When you're ready, there's nothing left to do but wait

All I've been thinking about, ever since I saw those posts over at the Godmother's blog, was getting ready for the pandas. I've never done that before, for any other expansions. Back in BC, I managed to get two max level characters by the time WotLK came out, but I didn't have a plan. I wanted to play my mage, and that's what I did. I had almost no gold to my name, because I'd spend it all on professions and pets.

But in WotLK, I leveled a shitload of alts. I gave them professions, and today, I have all of them. On a single server. Which means I can farm for gems, enchants, and everything I need instead of buying it. It makes a huge difference. When Cata was released, I didn't stockpile gold. I didn't farm until my fingers bled. I just waited. And blew all my gold on obsidium ores to level Jewelcrafting when the expansion launched. But this time, I'm pretty much ready. All thanks to the Godmother and her precious advices.

Most of my characters's professions are maxxed, and they have enough mats to gain five skill points from both their primary professions when MoP launches. Except the gathering ones. They all have a nice little nest of gold, plus some more stashed on my banker alt. They all did 21 dailies from Tol Barad plus the cooking and fishing dailies from Orgrimmar, for a total of 23 dailies to be turned-in as soon we can get xp again.

I've cleaned all my character's banks and bags in order to make room for all the new stuff, and dumped everything in the AH, making some decent profit in the process. My personnal guildbank was full to capacity with herbs and ores and leathers and enchanting mats until recently. I had planned on putting it all on the AH next week, in the hopes that some pandas might need it for their professions, but I used most of the ores I had to level engineering on my death knight, and my boyfriend suddenly decided he wanted an enchanter/tailor warlock, so there went most of my cloth and enchanting mats. Which is fine. More professions, the better!

I did have a moment of panic a couple weeks back when I realized that patch 5.0.4 meant cross-realm zones were becoming a reality. No more farming for hours alone in a lowbie zone. Which is a shame, because I really enjoyed that. So I did what I had been putting off for weeks and I finished all the farming I wanted to get done before the patch hit.

I had a lot of fun preparing for the big day, and I feel as ready as I can be to welcome the pandas and explore their world. It's really exhilarating for me to feel so connected, so focused on a precise goal. I used to just let things go, and even though I was excited for previous expansions, this time it feels different. It's even better. I just hope I'm not getting my hopes up, with expectations so high that they can't possibly be met.

I'm anxious to work on my professions again and craft new items, pick new flowers, cook new foods and kill new enemies. There are five days left before the gates open. And it's getting harder and harder to be patient.

Luckily, I still have Tides of War to read before Tuesday.

Smells like Pandas

In less than three weeks, the Pandas will be here. And in less than two weeks, we'll have access to the Theramore event. /squee

It's almost here, guys. We can almost smell it. New expansion, new world to explore, new race, new class. We're gonna need more coffee, chief. But until then, there's some things I must do. I've been very busy just relearning everything so far. Now, I need to make sure everything is ready.

I had planned on doing a full post about my bucket list and all, but I don't think it's necessary. (I mean, if you're curious, you can just go check out my Bucket List page.) I've done most of the things I wanted to do before Cataclysm ended. The things I didn't are now on the MoP Bucket List. There are only a couple things I need to take care of in the next week or two :

- Finish spec'ing and glyphing the DK, Druid, Paladin, Lock and Warrior. I'm almost done with the warrior, but the others need more work.

- Finish adjusting everyone's UI. Most characters are playable, but some need more tuning.

- Do one more round of cloth farming in TB with a potion of treasure finding.

- Get 2 more mounts. So I can get the dragonhawk! So pretty!

- Make some missing glyphs for various characters. Only a couple glyphs missing here and there. 

- Name some of my pets.

- Level the alliance mage to 85.

Since I joined SiB last weekend, I started leveling a mage to eventually raid with them. I haven't decided yet if I'll transfer one or many or any characters at all to this new server. But just the thought of leveling alts and professions without gold and heirlooms is discouraging. I have plenty of mats on my horde server. I just don't know what I want to do, at this point. But the guild is worth it. I just need to decided whether I want to pay real money and choose the easy way, or just start over from scratch. Decisions, decisions.

