Toward the end of Burning Crusade I stopped playing my main. No reason. She just lost the appeal. I spent forever gearing her up through Karazhan and later the new badge gear and then I figured I was happy with her and went off to play my druid and Lunapike.
Well, it appears that the same thing is happening again. Here we are in what is supposedly the last major patch of WotLK and I’ve stopped playing my main. Haven’t touched her since last year (quite literally, which I suppose isn’t saying much right now, but hey.) I think the gear reset sort of bugs me. I spent months getting Tawyn up to a really good ToC-era level of gear, and now knowing I have to do it all over again just doesn’t appeal to me. I get bored of endgame much more easily than most people do, I think. All it takes is five or six solid weeks of raiding and then I’m done for months. I am quite certain I’m the World’s Worst Raider.
Anyways…
I’ve actually been logging on to random lowbie alts who I haven’t played in years and are covered in a thick layer of dust, and chucking them into LFG. Because it’s insanely fun. I digress, though.
I’ve found myself wondering if there are other people who temporarily shelve their main at the end of an expansion, too. I know a lot of people switch mains at the beginning of an expansion, but that seems to be when I rediscover my initial main. What say you?
…and as an aside, I also find myself wondering if I should actually start random-dungeoning with Tawyn because then there’s a chance I might wind up in a group with any of you lovely readers who happen to play Bloodlust Alliance, and that would be awesome. (I mean, I suppose you folks on Nightfall Horde could also potentially random-dungeon with Lunapike, but she’s in sort of a weird state of gear-limbo right now and I’m not sure how many of you would be matched up with her.)
So, I love the new LFG. I think it’s one of the greatest things ever to hit WoW and I’m sure most of us can agree.
It has, however, led to a few interesting situations. My favorites thus far:
* Wound up in a group where everyone was speaking French. I’m not exaggerating. I couldn’t understand a word these people were saying. Oh wait, I understood one phrase. “Le boss”.
They were all from different servers, too, so it wasn’t like they’d all queued up as a group. Apparently I just managed to stumble onto the super-secret Québécois contingent of the North American WoW servers. I blame my Men Without Hats obsession.
I think they wanted to do more heroics afterward but I wasn’t sure, because I had no idea what they were talking about. So I said “thank you” and hearthed. Everyone understands “thank you” right? … hey, don’t look at me, I took Spanish in high school and Japanese in college, I have no idea how to say “thank you” in French.
I actually sent a ticket in to Blizzard asking if I’d somehow messed up my settings and was queuing up in another language without meaning to but apparently it’s a “known issue”. So. Now you know!
* Died about five seconds into Anub’arak in Azjol-Nerub (was one-shotted by the guy) and still got Gotta Go! Making it more impressive (and embarrassing)? I was the healer.
* Actually had to leave a Blackfathom Deeps group that I entered mid-run because I had no idea how to navigate the place and the group wasn’t coming back for me.
“But Pike, I thought you liked big epic sprawling instances!”
I do, when they meet at least one of the following criteria:
a.) are being led by somebody who knows where they are going
b.) are not being started in the middle with me stranded at the entrance portal
c.) are not a part of The Grand List of Instances Blizzard Designed Specifically to Annoy Pike.
The Grand List of Instances Blizzard Designed Specifically to Annoy Pike consist of the following:
Most of the comments I have received for the moonkin involve the fact that he is not fat. To which I say, he’s one o’ them super slim geeky types! /nod (Personally I think his left hand bugs me more than anything but hey, I sketched it out in five minutes, so I didn’t have time to go back and fix things! =P )
** Low level LFG! The LFG at 80, right now, is not on particularly good standing with me. Dungeons I’ve done a million times before and groups that are like RUSH RUSH RUSH RUSH ZOMG ZOMG RUSH RUSH LET’S ALL MAKE FUN OF THE HEALER AND DPS IF THEY FELL A BIT BEHIND THE TANK ON ONE PULL. Heaven forbid you’re new or an alt and still have a couple blues and people inspect you. I mean sometimes you luck out and get a good group, but meh. Needless to say none of my 80s will be getting “the Patient” anytime soon.
