Tag Archives: meta-blog

non-wow

AFK. No, I mean, REALLY AFK

22 Comments

There are rumors on the internets that I’m returning to Aspect of the Hare full-time.

And you know what, I’d love to do that.

It’ll be different. At the moment I lack both the time and interest to raid or really play “hardcore” or provide hunter guides. However, I had a lot of fun writing, say, the food post and I’d like to do more “fun” stuff like that, a few times a week, if possible.

Unfortunately this is going to have to wait a bit. See, due to a REALLY long and convoluted series of events I am moving to the west coast (Western Washington to be specific.) I am doing so, uh… *checks watch*… in under twenty-four hours. I also had to quit my job. And I haven’t been able to find a new one yet. (Which has me absolutely terrified, by the way.) So these next few weeks will involve the following: throwing things into a truck, driving 600 miles west, unpacking, and frantically job-hunting because I have bills and crap due in a few weeks.

I’m telling you all of this primarily because I feel bad about repeatedly getting everyone’s hopes up about the return of the Prodigal Pike which is inevitably followed by me not really delivering. But this is what’s going on, so now you know.

TLDR: I’d love to come back but gimme some time to make sure I can actually afford food and stuff.

Much <3 to my most dedicated readers.

screenshots

Quick Logistical Post

7 Comments

I get a lot of spam comments. A lot of it. I clear out probably five or so spam comments a day on both of my blogs combined– and that’s not counting the several thousands that Akismet has caught in its spider-web.

Yeah.

Most of the spam tries to cleverly disguise itself as not-spam, which is how it gets through the filters. But it’s still not something I want to deal with every day.

As a result I have decided to auto-close commenting on all posts older than 14 days. I hate to do this, because I know some people have a lot of blogs to catch up on and don’t get around to individual posts for a while, but it will help tons with the spam situation (as 90% of it happens on old posts).

You are, of course, always welcome to contact me via e-mail, Twitter, or by commenting on more recent posts, though!

screenshots, special, stories, Uncategorized

Every New Beginning…

70 Comments

…comes from some other beginning’s end. ( – Seneca. Or Semisonic. Whichever…)

The account has expired, and I’m done with World of Warcraft for the foreseeable future. Having done everything I needed to do on my “mains” last night, I was actually in the process of going around and double-checking my lesser-played alts today for any rogue items in their mailboxes when I was kicked off of the server.

So wait, you’re coming back, right? When?

I’ve hesitated to say for certain one way or another because I don’t want to make any guarantees. At best I want to give myself a few months to get things sorted out. If needs be I’ll wait until Cataclysm and see how things are looking then. Let’s just give it the ol’ Blizzard “Soon“™

What about the blog?

As I said, I will keep blogging. Probably in more than one place, because apparently I’m an addict like that (or a masochist, take your pick.)

I’ve thought about it for a bit and although I initially figured I’d just keep blogging here, I think I’d rather leave Aspect of the Hare “as is”. That way, people who want to continue linking to me for guides and the like can do so without worrying about people having to wade through non-WoW stuff. Plus, if/when I come back, I can just jump right back in to a ready-to-go WoW-themed blog.

What I’m probably going to do is set up a couple of subdomains here and then when they’re all set I’ll make another post linking you all to them. Gimme a couple days and I’ll get back to you!

Also, if you have a LiveJournal account and want to read my somewhat less-structured and more non-sequitor rambles I don’t mind if you friend me over there, either.

Commissions?

Will continue, send ’em my way! I’d like to think the fabled “Sitemeter Avatar Contest” will continue in some fashion also, though we’ll have to wait and see how things go once I get my “New Blog” all set up.

And now, roll credits:

Thank you…

…to BRK and Lassirra, without whom I would never have started blogging. Your blogs were inspirations that got me excited about the WoW-o-sphere and taught me how to play a hunter in the first place.

…to the WoW Twitterati for giving me one epic chatroom to rant, laugh, cry, and joke in, to bounce ideas off of, and inspire me to do crazy things like draw pictures or write books. I’ll still be around, don’t worry.

