Tag Archives: minipets

fun, screenshots, Uncategorized, weapons

Of Guns and Robotics – Why I Like All The Things Lots Of You Don't

20 Comments

One thing I’ve noticed lately is that I usually get confused and curious comments or Twitter messages when I mention that guns are by far my favorite type of ranged weapon, or that I am obsessed with Mechanostriders, or that I like gnomes and goblins. And because curiosity is typically a good thing, I am here to reward that curiosity with answers! *nods*

Okay, first, let’s go back to the basics. I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll mention it again because it’s relevant: I’ve always been more of a sci-fi person than a fantasy person. When I was a kid, I found aliens and spaceships and androids to be much more interesting than more abstract concepts like elves and dwarves. I shoved various fantasy films and cartoons aside in favor of Star Trek or Star Wars, which never bored me, despite the fact that I’d seen the various movies enough times that I could quote entire scenes verbatim.

As I grew older, I finally started to sort of grasp and appreciate fantasy much more than I had in the past, but that longstanding love for sci-fi has really stuck with me.

As such, I really REALLY like anything involving robots, steampunk, rube goldberg devices, mechas, crazy machines, airships, flashing lights, and any sort of otherwise otherworldly and machiney contraptions.

One of the awesome things about WoW and the Warcraft world is that Blizzard isn’t afraid to occasionally toss all those awesome things into their games. Sure, I was always the girl who preferred StarCraft to WarCraft back when they were strictly RTS games (go figure), but even the WarCraft games had glaive throwers and flying machines and all sorts of fun stuff. So I’m naturally drawn to all that stuff (and by extension, to gnomes and goblins).

Anyways, this fangirlishness of mine has manifest itself today in the form of showering my characters with all sorts of fun contraptions:

MechanoTawyn1

I’m not sure if it’s quite possible for me to express the awesomeness of having a mechanical mount and a mechanical minipet. I have actually started collecting Mechanostriders in various colors and while I love all minipets, the robotic ones (such as Clockwork Rocket Bot) are my favorites. The particular set you see here; the Gnomeregan Mechanostrider and the Mechanopeep, cost 140 Champion’s Seals all told. That’s a lot of dailies. And you know what? It was totally worth it.

I love the way Mechanostriders appear to have so much personality for being a machine (I am a sucker for that sort of thing), but recently I discovered that they have tail-lights, and my Fangirly Squee reached new heights:

MechanoTawyn2

Tail-lights. On my mount. Tell me that’s not awesome.

Now let’s move along to guns. Truthfully, there are sort of a myriad of reasons why my various hunters tend to gravitate towards guns instead of bows/crossbows, the major ones among them being a.) roleplaying (Tawyn has close ties with the Dwarven District of Stormwind, for example), and b.) Me being shallow (Male blood elf + gun = drool)

Largely, though, it all goes back to phasers and light-pistols and tricorders and things that go PEWPEWPEW very loudly and with lots of flashy lights. It reminds me of Trek and Star Wars and those warm, cozy, and oh-so-fun childhood memories of watching the good guys triumph with their little laser guns in hand. (Well, and lightsabers, but that’s what glowy stat-sticks are for.) I want my made-up hero to be like that too. So gimme guns, baby.

Now I know what you might be thinking. You might be thinking, “Pike, are you seriously going to pass up a ranged weapon upgrade just because it isn’t a gun?”

The correct answer is: no, of course not. I only saw Arrowsong drop once, ever. But I rolled on it so fast your head woulda spun. I lost, but you know. Back in Burning Crusade I replaced the sexiest ranged weapon of all time, Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle, with The Choco-Bow as soon as I had the badges. I am, afterall, a hunter. I’ll take any good ranged weapon.

…but that doesn’t mean having a gun gives me a little thrill and makes me happy in a dorky way.

