Tag Archives: blog

Looking Back at a Year O’ Pike

December 28, 2009 Pike 12 Comments

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.

Beast Mastery is nerfed hard; I march into VoA the next day and score second on Recount.

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.

April 2009:

I drew a picture that I’m still quite proud of.

I started tinkering with Survival again, mostly because I was tired of having mana issues. The spec change didn’t last long, though.

3.1 hits; Beast Mastery is semi-buffed. I’m still puttering around in Naxx PuGs.

I decided to see what all the hype was about and I tamed a wolf. I became quite attached to him, but he was no Big Pink Raptor.

May 2009:

I walk around the world as a rabbit, just for kicks and giggles.

I miss chain trapping.

While the rest of the world is in Ulduar, Pike goes to Black Temple.

June 2009:

I write up a whole series on Doing Naxx As a Hunter.

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.

The end of the month is pretty exciting: my druid hits the bit Eight-Oh, becoming my first non-hunter character ever to reach endgame, and I go on some solo’ing shenanigans with Tawyn.

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:

The month starts out on a high note when Order of the Rose chucked Tawyn a guild invite.

In addition, my druid heals all of Naxx. In a random PuG, no less.

ToC is released literally the next day and Naxx is forever obsoleted. I’m glad the Tree got to see it first.

My Hordie Hunter hits 80!

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.

September 2009:

The blog gets defaced and Pike is not a happy camper.

Kael’thas goes down, now that I finally have a tenacity pet.

And I talk about why guns and mechanostriders > bows and Barbie’s Princess Adventure kittycat mounts.

Recruit-a-Friend!

I rant about hunters who do not use their pet.

And I get a Super Cool Title of Win.

October 2009:

I’m playing my druid a lot. Whee!

Tawyn, uh… isn’t feeling well.

< Order of the Rose > takes on Anuby. After a few weeks of false starts, we triumph.

I make a new hunter alt and walk all around the world to tame a Northrend pet at level 10.

I also talk about chemistry. One of my favorite posts of the year, probably.

November 2009:

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!

Also, WoW turns 5!

December 2009:

I talk about Alliance vs. Horde vs. Penguins. Another contender for “Favorite Blog Post of the Year”.

And because I like hunters and druids, I get even more to Outlands-level.

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

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Pike’s Got Mail!

November 18, 2009 Pike 10 Comments

If I have an Achilles’ heel when it comes to blogging, it’s answering e-mail. I stink at it.

First of all, I get a lot of it.

Secondly, I often read it via my cellphone at work. Then I compose a long, grandiose reply in my head.

Thirdly, when I get home from work, half the time I can’t remember if I actually answered a certain e-mail or if I just… well, composed a long, grandiose reply in my head. Then when I go to find said e-mail in my inbox, it’s squeezed in between blog comment notifications and all sorts of non-blog-related e-mail and the like. So then all these lovely e-mails I get wind up unanswered because I can’t find them and I’m terrified of looking through the clutter through them.

SO!

In my best attempt to rectify this, I have a new e-mail address. I’ve stuck it on the sidebar and also made Eltanin the Mail-Windserpent a mailto link. It is aspectofthehare [at] gmail [dotcom]. This is going to be my new e-mail specifically for people who want to get ahold of me or ask me questions. Therefore, in theory, said e-mail won’t get buried between non-related e-mails, or forgotten about.

If you have sent me e-mail in the past and have not gotten a response, and would like one, I promise it’s not cause I hate you and encourage you to send it to my new e-mail. /nods

Today’s Copout Post was brought to you by the letters Q and Q. And today’s “brought to you by” was brought to you by my guild‘s message of the day.

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The Official Be-In-A-Story-With-Pike Contest!

October 10, 2009 Pike 5 Comments

So the Sitemeter on my site is almost at 400,000 and as is tradition here, I want to give out a “kiriban” prize to anyone who can screenshot the number and e-mail it to me *points to e-mail on the left sidebar*

However, I’m going to try something a little different this time: instead of a custom avatar, you’ll get to pick one of your characters to star with one of mine in a short RP story! Cool, right? Maybe? …hopefully…?

Anyways, it doesn’t just have to be one of my hunters either. Wanna be in the very first story of my druid, warlock, or paladin? I haven’t done stories of any of them yet, and they’re all open game.

Here’s how it will work:
1.) If you screenshot the counter saying 400,000, send it my way!
2.) All winners (there will probably be several, due to the way Sitemeter works) will receive e-mail instructions including brief bios of all my characters so you can pick which one you’d like to be in your story, and directions to send me back information about whichever of your characters you choose. In addition if you have any particular plot ideas for the story, you can send me those as well (or I can spin one up, if you’d like!)
3.) Your story will soon appear on the site for the whole world to see, and your character will be immortalized in PikeLore~! (I’ll spread the stories out a little if there’s a lot of them, so as not to crit you with them all at once.)