Is it Tuesday yet?

We are less than a month away from Mists of Pandaria, and there are only a couple of hours left until the patch hits the live servers. 

omg omg omg.

I'm super excited for all the changed happening, and a little scared/worried. A lot of things are changing in the next 36 hours, and we don't know yet if we're going to like it or not. New talents, new abilities, new glyphs, new rotations. And we have four weeks to get our shit together before we go out in and explore a whole new world.  

I don't know about you, but first thing I do when I log on Tuesday, is check out my achievements, mounts and pets. I'm anxious to know how many achievement points I have total across all my characters. I'd also like to work on having 100 mounts for the red dragonhawk, so then I'll see how many more I need. Same for the pets and the 125/150 achievements.

Then I'll have to work on updating my addons. Tomorrow will be dedicated to making a list of all the addons I use, and see which ones can be updated, removed completely or replaced with better addons. I want to wait to actually log on to see which addons are broken before starting.

Then, once my UI is stable, I will be spec'ing my characters and then running some (many) dungeons. I'm really anxious to test out my mage, hunter and shaman in particular. I will most likely try out all my max level characters throughout the next few weeks, though. Then, hopefully, I will be able to determine which character(s) I will be playing in MoP. All of them will be leveled to 90 eventually, if only for professions, but it might take a while. On my main server, I have 9 max level characters, to which will be added a monk very soon. I only hope all those changes will keep me busy enough that the next four weeks will go by a little more quickly. 

Anyone got any special plans for Tuesday, or the following days?

That patch better be really entertaining

I haven't posted in a while and this bugs me. But I haven't exactly been doing exciting stuff in game in the last week. It's only been farming and questing, doing dailies in TB and farming some more and then fishing, and then some more farming. After reading this post from the Godmother, I took my skinner shaman extraordinaire to Vashj'ir where she skinned her little troll heart out. I had been farming cloth in TB with the potion, but I hadn't done any other kind of farming. It was pretty fun, and I got lots of goodies. It was a real shark carnage.

There's still some stuff I want to get done by next tuesday. I want to farm some more herbs, ores, cloth and leather. I want to get my priest to 85 and max her professions. I want to do dailies on all my characters (there are two left, including the soon to be 85 priest) so I can turn them in first thing when I log online on September 25th. 

But I just can't bring myself to do it.

Real life is being weird lately. Mad and I decided to have a baby, so I stopped taking the pill a couple days ago and my body doesn't seem to like it one bit. I cry for stupid shit, I have sudden and terrible headaches and I'm just really really irritable. So hopefully, this changes soon and I can come back to normal. Because I hate being like this.

So lately everything in game feels like a chore, and I just have no patience for any of it. So I do nothing. I spend my evenings watching Fringe and stressing about the fact that the priest will never be ready on time. But I just don't especially enjoy questing as a shadowpriest, and I can't even queue for dungeons yet. So I gather herbs and ores and level very slowly. I hope the patch will bring back some interest for the game, because I just feel really bored with it right now.

In the meantime, Mad and I plan on playing some Diablo3 together this weekend, because I still haven't tried it and I want to play a game with him. (He gave up on the rogue he was supposed to level with me on my priest -.- ) I was excited for D3 when I first heard of it, but then it came out and I was busy with WoW and just never installed it. I guess now is the best time to do just that.

Many yellow dots, handle it!

Look at all the shiny pretties.

The last week has been pretty productive in many ways. 

My priest is now level 69. Mad and I chain-dungeon'd our way to 68, then went questing in Borean Tundra for a while. Now that we can queue for UK, it's back to the dungeons! I loved the Outlands dungeons, but at 68, all you can get is Sethekk Halls or Old Hillsbrad, so we decided it would be faster to just quest a little. 