Low level dungeons, though, are awesome. Sure, half the time the groups have no idea what they’re doing and there’s no tank or healer, but frankly I’d take that over “AMG RUSH RUSH GEAR SCORE OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAND” any day. Maybe that’s just me, though. Gimme my Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep and Wailing Caverns, please. …okay, maybe not Wailing Caverns.
** My warlock. So did this class suddenly decide to get awesome and fun when I wasn’t looking? I tried about three thousand times to make warlocks and suddenly it clicked, I guess. I just DoT things up, watch my screen fill up with numbers, and cackle when I Life Tap + Drain Life.
I'm in ur dungeon, toppin' ur recount
** Enchanters in groups. I get all excited when the little “Disenchant” button pops up. Even better, my ‘lock is an enchanter, so everybody gets all excited about her being in their group.
** Tower Defense games. This has nothing to do with WoW, but it does have something to do with “Things I Like Right Now”, which is the title of the post. So, nyar!
I have loved Tower Defense games since Starcraft’s battle.net back in 1999/2000 when you could find delightful gems like “Tower Matrix D” inbetween all the “$$$$$FASTEST MAP EVER$$$$$” games. Since then I’ve played dozens of Tower Defense games and I <3 them all. Desktop Tower Defense is my longstanding favorite, but recently I discovered that Neopets has one called Biscuit Brigade and I immediately had to throw everything aside and master it.
Yup.
** Bang Shishigami + Falcon Punch:
** Walking aimlessly around my apartment while wearing a trenchcoat, fedora, and pocketwatch, and pretending I’m cool because of it
** Iron Man
** Did I mention my warlock? Yeah. I like my warlock.
I decided to go back through aaaallll my blog posts and see what I did this past year. Here’s what happened, in a nutshell:
January 2009:
The remnants of Pike’s old and exploded guild < Entelechy > coalesced into < Friend Ship > a few months prior and because it’s a tiny baby guild we’re mostly PuG’ing stuff. At this point I was in Naxx25 PuGs with Tawyn, topping the Patchwerk meters in blues with endless Steady Shot spam. Pike misses her shot weaving. She welcomes the impending Beast Master nerfs despite the fact that she never spec’d into BW/Readiness because she found it to be rather inane and cheesy.
Still, I was feeling self-conscious, so I spent a few days plinking around with Survival and Marksmanship. Saw a Big Fat DPS Decrease with Survival and just plain didn’t enjoy it. Marksmanship was more fun and I stuck with that for a few days before going back to Big Red BM, nerfed or not. At the end of the month I decided I missed my raptor, Wash, a pet which I’d had long ago and then released for various reasons, so I went out to re-tame him. He would be my companion for the rest of the year.
February 2009:
Pike rolls a paladin who quickly gets to level 20-something before she gets distracted again.
I’m still PuG’ing Naxx. I rant multiple times about dying on Heigan.
I’m also PuG’ing heroics, leading to a couple of fun times in LFG.
I make a “quilt” out of pictures of my pets that I had at the time across all most of my hunters. Looking at the picture now, it’s rather oudated, but I still like it.
March 2009:
My little guild starts doing Naxx every Saturday afternoon. At that point I was working every Saturday afternoon. I won’t deny I felt miserable being left out as they cleared it week after week while I struggled along in PuGs, but I tried to make the most of it. In one of those PuGs I survived Heigan for the first time ever in smashing fashion, and another led to what, out of all the blog posts I’ve ever written, is quite possibly my very favorite. In addition, I fell in with a guild called < Song of Chu > that was raiding on my days off and I did quite a few Naxx runs with them and even made a Hunter Guide Movie in one of their runs.
Eventually I requested a Saturday off from work specifically so I could raid with my guild and I finally cleared Naxx.
I still missed Karazhan, though. A couple of friends and I went back there for kicks. Then my druid ding’d 70 doing the Karazhan key questline.
My guild is slowly dissolving as friends go off to join raiding guilds and we opt to stick to a chat channel and AIM chatrooms to maintain ties. So for the first time in a long time, Tawyn becomes guildless.
