And the answers to the next seven questions!

8. “What pets will you have after 3.0, and what pets do you think will become the favorites?”: Currently Tawyn’s three pets are: Tux the Owl, Locke the Kitty, and Eltanin the Windserpent. When 3.0 hits, Tux and Eltanin will be Cunning pets and Locke will be a Ferocity pet, and I will have the two new slots left to play with.

In Beta, those two slots are already taken by Wash the Devilsaur (Exotic Ferocity pet) and Raskolnikov the Rhino (Exotic Tenacity pet), and I’m having a hard time replacing those two to test others, because I already heart them so much. So in that case, I will have all three types of pets covered.

There are still so many other pets I want out there, though, that it’s really hard to say. Tux is staying no matter what; Blizz could make owls the next sporebat and Tux would still be staying. Eltanin is staying because I love Windserpents and because I put a lot of work into getting him out of Zul’Gurub. Locke, oh Locke. The rare spawn kitty I had to tame at 4am. The pet I took into countless heroics and countless raids. The bumbling lil’ kitty that has become the brunt of a variety of inside jokes among my little WoW social circle…

…if it really comes down to it and cats really do get as nerfed as early reports say they are, and I really need another stable slot, we may have to part ways.

I don’t like to think about it though. And hopefully it won’t happen.

Of course, the good news is, with two 70 hunters (I love being able to say that), I really have ten stable slots, so… perhaps all is not lost! /dance! I’m not sure what’s in Lunapike’s pet future though. That does make it all the more fun, I think.

9. (paraphrased) “Ever try a melee hunter or plan on trying one?”: No, because I love the ranged aspect of the class too much. Lemme tell you though: Funniest way ever to beat other hunters in PvP is to melee them to death. No, really, it’s a laugh riot. Jump on ’em, Wing Clip ’em, Snake Trap ’em, and let your pet eat their face off while they stumble around absolutely baffled at what is going on. I think they’re too stunned to properly get away from me, because the worst that’s ever happened to me is that I’ve been Scattershotted once or twice. Super easy kill otherwise.

…am I evil yet?

In all honesty, I respect my fellow hunters and try to fight them honorably. But sometimes they’re just being annoying, or you’re desperate, and that’s when you never know what kinds of crazy things you’ll resort to.

Mostly in Warsong Gulch.

I Raptor Strike’d a flag carrier to death once. Don’t tell anyone.

10. “Why haven’t you leveled Lunapike to 70 yet?”: Well, since this question has since become a moot point, I’ll change it to say “why did it take so long?” History lesson first. Lunapike was born on the Wildhammer (PvP) server a long time ago– before this blog was a even a glimmer in my brain. Heck, Tawyn was still level 30-something. Lunapike hit level 28 or so before I transferred her to The Venture Co. (RP-PvP) because not being in an RP environment was soul-crushingly depressing to me. Okay, maybe not quite that depressing, but it was still pretty sad. Anyways, that was right about the exact time as the leveling speed change, and slowly but surely Lunapike spent the next year getting to 70.

I have three reasons on why it took her so long. 1.) I am a notoriously slow leveler. I take my time to look at the scenery and I have the memory of a goldfish so while boyfriend-with-the-crazy-memory can memorize the best routes to do all the quests in every zone, I can’t. =P 2.) I had a 70 who I was doing all sorts of fun stuff with, and I sacrificed a lot of alt time for that, and 3.) 40 hours a week at this silly thing called “work” really cuts into your WoW-time.

11. “Since you love to RP and seem to have background stories for all of your hunters, how will that change/evolve when wrath hits?”: My characters are sort of like a Wiki site, they are editable when I get inspiration. Sometimes they go through major overhauls, other times just tweaks. In the past couple of months I have actually changed Tawyn’s character alignment from neutral good to chaotic good, which I find much more fun to roleplay, and those personality changes have enabled me to put more depth into her backstory.

There is a good possibility that WotLK will contain some faction or town that I will fall in love with (similar to how I fell in love with the Mag’har to the point that I’ve changed Lunapike’s story so that she has moved in with them in Garadar– I’m working on getting her exalted with them at the moment), and that may change things up a bit, but that’s okay. The Warcraft timeline is marching on, afterall, so there may very well be things like that in my characters’ future.

I am currently undecided on whether or not a certain important person from Tawyn’s past should, “lore”-wise, be located in Northrend or not, which would forewarn an eventual meeting. Decisions, decisions.

12. “What are your plans for wotlk in terms of characters and specs?”: Well, the nice thing about having two 70s of the same class is that you can mess around with different specs without having to respec too much. I can tell you right now, you’re going to be hard-pressed to tear me away from my beloved Beast Mastery tree. So at least one of my characters is gonna be toting around exotic pets. Now the other specs are looking pretty yummy too, and in all honesty some hybrid builds are also not looking too shabby, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I played around with some of those.

But really, I don’t know for sure yet. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

In terms of characters, Tawyn and Lunapike are getting to 80 and then I’ll work on my druid. Then probably on another hunter. =P

13. “What KIND of unladen swallow?”. Well, either African or European, that’s for sure.

14. “What should I do with my badges? I have enough to get the Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard. Should I or just use my badges for gems and sell it for gold?”. Hmm. This is actually kind of a toughie. I will begin by saying two things: firstly, I myself own the Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard on Tawyn and I love it dearly, dearly so. It’s basically one of the best hunter chestpieces in the game, period. The second thing is: had you asked me this question earlier in the year I would have told you hands down to get it.

But WotLK is a couple months away. This makes things a little tougher.

The way I see it, assuming you are a “casual raider” like myself (i.e., you raid sometimes but Illidan and friends aren’t in the cards)… you have two options here, depending on your own thoughts on how badly you need gold, how much min/maxing you are willing to do gearwise, etc. Option one would be to go all out and get the Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard cause it’s just that epic. Option two would be to get the gems and sell them for gold, and farm Heroic Magister’s Terrace for Tunic of the Ranger Lord instead. That Heroic-MrT chestpiece is not a bad replacement– the Scaled Drakeskin Chestguard is still a good head and shoulders above it overall, but if you’re okay with having a “very good” chestpiece as opposed to an “excellent” chestpiece, then it’s definitely a viable option.

Which should you go with? Only you can answer that question, because you know where your priorities lie. Tell you a little secret though; if I was making the choice I’d go with the Scaled Drakeskin =P

To Be Continued…