…to my guild, Order of the Rose, for being made of at least ten types of awesome. For dragging me around to their alt runs when I was an undergeared nub and then tossing me head first into their 25mans and hard modes, for passing gear and weapons to me, and for pulling together special raids just for me so I could get my Champion of the Frozen Wastes title– on not one, but two characters. For not just “letting” me raid as Beast Mastery, but for flat-out encouraging and challenging me to do so. Every outcast, non-flavor-of-the-month player should be so lucky.

…to my guild in Burning Crusade, the now-defunct but never-forgotten Entelechy. This is going to sound dorky and cheesy to the Nth Degree, but ya know what, I’m gonna say it anyway: you guys are some of the best friends I’ve ever had. I love that a good number of us have kept in touch outside of the game, via our forum or our nightly AIM chats, which is awesome because I know a lot of us have quit playing. I think back to the best memories I have of this game– Karazhan, countless Heroic Mech runs, opening all the graves in Zul’Farrak when we were all level 45, marching in on the Caelestis Templares’ cathedral twenty-strong– and I wasn’t doing it alone, but with you guys. May there always be Five Seconds to Evocate on Curator and may “Thundercats, Ho!” always ring through the hall before Shade of Aran.

…to Blizzard, for, well, making the game to begin with. I’ve been a BlizzHead since StarCraft stole my heart away in 1999, and it’s you guys and Nintendo more than anybody that have instilled a love of gaming in my soul. Being a citizen of Azeroth these past three years has been an honor and privilege. You guys are masters of making living, breathing worlds and characters. I was trying to emulate that solid real-ness when I was writing my book and inventing my own fictional world and characters, and if I was even half as successful as you with it, then I think I’m good. And if my book ever ends up published and with even a modicum of success then I’ll owe you a grateful hat tip.

…and finally, to my readers, for being the best readers that any blogger could ever hope for. It’s been almost three years of blogging and I can count the number of truly negative comments that I’ve received on one hand. And it’s because you guys are all amazing and mature and here to contribute to this little community. I have read every single comment ever posted here– every single one– and I wish I could go through and name names one by one and thank you all individually but it would take too long. Suffice to say if you have ever commented here I consider you a friend. Thank you for making me a part of your lives. I really didn’t deserve it.

If you’re going to follow me along to the rest of my blogging adventures, then I very much look forward to seeing you there. If not, it’s been a pleasure and I can only hope that something I said at some point made you smile or made you think. And I hope to see you again should I return.

—

Before I logged off of my characters last night, I tried to make sure I logged off appropriately. Tawbree, for example, is astride her new Epic Fiery Horse cause I did in fact manage to hit level 40. Tamaryn is in tree form, dancing away, with both trinkets activated and all of her HoTs ticking on herself.

And Tawyn pulled out Tux, her very first pet ever, and went on a little road trip. She went to Teldrassil, where it all began; she went to Azshara and explored the entire thing– including even more things I’d never seen before!– and then… then, she went home.

Bestial Wrath’d right before I logged out. That way she’ll be Bestial Wrath’d out there in Pixel-Land until I come back, and if I don’t come back, she’ll be Bestial Wrath’d until the servers go down.

I thought it was a nice touch.

—

Long past were the days when Medivh’s tower was much of a threat and adventurers flocked to the pass to donate their skills to the cause, but the few Violet Eye delegates that were holding out there did see the occasional visitor.

Archmage Alturus was on a first name basis with a few of these visitors, the night elf Tawyn being one of them.

“Back again, are you?” he asked, eyebrow raised.

“Ayep,” Tawyn replied tersely as she dismounted.

“What keeps drawing you here, really?” The Archmage was genuinely curious. “The time is past that we really needed you…”

Tawyn blinked. He may as well have asked her why fish swam and why birds flew. “Maybe it’s the ley lines under the place. I dunno. You don’t ask the gulls why they return to the sea.” She shrugged.