I've also picked her professions. I hesitated a lot, thinking I might make her my second tailor, and fourth alchemist, but then I read these posts over at Just my two copper, and decided I didn't need a second tailor, but should definitely consider making a "pure gatherer" character. At first, I didn't want my priest to be a miner and an herbalist, as I prefer my druid for herbalism and my paladin for mining (for flying form and crusader aura respectively), but it just made so much sense to have both professions on one toon, for faster farming, that I did just that. 

Leveling mining and herbalism at the same time is both awesome and overwhelming. It's nice to see all those yellow dots all over the place on your mini-map, but I was always afraid I'd miss some. At some point I decided to just stick to the routes I found on WoW-Professions, and not just follow all the yellow dots in random directions. I've leveled both professions pretty fast, and it's been fun, but now I want to wait for level 70 so I can buy a faster flying and speed up the process of gathering in Outlands and Northrend. Slow mounts are slow.

I've also cleaned out the transmog tabs of the guild bank and was able to reduce it down to one tab. The rest as been sold, disenchanted or is in my bank alt's bags, waiting to be put on the Auction House. With the ores and herbs I've gathered, I've been able to help Mad with his engineering, stockpile enough herbs to level alchemy on my future monk, and put aside enough ores and herbs in the guild bank for future glyph needs, or simply to put on the Auction House once MoP is here. I also have a tab full of various cloths, which will be used to make bags for all the new pandas, and also to be put on the Auction House in a couple weeks. Hopefully, I can make a decent amount of gold out of it.

I want to try and finish everything before September, so that I can have at least three weeks free of any farming or questing before we start all over again with the gathering and questing and grinding in MoP. 

Which leaves me about three weeks to get my priest to 85, max her professions, gather everything needed for various professions (For my monk's and a few of Mad's characters. Because he's such a slacker when it comes to his professions.) and max my warrior's fishing (because I'm also a slacker).

Hopefully by then the patch will be live and we'll have some new things to play with while we wait for the pandas. I'm hoping the patch hits either on the 21st or the 28th, more or less a month before the expansion. After that there will be much messing around with the new talents, figuring out how to spec each of my toons, and explore all the new changes. I expect there will be some last minute stuff to be done, like squeezing in some quick achievements, hunting down a few more pets, grinding for a few more mounts, or updating addons and such. And that's fine.

Two months of torture

So we're getting MoP in exactly two months. Since it's coming in the middle of the Brewfest, I'm guessing the holiday boss will not be dropping the new gear. Which sucks really, but hey, there's always next years. Unless of course Blizz postpones Brewfest to a later date, which I don't think they will do. I've been disappointed in the past to see holiday boss still drop level 80 shit when the cap was 85. Can't remember which one it was, though. But, we might get lucky with Hallow's End, which comes a little more than three weeks after launch. Who knows? Brewfest and Hallow's end are my favourite in-game holidays, so I'm excited for it, no matter what kind of gear their holiday boss drop.

I'm done with most of my bucket list, except for Loremaster stuff which I kinda knew I wouldn't even touch. It was more of a "I hope I can get motivated enough to actually do it if I put it on my bucket list" kinda thing. Like I thought that I'd go "I said I'd do it, so I have no choice!" But no. I'm more lazy than proud, apparently. So there, I didn't do "everything" from my original bucket list, and I'm fine with it. The bucket list in itself has changed quite a lot over the weeks, but I think I'll make a post just for that in the upcoming weeks.

Now's the time to finish the couple things I have left, like level archaeology on the druid, level fishing on the warrior that just now came out of retiring, and maybe get some more gear for the freshly 85 lock. I will also be farming a bit or even run a couple dailies to make some extra cash. I'm quite happy with the gold I have now, but a little more can't hurt. I'm sure Mad will be asking for gold once he sees something he can't afford. XD

So now that we have a date, I can make plans. I can have Mad take a day (or two) off at work so we can play as much as we want when the game is released. Superfluous stuff like eating and sleeping will have to be taken care of in between leveling sessions, and I want to try and figure out how to do that in a "healthy" way while keeping the game time to a maximum.

