A typical start to the expansion

It was a typical start to an expansion for me, meaning after the first two quests off the boat, I was leveling fishing, herbalism, alchemy, cooking, tilling, and archaeology.

Then something very very bad happened. I met someone very dangerous. The introduction went like this:

Blizzard: Hi K, this is pet battles... pet battles, this is K.
Pet Battles: Hai K! /cue cute critter wave
K: ZOMG I am done for. Just done for.

I can not even express the danger that is pet battles. But let me try with the following jumbled list of suggestions and random thoughts and observations.

1. It is random whether a pet you catch will turn out to be a poor, common, uncommon, or rare quality pet. I think I caught a fawn 3 times and it ended up being poor twice and rare once. So even if you've caught a pet, I would try catching more if you want to try to get a higher quality pet.

2. Try to level your 3 pets together. At one point I had two pets that were level 6 and 7 and my third was level 1. The poor level 1 got his ass handed to him when I got into a bit of trouble and my level 6 and 7 pet died. It was ugly.

3. Consider leveling more than your 3 pets together. In preparation for No Favorites as well as having a team pets to switch in and out depending on the zone and type of pets I expect to encounter, I am leveling more than 3 pets at once. I figure while I'm in the starter zones, I might as well do it now. So I think I currently have maybe 6 or 7 pets in the level 5-7 range.

I don't think you need to level all 10 types of pets from 1 because for this achievement you can catch a level 9 pet, level it to 10 and have it count. But I like the variety in knowing I have 6 or 7 classes of pets to swap in and out.

4. Speaking of achievements, be afraid. Be very afraid. As an achievement addict, the achieves to catch every pet on the continents just make me twitch. For example, Kalimdor Safari requires something like 90 pets to be captured. And that's just Kalimdor. Are you twitching as well?

5. This could be a serious threat to raiding. At one point last night the four of us guildies that were online were all pet battling. No questing, no doing the dungeons, no leveling up professions, but pet battling.

6. You will start thinking of cute little critters like bosses. So we were on vent last night and it was funny to hear the commentary as each of us went up against critters that we used to think of as just cute little critters. There was boasting, there was swearing, there was crying after losses and celebration after wins. If you didn't know any better, you'd think you were hearing us fight some dungeon or raid boss.

(And can I just say its total bullshit when you think you're going to fight one pet then it turns out to be two? Bullshit!)

7. Don't forget that your pets don't have to die to swap another pet in. So my pet Sebastian (my Magical Crawdad pet who I've always called Seb after the crab in the Little Mermaid) has a healing ability called Renewing Mists that looks like it persists for 5 rounds. My other pets have damage abilities that stack for a couple rounds as well. So play around with swapping pets in and out to take advantage of all abilities that stack through subsequent rounds.

8. Use the resources that have already been compiled. Two from Wowhead are helpful. The pet database lists every pet, showing images, stats, abilities, and location. Their map allows you to see all the pets that are in a particular zone.

9. As Lorosia mentioned in the comments, some addons to help you! Pet Journal Enchanced which helps you sort and filter your pets, Battle Pet Count which shows you the quality of battle pets you already own of that species, Pet Battle Teams which allows you to save up to 60 team pet combinations.

Anyways, here is Mini K:



Apparently I'm not the only one using a tree. My ever loving and supportive holy pally guildie Lorosia shared a while ago that he would use a tree pet to battle as well. Why? Because it would be the only time that he could tell a tree what to do and the tree would listen.

Anyways. Eventually I tore myself away from pet battles and when Jess logged, we did what has been tradition for several expansions now and did some quests together. Though it was a bit nontypical in that I did actually help instead of herbing or fishing on the side, the vent conversation was typical in that I said things like "Jess!!! Five mobs are on me!" in a very irritated voice.

I am also continuing my tradition of leveling in my resto spec. And I was surprised with how much more dmg I did! This is not going to be as painful as it was in past expansions. Woot!

Ok that's enough of a jumbled post on what my first day of the expansion was like. Hope everyone is having fun!

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OMG its as if the WoW gods were listening

Just got word that my Thursday meeting at the client site got cancelled, which means it makes no sense for me to fly all the way to the east coast for one meeting. Which is a long way of saying that I am not traveling this week and will be on at MoP launch! ZOMG!