“Fair enough,” the mage replied. “And we could always use good scouts, I suppose. You never know if something new might pop up in there.”

“Good. I’m goin’ in.”

“Alone?”

“I’m never alone.”

It was then that Archmage Alturus saw the big gray owl with yellow eyes perched nearby in the shadows. As if in response, he took wing now and alighted on Tawyn’s shoulder as she opened the front gate. She stood there a moment, gazing inside, her eyes clouded a bit as if distracted. “We aren’t getting any younger I suppose, are we, Tux?” she murmured.

Tux hooted something in response and then the hunter and her owl went inside.

goals

The WoW Bucket List, or, Do Not Stand At My Blog And Weep

51 Comments

Alright guys, here’s the deal.

My World of Warcraft account expires in a week. And unless I’m hit with a non-paladin Divine Intervention between now and then, I’m… not resubscribing, probably for a while. I hate to use the term “quitting” so I’m using the term “on hiatus” instead. (Plus, it sounds better if you sing it to the tune of “Rock Me Amadeus”.)

So, lemme clear up some confusion that people may have. This isn’t because I’m dissatisfied with the game. This isn’t because I had some sort of epiphany. This isn’t because I stopped loving WoW. Au contraire, I freakin’ love this game. I’d love to play it and blog about it forever.

But.

There are only twenty-four hours in a day and between my full-time job, looking for a second job (I’d like to pay off my student loans sometime in this lifetime), art commissions, my rediscovered love of drawing/writing/creativity in general, and working on publishing this NaNoWriMo novel of mine (yes, I’m serious about it), my time spent WoWing has dwindled and dwindled and dwindled and this blog has been sorely neglected and after doing a lot of thinking about it, I think that this is the best thing to do.

I like to think I’ll come back later when I have more time. Cataclysm, maybe. Or maybe before that. Or maybe after that. Who knows, really? Now is just a rather busy time in my life and I’ve gotta re-focus for a bit.

Before you ask, yes, I’ll keep blogging. Just not about WoW. I’ll write about Linux, and fish, and… uh… more about fish… *watches subscriber numbers plummet* … ANYWAYS, I’ll talk more about that when the time actually comes.

That’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is that I almost decided to just go about my business and blog as usual and then sometime next week make my super-dramatic “Bye guys!” post. But that would feel too– not really dishonest, I guess, but I dunno. It would feel like I was keeping up a facade and pretending things were all honky-dory until D-Day. That doesn’t seem very Pike-ish.

Instead, in the vein of people who think funerals are too depressing and do “life celebration” things instead, I want to share my last days of WoW with you guys, and keep blogging about it as long as I can.

So, I’m making a WoW Bucket List. A list of things I want to do before my WoW sub kicks the bucket. In no particular order…

  • Get my warlock to 40 and nab my epic mount. This shouldn’t be difficult; she’s level 38 and pretty much completely rested.
  • Run said warlock through Orgrimmar and do RFC.  See, she’s well on her way to having the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement, but the new LFG wasn’t introduced until she was past RFC level, so it’s conspicuously missing and it bugs me.  This must be remedied.
  • Make an attempt to solo Attumen again.  Last time I tried, I didn’t have a turtle (for Shell Shield) and I didn’t have the three extra pet talent points that I previously had to stick into Avoidance.  Also I didn’t have the new and improved Misdirect.  I still don’t know how well I’ll do since I lack 2-piece T5, but it’s worth one more shot.
  • See the world.  In the event that I don’t come back before Cataclysm, I want to re-visit the Azeroth I fell in love with almost three years ago.  I’ll bring my camera– er, Print Screen button.  Maybe I’ll go for the Explorer Achievement or something.
  • Do something about my poor druid’s gear.  She still  has the mace from Heroic Nexus.  And a level 77 blue offhand.  You know, next to her ToC25 epics.  I dunno if I can give her a complete makeover in seven days but who knows?
  • Do some good ol’ Burning Crusade dungeons via LFG on my level 61 hunter Althalor.  I would’ve liked to get him to level 70 before the Final Log-Off but I don’t think I have enough time, so I’ll do a couple of old favorite instances and call it good.
  • Make some pocket change on various characters and dump it in their respective guild banks. Also, make sure I don’t have anything laying around in the AH.
  • Run Molten Core, get the Leaf, and do the Rhok quest.  …okay, so that probably won’t happen.  I can dream, though.
  • Kill Arthas?  …nah, this probably won’t happen either, but I won’t lose sleep over it.  I’m content with my WotLK experience.
  • Comb through all the billions of drafts I have laying around in the WordPress dashboard and publish the good ones.  (I probably have enough of these to continue “blogging about WoW” for a good few weeks after the subscription expires >.>) …okay, so that one wasn’t exactly game-related.