Because all I’m doing at this point is leveling my druid and occasionally PuG’ing Naxx, I decided I needed something more interesting to write about so I start a Grand Spec Project where my aim was to really learn the other two hunter specs. My verdict was that I still royally sucked at Survival and I still didn’t like it. Marksmanship again proved itself as being pretty darn fun, though, and became my official Alternate Spec.
I also play much with my druid’s stealth in the name of epic Photo Ops.
July 2009:
I decide it’s time to start looking for a new guild but I don’t actually do anything about it for a while. So, not much happens this entire month. I’m playing low-level Hordies and the like. I wrote some good posts, though.
I released my wolf so I could snag myself a turtle and attempt to solo Attumen in the name of a necklace which has never dropped. (Guys, I did it two days ago with a couple friends. IT STILL HASN’T DROPPED.)
At the very end of the month I decided I really was tired of being guildless this time, went to the Silver Hand forums, found the first “Recruiting!” thread I could find and applied. The guild was called “Order of the Rose”. Sounds nice enough right?
August 2009:
My new guild starts dragging me around to all sorts of places, so Tawyn finally gets a title she probably should have had a long time ago, and suddenly she has Ulduar epics too.
The blog is infested with some sort of bug and after a day or so of trying to track it down I got frustrated and re-did the entire site from scratch. Not a particularly good start to the month, but hey!
Most of this month I actually took off from WoW in the name of National Novel Writing Month, which I won. Said book has since been finished and edited, by the way, although I still want to add some things and tighten up the story. We can all blame Krizzlybear and the rest of the Twitterati for getting me excited about NaNo and inspiring me to do it. (<3 Krizz)
In my absence, my guild nails A Tribute to Insanity on 10-man. My only regret is that I wasn’t there to FRAPS it because from what I hear, it was epic. Much grats to them, though!
Aaaand… that pretty much takes us to where we are now. I haven’t stepped foot in ICC yet, but I’m no rush. I’m rather enjoying playing my BabyLock at the moment.
This has been a crazy year and it saw me take the grand leap from being a casual PuG’er to being a “raider”, which was a first. Now, onward to 2010 and Cataclysm and all that fun stuff! /charge
I have opened up avatar commissions again! I’m sorry it took so long for me to do so. $10 will get you a vintage World of WarCute avatar personalized for a character of your choice, and yes, I am open to most non-WoW stuff also: try me!
If you want an avatar but are low on money or you’re feelin’ lucky, (well, do ya, punk?) then you are free to try for the 5th Annual Sitemeter Screenshot Contest. As you can see by the Sitemeter widget on my sidebar, I’m currently sitting at about 485,000 hits, which is 15,000 away from an unbelievable half-a-million. If you e-mail me a screenshot of the meter saying 500,000, you are eligible for a FREE World of WarCute avatar, which is the prize this time! I am currently getting about 1,000 hits a day so the ETA for this is in about two weeks, just to give you an approximate timeframe. (Do note, though, that this is subject to change if I get WoW.com’d or something similar, which basically triples my daily page view. I know that happened last time; I got WoW.com’d when I was within a couple thousand of the big number, and it may have tripped a few people up. So be prepared!)
So prep that Print Screen button or head on over to the Art Commissions page for details if you are interested!
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away, there was a BabyPike.
BabyPike had a computer.
BabyPike was playing on this thing before she could talk. If you opened up her “Baby Book” you could find a spot for “Baby’s Favorite Games”, and instead of “Patty-Cake” or “Peek-a-Boo”, it said things like “Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man”.
It also said “Christmas Game”. That one might not be so recognizable. See, “Christmas Game” wasn’t actually a game. I just called it that (when I finally put down the joystick long enough to start talking.) “Christmas Game” was actually a technical demo for the Commodore 64 and I loved it and would watch it over and over. I think it was because Frosty the Snowman dances at the end. (I distinctly remember that being my favorite part.)
Merry Christmas! <3
And NEVER FORGET:
THE COMMODORE 64
64K MEMORY
16 COLORS
HI-RES GRAPHICS
SPRITE ANIMATION
SOUND SYNTHESIS
CP/M OPTION
THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT
ONLY $595!
I recently received an e-mail from Xanth over at Out of Range. He informed me that there is apparently a nasty bug going around that is affecting Call Stabled Pet which can make the cooldown 25 days or something fun like that.