If that sounds like something you might be interested in, keep an eye on the hit counter! It’s on the bottom portion of my right sidebar. Currently I get a little over 1000 hits a day so I’m estimating an ETA for this in about four or five days. Save the date!

The Fine Print:

-Yes, you can enter if you’ve already won a previous Aspect of the Hare prize
– Yes, I’ll be doing an avatar prize for 500,000 if you’ve got your heart set on one of those
– Special thanks to Rilgon for the contest idea <3 Also:

This might sound funny, but I noticed that a few of the winners from last time’s avatar contest never sent me screenshots of their character after I sent out the post-winner-instructions. It is possible that you forgot, or that my e-mail simply got lost in Junk, etc. Whatever the case, if I owe you an avatar from some point feel free to hook up with me again because the offer doesn’t expire!

Questions/comments/suggestions? Ask away! And good luck to all!

fun

And Now For a Random, Awesome Aside

October 5, 2009 Pike 17 Comments

Like many blogs, I have the mouseover WoWHead links enabled. This allows you to see the details of what items/talents/abilities/glyphs/etc. I am referring to by simply mousing over linked text.

Examples:

Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle is the sexiest ranged weapon in the game.

Medivh is roughly as hot as Mega Man. (hint: I’m not being sarcastic.)

My Hunter’s Mark is bound to my pet attack via a macro, which makes the hunters in my guild with Improved Hunter’s Mark and Glyph of Hunter’s Mark want to hurl things at me.

And so on.

“Pike… duh” you are probably telling me.

But did you know that you can link to CHARACTERS as well?

Check this out:

My “main” is Tawyn. I also have a resto druid named Tamaryn and a Tauren Hunter named Lunapike.

And all sorts of other alts.

My boyfriend hasn’t played in a long time, though.

But yeah, the point is…

IS THIS NOT THE COOLEST THING OF ALL TIME?

It’s really easy to do it, too. Just go to WoWHead Profiles and look yourself up, then link to yourself.

I am doing this for the rest of my blog’s existence. Just a heads-up. >_>

special, Uncategorized

A Very Special Aspect of the Hare Post

August 9, 2009 Pike 36 Comments

“So instead of constantly boring my friends on my personal journal (It’s over at LiveJournal) with the random things that happened to me on World of WarCraft, I’ve decided to start posting them here.”

-Aspect of the Hare, August 9, 2007

The WoW blogosphere was a lot different two years ago than it was now.

BRK (now Daniel) was on blogspot and while he was very popular, I don’t think he’d quite reached mega-star status yet. Matticus was in his bloggers’ larvae stage. The Hunter’s Mark was well established, but it was still being written by one person and not the large group of them that helm that site today. There were a lot of blogs out there that no longer operate, and several popular ones of today that hadn’t yet been conceived in the minds of their writers.

And then a WoW player whose main was a level 42 hunter at the time started a WoW blog. She knew full well that no one would read it because she didn’t think she had anything to say that would interest anyone but her, but she started it anyway on a lark.

Two years later here we are; this site averages over 1000 unique hits a day and that doesn’t include the 800 of you tuning in by feedreader. For some reason that I cannot comprehend, this blog has become an informative and entertaining hangout for a variety of hunters and non-hunters alike, and I have somehow been promoted in status from someone who simply wanted to write about a class she loved to some sort of expert on said class. How did this happen? No idea. Early exposure from BRK, Matticus, and Mania of Petopia as well as several others certainly helped, but the rest was sheer word-of-mouth. I don’t advertise my site. I don’t make particularly large efforts to gain new readers. You all have just shown up– why? I dunno– but really, it’s not bad for someone who back when she started her blog assumed that the “ravagers” everyone was talking about as being the hot new DPS pet were the wolves out of Duskwood.

And so, I’m happy to announce my two-year-blogoversary. In celebration we have an all new banner (you will have to visit the actual site to view it if you’re reading in a reader)! Yes, it is the Safety Dance picture, and yes, that’s Deadwind Pass and not Naxx. Partially because I was having a hard time getting a good, wide shot of Heigan’s dancefloor that wasn’t filled with UIs and/or players, and partially because I like the idea of it being a nod to my love for my favorite raid instance in the game.