Hmm, that looks like a good start. Toss me some others that you think I should add!

Dang.

So now I’m sitting here feeling like this cartoon, wondering if I should post this or not. I can already feel myself starting to get all sappy and this isn’t even the sappy post yet.

Ah screw it *hits publish, then runs away before she starts to second guess herself again*

special, Uncategorized

Looking Back at a Year O’ Pike

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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.

wow_tawynwashwetlands

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.

petquilt

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.

safetydance

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.

wow_perezvonstory2

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.

wow_illidan1

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.

WoW_MoonkinFun1

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.)

BourneTheTortoise

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.

TawynOfTheRose

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.

WoW_TawynOfTheNightfall

October 2009:

I’m playing my druid a lot. Whee!

Tawyn, uh… isn’t feeling well.

TalkLikeAMan

< 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!

Happy5thBirthday

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

Uncategorized

Pike’s Got Mail!

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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.

Uncategorized

Not Bad… for a Human

22 Comments

So it’s “Aliens” quote day, so sue me. (Best Movie Ever by the way.)

ANYWAYS! For those who missed it, this blog has been infected with a nasty little bug the past few days, so I nuked the site from orbit to try to kill it. Backed up my posts/comments/images, deleted everything, and spent the last six hours trying to bring this back online again after some issues.

Everything, for the most part, should be back– obviously some of the stuff on the sidebar and some theme stuff needs to be fixed, and images are in the middle of being uploaded and probably won’t finish for quite some time, since I have a truck-full of them… but all posts and comments (aside from those comments that were posted in the last few minutes before D-Day, after I’d backed everything up) should be good to go.

Since I’ve pretty much been working on this all day, though, I’m gonna go relax for the rest of the night and finish polishing up the blog tomorrow!

I would like to thank everybody for their patience and for doing things like leaving cheery or silly messages on various phases of the reconstruction process when I was frustrated as all heck. I would also like to thank everybody for your patience regarding the fact that the blog post content here has been pretty craptacular while I’ve been dealing with this problem. =P Hopefully, though, it’s behind us now (if not, it won’t be pretty). Onward and upward~

Uncategorized

An Update

23 Comments

Firstly, I want to thank everyone for all the billions of comments I got on my “Brutal Honesty” post yesterday. It was one of those posts where I basically reached into my inner psyche, pulled something out, threw it at the computer screen and then ran to work as fast as I could since it made me late. I write those sometimes, and I’m never sure how they’re going to turn out, but I’m glad it seemed to strike a chord with so many people.

I do want to make a couple things clear, since I worry I may have caused some confusion.

** I did not “reroll”; I made a new alt. The point of having the alt be a central feature of that article was that said alt was what reminded me why WoW was fun. I have no idea how much this alt will be played. Maybe I’ll player her a lot, and maybe not. Who knows! I had some people concerned that this alt would eventually reach endgame and I’d have the same issue, to which I respond, she’s level 15 and when you take my leveling speed (or uh, major lack thereof) track record into account, I give two years as a rough estimate of when she’ll reach endgame (if it ever happens), so I’ll worry about it then =P