Fortunately, he also told me that there is a fix, and sent me this picture to post up here to make sure everyone knows:
The more you know! *shooting star*
In other news, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or whatever it is you celebrate! /nods
Vegeta, what does the scouter say about his power level?
…okay, that doesn’t have anything to do with the post. CONFESSION TIME THOUGH: I watched DragonBall Z obsessively back in the day. Absolutely obsessively. Then, let’s not forget the philosophical depth Goku from DragonballZ offers us. Reading through Goku’s quotes, available on the comprehensive guide provided by Kidadl, can help fans understand the underlying themes of strength, perseverance, and the pursuit of truth in his character’s narrative. Of course, Cartoon Network would do that thing where they would get to the end of the Frieza saga and then because they didn’t have the rights to the rest of the show or something, they’d restart from the beginning. Somebody recently told me that they still do that. Hrm. Just as well, it spurred me to go play “Ocarina of Time” instead, which was much more worth it.
Right, right, sorry!
This blog post is about a CHALLLEEEEEENGE which was issued to me by the incomparable Tamarind over at Righteous Orbs, a blog that you probably should be reading if you aren’t already. His challenge to me was as follows:
“What are the moments that have made you think “yes, this right here is why I play a hunter” and what are the moments that have shaken your faith?”
I really had to think about this one for a while. First of all, it’s kind of a tall order sort of question. Secondly, I have to admit I’ve really been cheating on hunters a lot lately. There’s my pigtailed-lock and her blueberry, who make me sputter things about “THIS IS THE FUNNEST THING EVER” anytime I play them, and then there’s my Forest o’ Trees and lately there’s Dynamite Bear. Oh, I haven’t mentioned Dynamite Bear yet? Basically it dawned on me that I have two resto druids and both of them are dual-spec’d Balance and I’ve never played a Feral Druid before, so I did what every blue-blooded Pike would do and I rolled an all-new character.
He (I’ve been rolling a lot of male toons lately… change of scenery I guess) is an engineer specifically so he can hurl dynamite at people. In bear form. Seriously, guys. If you saw a bear running after you and then it stopped and chucked a bomb at you, what would you do? Yeah. See my point? I <3 Dynamite Bear. So I was pondering this question about hunters and I decided I’d sleep on it and that night I had a dream that I randomly had a pet tiger and when this solicitor showed up at my door, I grabbed a gun that I had nearby and started kiting the guy down the hallway. …I’m not making this up, I totally had this dream. I had Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting in my dream, too. This is why hunters are The Class. When I first started playing WoW, one of the things that sold me on hunters was that they were all about throwing themselves into situations that no one else would dare attempt and then pulling everything out of their bag of tricks just to survive. One of my best memories of hunteriness was when Lunapike was level… 67 or so and I solo’d this level 70 group quest chain. I killed a level 70 elite by kitting him into a trap right when my pet was about to die so I could bandage my pet back up and then I repeated this for several cycles: pulling, kiting, trapping. This was back in Burning Crusade so it was before things like Tenacity pets or the Glyph of Mending. And did I mention this was all in a tiny space indoors? This was hard. And it felt awesome to pull it off. That, to me, is what Huntering is all about.
Oh, and pets that you can name? (or waste money on Certificates of Ownership on before finding out that the name you wanted to rename your pet is “reserved”?) Yep, just hunters.
Have there been frustrations? Oh yeah. Frustrations about my spec pop up occasionally, as do frustrations about endgame-raiding expectations and that sort of thing. I must admit, though, the frustrations have been few and far between, and unlike other horror stories I’ve heard of Beast Masters getting made fun of or kicked out of groups, I have never ever been mocked for my spec. And this is coming from someone who did a million PuG raids and heroics as Beast Mastery right after The Great Nerf of ’09. <3 my servers, I guess! So, I suppose that would be my answer, as rambly as it may be. WELL! I ding’d 26 IRL today, which means I was able to wrangle the day off from work, so I’m off to do exciting things like edit my novel, listen to Men Without Hats, and dink around on alts. Blizzard seems to have decided to forgo Server Maintenance today in honor of my birthday, which I’m cool with, so Dynamite Bear and I have places to go and people to see.