I am also in talks with someone about a potential new site theme overhaul, so I’d finally have my own “custom” WordPress theme– I promise that if and when that does happen, the site layout will still feel the same overall– magazine-style formats and other similarly complicated blog formats always throw my navigational skills for a loop (I suppose I’m not that bright) and I just like the straightforward theme of your sidebars on the sides, your posts in the middle, and a bright blue color scheme that has been the trademark of this site since Day One.

I really have little else to say, other than a sincere thank you to my readers for all the support you’ve tossed my way through the months. I am very proud to be the head of the Aspect of the Hare community and a small part of the “Blog Azeroth” one as a whole. It’s always hard to say what the future plans are of a site like this; I can guarantee that so long as I am playing WoW, I will be blogging about it, and I’ve no doubt I will be blogging in some form or other after WoW’s time has passed. There’s nothing particularly fancy about Aspect of the Hare– no forums, no chat rooms, no online stores, no podcasts, and, very staunchly and proudly, no advertisements– but I am very happy about what I’ve managed to accomplish.

In the end, I really am just trying to follow the advice of a wise man named Paul Simon, who penned the following lyric for his song “Hurricane Eye“…

So you wanna be a writer, you don’t know how or when?
Find a quiet place; use a humble pen
You wanna talk, talk, talk about it, all night squawk about it…

Onward and upward~ ^_^

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We Interrupt This Program

March 4, 2009 Pike 11 Comments

My apologies that this isn’t a real post, but I’ve got a couple things I’d like to address really quick!

Firstly, and I know I never thought I’d say this, but… I get a lot of blog-related e-mail these days. And it’s kind of hard for me to keep track of sometimes. Now before you think that this is me saying “don’t e-mail me”, it’s not. I love e-mail from you guys. But I think lately a lot of e-mail has slipped through the cracks; i.e., I’ve read it and forgotten to reply, or I’ve opened up a link you sent me in a tab and then my browser crashed and the link went byebye and I can’t find it… etc. So I guess what I’m trying to say is: if you e-mail me and don’t get a response, I’m very sorry, and it’s nothing personal. It’s hard for me to keep track of all my e-mail. I do read everything, I promise, and I do try to respond to everything but I’m 99% sure that hasn’t happened, so I wanted to explain why =P

I do encourage people to check out my FAQ before e-mailing me though, those questions there are called “Frequently Asked” questions for a reason! *nods* Scroll down to the bottom of the “About” page to see them. Again though, I do love getting e-mail. Just wanted to make that clear. >.>

Second matter of bloggy business, if you are on Livejournal and want to receive updates from this blog on your friends’ list instead of a feed reader, you can do so here. I’ve subscribed to it with my own Livejournal account to help me keep an eye on any comments that wind up being posted to the entries over there rather than over here. Cause I love your comments. <3 Third matter of bloggy business, I'm thinking more and more that I need to trim down my blogroll. I fear that it isn’t accomplishing anything because it’s so big and unwieldy and intimidating that none of the links get clicked anyway. See, lemme explain something. When I started this site, I had a strict policy of “If you link to me, I will link to you!” but this site has grown far beyond any expectations I ever had for it and it’s simply becoming unfeasible to link to everyone who links to me, as much as I would like to. Especially when you toss blogs that don’t link to me but that I like anyway into the list as well. So I think over the course of the next few days I’m going to try trimming it down as much as I can. This isn’t going to be easy for me to do because I appreciate all the talent out there in the blog world and I don’t want anyone to feel left out, but I unfortunately think it’s necessary at this point. This also means that new blogs you send me may not wind up on my blogroll right away. I’ll probably make another blog post later regarding more details on this blogroll cleanup once I sort of come to a plan on how I want to go about it.

Okay, sorry for the quick sidetrack, and we will return you to your regularly scheduled hunterness momentarily…

blogs, memes

Who's On First

December 18, 2008 Pike 15 Comments

“Go back to your first few posts. Who was the first person to EVER comment on your blog? Call them out, link that post and thank them! Then tag a few folks to see who they call out.” – Cait at One Among Many

I still remember the day I started this blog. I’d been lurking around at BigRedKitty and The Hunter’s Mark and a few others for a while, soaking everything in and commenting on the rare occasion. A couple times, I thought about making a blog of my own, but that idea quickly evaporated, for it was a silly idea.

But I was playing more and more of the game and starting to get more opinions about it and I wanted a place to voice those opinions that was not my LiveJournal. Since most of my LJ friends wouldn’t have a clue about what I was talking about.

The solution, I decided, was to make someplace entirely new. Someplace where I could jot down all my thoughts on the game and feel satisfied that it was “out there”, but nobody would ever have to read it.