** I don’t really feel too pressured by the blog itself or by my readership or by the shadow of BRK, etc. Oh sure, my closer friends have no doubt heard me gripe about the pressures of sometimes feeling shoehorned into being the new BRK. And there have been times when I’ve wished for the blissful anonymity of my past WoW life. So, I’m not going to deny those pressures are there. They tend to just show up if you are a “bigger blogger”, as was eloquently stated by Rip. But these are only very minor gripes, in the long run. They aren’t what caused me to “snap”. What I was trying to express in that post was that the pressures I was feeling were internal more than external. I am a perfectionist when it comes to certain things (those things do not include the state of my apartment /glances around and coughs) and it happened to come to a head one day. So I wrote about it.

A wiser person than I might say that the internal pressures are the result of external ones, and hey, who knows, they’re probably right. I don’t see a reason to think about it too deeply though. /shrug

** I do think some of the internal pressure is possibly a byproduct of blog growing pains. There are times when I’m not sure what I should write in this blog. See, I know people are going to tell me “Forget about the readers and write what you want to write about”, but I’m really strongly into themes and subject matter and whatnot and even if I didn’t have a single person reading this blog I’d still want it to have a strong theme. That’s just how my mind operates with my creations. I can never tell if this is a hunter blog or a having-fun-with-WoW blog or a personal-anecdotes blog or what. There are even sub-categories within those. I have been called a Beast Mastery specific hunter blog, (although I tend not to like that title), or a hunter blog that focuses on guides, or on the flip side, a hunter blog that focuses on stories. What am I, really?

In the past, I’ve called myself a blog for anyone who has ever rolled a hunter, tamed a pet, shot something with a ranged weapon… and got a little smile on their face for doing so. it’s a broad category, but in the end, I think that’s what I am.

Thus, the question of “what happens if I stop liking hunters?” lurks in the back of my mind because it means I’d have to redo my blog, and my blog is something I take a lot of pride in. Hence the “panic attack” when that question actually seemed to surface the other day. It’s not really the potential to lose readership that I’m worried about (though I do love all your comments), as much as the simple fact that I don’t like breaking my own rules. That’s why I also have a real-life blog and a recently-started Linux blog (which I should really update again) in addition to this one. Everything in its place.

** I still 100% love raiding with my guild and am planning on doing so a lot this weekend. =P I have just never been a raider before so the work involved caught me off-guard. I am determined not to let it burn me out.

** I do dailies because I suck at the Auction House. Not so much because it’s hard, but because I lack the dedication to do all the research and et al. The closest I ever got to “playing the AH” was a brief period where I cornered the minipet market on the neutral AH with Lunapike as a way to make epic flyer money. This provided a small but steady source of income and I’m pretty sure the other people that were also trying to do this hated me because I was always undercutting them. I stopped doing it primarily because it didn’t really interest me. Dailies at least have you flying around and you can level pets and stuff.

As it is now I toss Alchemy stuff onto the AH every so often and call it good.

I still think the depth of the WoW economy pales in comparison to the Neopets economy. Giggle at me all you want; I’m just sayin’ it like it is. =P I spent one whole year restocking and reselling and keeping an eye on market prices, just to reach a single goal. That’s hardcore.

SO! There you go. I just wanted to dissipate some of the concern I was hearing, and approach the story from a more logical standpoint as opposed to the pure emotional one that I poured out on you all the other day.

IN OTHER NEWS:

I am getting close to 400,000 page views. As long-time readers know, I usually hold a contest where people who screenshot the big numbers can get free personalized avatars. I’m hesitant to do it this time, because I’ve run into an issue with getting these avatar prizes done in a timely manner due to how busy I am all the time now, and it makes me feel bad (this applies to all the e-mails I get as well, I swear I do read them all!) So if you have any ideas for a different sort of prize, I’m all ears and open to suggestions!

As always, thank you all for being a reader. Why anyone reads my rambles, I have no idea, but it has enriched my life and I hope I’ve enriched yours a little <3 /ramble-off

fun

And Now For a Random, Awesome Aside

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

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~ ^_^