues yet!  What sucks the most is that I feel like people who used to be my friends in my guild are now too into raiding and have lost sight of just being friendly and messing around.  Don’t get me wrong, I am definitely a PVEr and I like to raid as much as the next person, but why treat people like shit over raids?

I’ve been thinking of pulling out one of my characters from guild and joining something else, just to see if a different dynamic is for me.  I have spoken to other people who have multiple characters and have done this before and they say that there is a great potential for animosity…  Who knows.  I guess I’ll just wait it out and see what happens.

On a more personal note, I am currently applying to 11 graduate programs (PhD in psychology, to be more specific), and haven’t had too much time to play wow and really explore the expansion.  I have to say, I don’t love any of the zones except for Zul’drak (hey!  I have a soft spot for trolls!).  The questing is alright and you get some pretty good gear from relatively easy and interesting quests that often can be soloed.  Overall, I liked TBC more than Wrath, but maybe I could still change my mind!