When WotLK was released, we woke up early and went to the store to get the game. Then we installed it. Then we played for an hour or two before we had to leave. Me for shcool, Mad for work. It sucked. I thought about the game all day. (I have no idea how I passed my exams that semester.) When Cata launched, we had bought the digital copy a couple days before and I think we had downloaded some of it already. (Maybe?) Mad went to bed at like 7 the night before, so he could wake up at launch time (3 a.m. for us) and play until it was time for work. Lucky for us, there was a huuuuge snowstorm that night. So in the morning, it was like "Boss, I can't come in, I'm snowed in!" Which totally worked. We played for a couple more hours, then took a nap, ordered some take-out when we woke up and played, played, played. It was fun, but it was also very lucky.

This time around, I want to make sure everything goes smoothly. We will most likely buy the digital copy before the launch day, and download as much of it as we possibly can. (If such a thing is possible. I can't remember.) I think we will also try and get to bed early and wake up at launch time, so that we can get started right away. When we get tired, we can take a nap, but I'm pretty sure we can get at least a level or two before such a thing happens. As for the food, there will most likely be ordering some chicken or something, as we probably won't feel like cooking a meal when we can be leveling! Maybe we can stop long enough to put a pizza in the oven, but not much more than that.

I also have to figure out in which order I want to level my characters. It depends on a couple things. Whether or not we get a way to make our alts fly right away in Pandaria or not (kinda like the book we could buy in WotLK.), and which professions I want to work on first. I know I've already said in a previous post that I'd level them in this order, but I didn't really think it through. It's more or less the order in which I prefer my characters rather than an actual optimized plan. But whatever plans I make - about anything - will probably change. I might decide to level my paladin to farm ores, and then I'll feel like playing my warrior instead and I'll just play it, ruining the plan. But making plans is fun, and it's the only thing I have left to do while waiting.

Oh, now I'm all excited. And I gotta wait two months. This is torture.

Love all the wrong things

I've been horde for quite some time now, but when I started playing WoW, my first character was a human mage. I loved being alliance. I loved night elves and draeneis. I loved Stormwind, and Redridge and Westfall and Duskwood. I'm glad Mad made us go horde, because I love my horde toons a lot. But I sometimes miss having actual active alliance characters. So what do I do? Well I start over on a new server, of course!

The last couple of days have been dedicated to creating characters and leveling them. I have no plan at this point, so I just level whatever class I feel like playing. I started with a hunter a couple weeks ago which is now level 61. She's my highest character on the server and that's fine. There's no hurry. No rush. Just quests, dungeons, whatever I feel like doing. I'm also working slowly (feels more like crawling) on professions as I level more characters. I have no 85 toon to farm stuff, so I have to level more to be able to farm ores and herbs on the druid. I'll get there eventually, it's just kinda slow. Which is ok, I suppose.

But it's not all been just good fun. I have two (maybe even three) healers that I plan on leveling solely through the LFD tool, and DEAR GOD WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Some groups are actually pretty decent, but most of the time, there's someone rolling on gear they don't need, or the tank is so squishy that even pouring my whole blue bar into their green bar isn't quite enough to keep them alive. In Gnomeregan, you know a lock or a hunter will jump down without dismissing their pet first, so half the instance will run to us to hug us with their deadly mechanical arms. Good times.

But I'm still enjoying myself. My mage is almost level 36 and the shaman is 33, so I've been in Scarlet Monastery a lot lately, which is good because it's my favourite instance ever. I  remember the first time I went in there, back when I was just a wee little noob mage. I was impressed and fascinated by the Scarlet Crusade. In a "Jesus titty fucking christ those people are insane!" kinda way. Interrogator Vishas is and always will be my favourite NPC in the game. I remember each time he started talking, I would say it with him, which kinda drove Mad nuts, since we were on Ventrilo together.

The voice acting is perfect, as he sound like he's batshit crazy. A nutjob with a razor, on a holy mission. Not scary at all. I think this guy probably is going away in MoP, and it makes me sad. Scarlet Monastery will never be the same without him.

The world needs more Taurens.

I've been so terribly bad this week. No posts in over a week has never happened before. But then again, I've only been blogging for three months.