I used Nesingwary 4000 for a very very long time. I love that weapon. It looks absolutely gorgeous. I think it’ll stay in my bank for time and all eternity (alongside Wolfslayer). The other day, the new gun from Trial of the Champion dropped. I waffled on taking it for a bit because the stats alone weren’t super hot, but in the end, it’s enough of a white damage increase that I’m pretty sure it is an overall upgrade. It’s not quite as pretty as Nesingwary, but I like it; it’s a very handsome weapon in its own right.

TawynsNewGun

…and it’s a gun. *squee*

I’m loving Ulduar so far. Guys, it’s full of robots and vehicles that chuck bombs at people. HOW IS THIS NOT AWESOME? (Hint: It is, in fact, extremely awesome.)

Okay, I’m done fangirling. Just figured I’d explain some possibly odd little obsessions of mine. Carry on now…

screenshots

Dailies Pay

9 Comments

Aside from things like gold, and rep, there are all sorts of fun shinies to be had. Such as…
pengu

Pengu, the cutest minipet ever, who has happily decided to satiate my inner Linux geek. All hail the penguin! He comes from being exalted with the Kalu’ak.

Oh and…

polarbearmount

[Reins of the White Polar Bear], which I got after completing a daily quest for the Brunnhildar in Storm Peaks today. It is apparently a random rare drop from the bags of Hyldnir Spoils which you get for doing their quests. The funny thing is, while I’d heard about the Polar Bear at some point, I’d mostly forgotten about it; I was doing the quests cause I liked them better than most of the Sons of Hodir ones to the east. So I was very pleasantly surprised indeed to open up my bag and find a bear inside! He is smaller than all other bear mounts (whether intentionally or unintentionally) but I kind of like him that way. It’s cute. And goes with my minipet.

Now I just have to finish getting Exalted with Wyrmrest for my Red Drake. I’m already about 35% through Revered and Heroics give you rep at a ridiculous clip if you’ve got the Tabard, so hopefully it won’t be too much longer. Then, my little cycle of shinies will be complete (for now) and I can start working on, you know, rep for gear and other less important stuff. >.>

screenshots

Forget Level 80.

17 Comments

This one‘s better:

Heck yeah.

D’awww!

And for the not-so-minipet-inclined, have a screenshot that was taken in live game with no graphical glitches or anything. It’s an actual place and camera angle you can get– fairly easily, too, if you have an “I wonder if you can go in there” type of mind. Any crazy guesses or need me to drop hints? =P

(Oh, and in case anyone’s curious… I’ll be dinging 79 tomorrow. Go go Aspect of the Tortoise!)

screenshots

Another Mission Accomplished

22 Comments

All it took was one run of the Sporeggar’s “Now That We’re Still Friends” quest to want to repeatedly bang my head into the wall. Grinding on Naga bugs me more than grinding on Ogres does, for some reason (maybe all the slave adds they bring?), and on top of that, you get to deal with approximately 42 other 70s there all camping the spot. Just say no.

But I really wanted Sporeggar rep for my Tiny Sporebat. I was already sitting pretty at Revered because that’s what I had to get to nab the Primal Earth to Primal Water Transmute (aka the Moneybags Transmute), so I just had to get to exalted. Preferably without that naga quest.

But hey, Sporeggar just loves those flowers that you can get in Underbog…

The question then became, “Can I solo enough of Underbog to effectively farm the flowers?”

…apparently, up to the first boss, I can!

Now that two-pull pre-boss is where things fizzle out, because those mobs are un-trappable and they just love to squish hunter pets. But still, I was quite pleased to have gotten that far. It was a crazy ride, I had to trap and kite and maneuver my way out of a myriad of large and hard-hitting pulls, and there were a couple times where I was lucky to escape with a mere 400 HP, but I never once did die, and in the end I wound up with not only 14 flowers but also the realization that I had fallen in love with Huntering all over again, for, oh, the 736th time or so.