And so Aspect of the Hare was born. It was made knowing that nobody would ever see it and that nobody would ever read it and that I would lose motivation for it and jump ship a few months into it, the same way I did with a Linux help blog I’d started previously. I accepted this fate. I made my blog and made a couple of posts to go along with it. I didn’t advertise it. I didn’t put a blogroll on it because heaven forbid somebody I idolized such as Lass or BRK stumble across this laughable little upstart blog who was linking to them. (I’m just a little bit shy.)

Somehow though, presumably through my Blogger profile and the way I would comment occasionally at BRK, a couple people wound up here. And the award for First Aspect of the Hare Commenter Ever goes to…

Kestrel. Who commented on my second post.

“Heheh…interesting story. Would like to see characters like that on my server!

Glad I follow links from other blogs, else I might not have ended up here. I’m sure I’ll be back. :)”

Yes Kestrel, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it is all your fault.

(Special runner-up award goes to Matticus for being one of the first people ever to link to me in an article he wrote. Waaay back in the day.)

I tag… whoever wants to participate. =P

P.S. Hi, WoWInsider. Welcome to my blog that I didn’t think anybody was ever going to read. Make yourselves at home?

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Last Blog-Related Update I Swear

October 10, 2008 Pike 6 Comments

I want to thank you all so much for your help in “Beta testing” the new site for me and offering me your feedback and constructive criticism. I would also like to briefly go over a few of the most brought up things:

1.) Broken Links. It appears that Blogspot and WordPress have different link-naming conventions so I have a lot of broken links now that lead to 404s. Yes, in my haste to get the site up and running, I failed to realize that. I think I have fixed all the ones at least on the front page– if you find any more, let me know– but there are likely still many broken links within the blog itself on various posts and the like. If you find one on a frequently-referenced post, let me know.

2.) Blog Layout and Design. I have a confession to make, guys. I… know absolutely nothing about web design and CSS. I can get things running on Linux but web page design is a completely different ballgame and one I am literally clueless about. I had– and still have– this dream of having a 100% original and customized site but it got to the point where I had to choose between figuring out how to get one and postponing switching to the new site, or picking something plug-and-play for now and playing around with site design later. I chose the latter option because honestly, it was getting harder and harder to write posts on the other site knowing I was sitting on this one, and I figured it wasn’t fair to my readers.

I am using the Mandigo theme which approximately 98.7% of WordPress blogs use (Note: 79.4% of statistics in this post are made up on the spot), precisely because it is easy to use and looks nice enough. I really want to have something much more unique and special someday but I can’t tell you when that will be. Someday, though. In the meantime I know I still have a lot of tweaking to do in terms of the site design.

3.) Banner. I received a lot of good feedback on my new banner picture, ranging from people who really liked its minimalism and design, to others who felt it lacked color. Most everybody liked the art though. Here is the deal with the banner: it was designed to be temporary. The original plan was to take the art, ink it up and color it in, and make a colorful banner similar to the one on my old Blogspot blog. However, the process was taking a very long time and I was getting closer to the personal deadline I’d set for myself, so I opted instead to make a much simpler banner to use for now.

I like the way the current “temporary” banner looks and I think it is cute and kind of unique, but I do think in the end I want something more colorful, so this will probably be one of the things that I change first.

Alright, that’ll do it. I want to extend a thank-you to all of you who have already updated your blogroll and links to me, and an extra BIG thank-you to Mania’s Arcania, World of Matticus, and Musings of a Raider for linking to my new blog in posts (if you have, as well, and I failed to catch it– my deepest apologies!). One of my biggest concerns in making this switch was the domain name change, but thanks to you guys it’s going a lot smoother than I thought. <3 Okay, enough of the blogspam. Tell ya what. I am going to log into WoW, which I haven't done in a few days (been working on this site, you know), and I will try to come up with something fun to blog about. There is actually talk of a potential Karazhan run with some old friends tonight. The thought makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Mmmyes.

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Welcome to Our New WordPress Overlord

October 9, 2008 Pike 32 Comments

If you are reading this through a feedreader then you are successfully subscribed to my new site, and if you have come to this site via the link from my old one, welcome! Look around and make yourself at home. I’m still sort of setting up so there are probably changes yet to come, but for the most part, we’re set.

A friendly reminder to update your bookmarks and blogrolls (if you have to), and if you spot a wrong link to me somewhere, let me (or maybe the place, if it’s out of my control) know so I can fix it post haste. Wouldn’t want to lose any of my lovely readers in the move.

Well– let me know what you think or if something isn’t working for you. And we will return you to your normal huntery goodness as soon as possible.

Thank you, as always, for being a reader of Aspect of the Hare and I look forward to all sorts of fun in the future <3 /dance