I spent some time this week getting the warlock to 80. She's been gathering rested XP ever since and will keep doing so until I feel like I can stomach Hyjal again. The DK is now running Magister's Terrace daily for a chance at the White Cock, as many call it. Not that I find this model particularly appealing, but more mounts is always good. My boyfriend's DK hit 85 this weekend and we are now in "run all the dungeons" mode. We've both got some gear out of it, and will most likely be able to hit the Hour of Twilight heroics soon. 

The mage has started doing some quests in low level zones in order to reach 3000 quests done and get The Seeker title. Yes, I'm that bored. I probably won't go as far as getting the Loremaster, but who knows. My goal right now is to knock out 750 more quests (probably while watching TV shows on my second monitor). That should keep me busy for quite some time. 

Also, I've created a second paladin, which will act as a banker. I've decided to level her to 40 so that she can get both her ground mounts (moar mounts!) for quicker travels from the bank to the auction house. Time is money, as they say.

I'm also thinking about creating an undead priest to do the quests in Tirisfal Glades and Silverpine Forest with. I'm still not sure if that will stick or if I'll change my mind. It's a pretty shaky plan to start with, but I've been wanting a priest on this server for some time now, and I don't see why I shouldn't roll one. At least, it's something to do until the Pandas get here. (Get here faster, dammit.)

I've also decided to level archaeology again, this time on my druid. As I know for a fact I'll want to get all my toons to 90 come MoP, I think it wise to find other means to reach said goal other than by questing. I reckon after I've done the zones on three or four characters, I'll be happy to do some digging and herb picking to break the monotony.

Repeat after me : everything is fair game in the Raid Finder.

I was in the Looking for Retards last night, again, because I'm after one last trinket for my hunter. It's all she needs to get rid of her last 378 piece, so every week, I queue for the RF, and hope for the best.

It went pretty smoothly yesterday, for the most part. But there was this warrior tank who rolled on a tier helm token. I didn't bother looking him up, but apparently, he already had a tier helm. Or something. And there was this shaman who kept asking for the token in chat. And lots of people were making fun of him.

Sounds familiar? Probably.

But it made me think. What if the warrior needed that for his offspec? What exactly is the proper etiquette for offspec? Say he's a decently geared tank, but his dps set still has some blues, or God forgive some greens, and he is missing a trinket. What's he supposed to do? Queue as a dps anyway and do what will most likely be terrible dps and roll on upgrades? Or queue as a tank and roll on offspec pieces?

I'm not sure if there is a good answer to that question. People will find ways to complain anyway. About his terrible dps, or about him rolling on offspec pieces. 

In groups, it's usually "need on stuff you can use, and for the spec you're in now, and for offspec only if no one else needs it." But in LFR, you see boomkins rolling on agility trinkets and all sorts of shits. I used to bitch at people doing that. I still kinda do. Because I never roll on stuff I don't need. (The only time I rolled on something I didn't need but wanted for transmog, I felt bad and gave it to someone who needed it.)

It seems that in the Raid Finder, to a lot of people, everything is fair game. If you get in there with the assumption that everyone will roll only on gear they really need for main spec, you will be pissed and disappointed. But if you go in there knowing that most people will roll on everything they can roll on, you won't be as pissed and disappointed when you lose the roll. Well maybe you will, but probably a bit less. 

It's not even a matter of what is fair and what isn't, or even about courtesy and being nice to other people. In the Raid Finder, it's every man for himself. So I've decided to change my expectations, instead of trying to change people. I am willing to give something I won because I feel bad about taking it. Most people wouldn't do that. I can't expect them to.

So when I lose a roll, I won't even look at who won it. I won't inspect them. It's not worth it.

Edit: After re-reading my post and a comment, I realized this sounds a lot more pessimistic and grumpy then I intended it to be. Long story short, I don't deserve gear more than anyone else, and should learn to be zen about the whole thing. My expectations about how people act in the Raid Finder is wrong. So this post is basically about me, needing to learn to let go and not get mad when I lose a roll. I blame lack of sleep for this crappily written post.