Now I could have just farmed that first third of Underbog over and over but at this point the Boyfriend and the Pallyfriend wanted to get in on the action so we stomped through the place a time or two and whaddaya know:

Annoying naga quest? Pfft. Who needs it when you’ve got a bear? =P

(And yes, Bear is now 70, and still nameless. Why am I so horrible at coming up with names lately? /sob)

screenshots

Minipet Mania

24 Comments

I figured since my last few posts were so focused on minipets– the bat minipet in particular– I should at least discuss my thoughts on them a little.

So, minipets. I’ve really liked them ever since I started playing WoW. I say “really like” instead of “love” here because I never really considered myself to be a diehard collector. I just liked having some fun minipets. My first ever minipet was the Westfall Chicken, when I was about level 8 or so. My sister showed me how to get it and helped me set up a /chicken macro to spam. I still have that macro in Tawyn’s macro list. The Westfall Chicken followed me everywhere until one day I found an adorable Mechanical Squirrel on the Auction House for a whopping 40 silver. I spent all my cash on it. I was broke but happy. My boyfriend thought I was nuts for spending that kinda money on a pet.

Then came the Children’s Week Quests and you had the option of getting one of three minipets, or five gold. Five gold! I would be rich!

…yeah, forget that. I wanted Speedy. So off I went to all sorts of crazy far off locations at the tender level of 16 and got my turtle.

As I progressed through the game I found myself casually collecting the occasional minipet, mostly the ones that I really liked. I willfully passed up on several minipets because I wanted the ones I owned to be special. It’s sort of like that inspirational story you’ll hear sometimes, about the kid who only owned two Hot Wheels cars but didn’t want any more because he couldn’t spread the love around that much. That was sort of like me– I carefully picked the minipets I owned. Of course, there were many minipets out there that I considered to be special, so it wasn’t long before I had a whole bag dedicated to minipets anyway (now consider my quiver and my bag dedicated to random holiday junk and “toys”, and you will know where my constant bagspace issues came from.)

At level 70 I sort of gained a reputation among my instancing/raiding circle as being That-Hunter-With-The-Minipets. Other people would have one or two minipets that they could bring out to show, me, I had a Random Minipet button on my action bars that I would hit every five minutes so I would cycle through several different ones throughout the course of your average Heroic. More than one person asked me “How many of those do you have anyway?” or /boggled at the fact that everytime they looked at me, I had a different minipet out. I was different that way, and unique, because I was that willing to give up my bagspace for them. But I was never a collector so much as just a fan.

And then Patch 3.0 and Achievements came out. Minipets became summonable, and fashionable. Even though it sort of bugged me on a minor level that now everybody could and likely would become a minipet junkie, on the other hand the idea of actually having bag space again made me so ecstatic that any potential sadness caused by a loss-of-uniqueness was nullified. It was also about that time that I realized “Hey… I’d might as well go pick up all those minipets that I passed up on before.”

So off I went, gathering up all the faction-specific minipets that I didn’t have and any of the other easily-obtainable ones, and after getting the Batling I took a look at my collection and realized hey– I have 40 minipets. Without even really trying.

Then I realized that when you get 50 minipets, they not only send you an adorable skunk in the mail, but you also get an achievement that includes wording which is suspiciously similar to my current place of employment. The irony, I could taste it. That achievement? Tawyn needs it.

So she spent the last three days living in Wetlands. It was worth it for #41 here:

Three more dragon whelplings and days of endless farming to go! Hey, it’s the week before the expansion, what else do ya expect me to do? =P

Do you guys have any thoughts or stories on minipets? Or other comments or questions? Share the comment love!

screenshots

/strut

12 Comments

My first group was a pretty terrible PuG ten-man that was literally wiping on the ghost horse trash (I blame the Boomkin’s tragic addiction to AoE), and I just barely managed to get out in time– I was disconnected, logged in and found myself outside the building while the rest of the group was working on Attumen. Hastily I left the group before I was saved, and then about a half hour later went back in with four of my trusty pals and a T6 priest and we demolished the place.

…even if I died on Mirkblood. Don’t tell anyone.

Passed up on the axe and gave it to our tank instead. He deserved it. /nods