So while I am not going to be power leveling, I may still try for realm first fisher, as well as support Nikolai in any way that I can as he tries for realm first 90 priest. If Kalthan is still trying for realm first alchemist, I could also gather herbs for him as well.

Anyways, hooray! See you guys at midnight PST! :)

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A bit of a sad panda and our chore wheel

I had been planning on taking a day off next week, along with probably "working from home" one other day. However I just found out yesterday that I need to fly out to my client on the east coast on Tuesday. It'll be a semi busy week, along with the following week, and I don't get back into town until late Friday night.

Boo. I had tentative plans in my head to try for realm first fisher the night of launch. I was also going to try to take advantage of the auction house madness via a couple of professions the first couple of days as well. So I am a bit of a sad panda, but hopefully I can sneak some time in the next two weeks. Oh well.

Oh I forgot! There is good news! I bit the bullet and waltzed into Apple last weekend to purchase a brand new shiny 15 inch Macbook Pro (non-retina though). Holy crap the game looks different! I think I was almost beginning to get motion sickness. However, I'm still a little concerned about how hot its running, even post all of the patch changes. Anyone else with a Macbook Pro still running hot?

Anyways the last things I need to do this weekend pre launch is finish the quests in Ashenvale, rearrange the first tab of the guild bank, and empty out my personal bags/bank. I'm wondering if I also need to create a chore wheel of sorts for the guild.

So my senior year in college one of my more on the ball roommates created a chore wheel for the house we shared. The wheel had the various chores with an arrow that we could either spin or move forward each week. The chore wheel lived on our refrigerator to remind us what we needed to do.

I'm thinking we may to do something similar for the planning of the feasts and flasks/cauldrons since they've become a lot more complicated. While I haven't figured out the exact details of what we need, the Left Claw Chore Wheel would look something like this:

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Do you think I could ask for royalties?

Last week I was randomly looking at blog statistics when an interesting blog visitor caught my eye. Yep, from a Blizz IP address in Irvine, CA, someone was checking out this old post and even clicking on the pics to get closer looks.

If anyone sees a future helm design close to any of those Philip Treacy hats, let me know!!! And in case Blizz needs any more inspirations, some more:

Fire mage:


Warrior:


Shadow priest:


OMG look its Druid tier 8!!!


I don't know who this would be but I find this so incredibly stunning:


Since we're talking fashion, let's provide some shoe inspirations (even though you really don't see or notice shoes in the game):

Holy priest:


Warlock:


Druid:


Rogue:


Shadow priest:


The shoes are leaving behind a trail of black puffy smoke!

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Secret watermarks?

Jess sent me this link this morning that basically says that since 2008 Blizzard has been putting a secret watermark on all of our screenshots that includes our user IDs, the time the screenshot was captured and the IP address of the server we were on at the time.

We know how technologically inept I am, so this is beyond me, but it sounds crazy. Another link to a forum discussion around this.

Comments on both sites include obvious concerns around privacy and hacking.

Hmmmm. Any folks more technologically advanced than I (which would be um, all of you) have thoughts around this?

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And you wonder why I have a thing against Pallys*

I share with you today reason #672 why Paladins are complete bullshit.

Their crusader aura no longer stacks to the rest of us! Watching all the little pink dots run ahead of me in BGs makes me grrr.

Exhibit A:

K (in an AV with 3 guild pallys): What, crusader aura no longer applies to the rest of us?
Lorosia: Nope, ha ha.
K: I hate you pallys! So selfish! And yet I share with you my Mark of the Wild! I should be able to take away my buff from just the pallys.
Lorosia: That would really be painful because its not as if we have the same buff.

/sigh.

You guys might think that my reason #673 might be the current iteration of Holy Shock, but for some strange reason I find it amusing. It's kind of fun running bgs with two holy pallys and watching them do more dmg than half decent dps. I told them to enjoy it while it lasts since there has to be a nerf incoming.

*Disclaimer: My 'thing' against Paladins only applies to Paladins in my guild. I'm perfectly fine with Paladins outside my guild. I read several pally blogs that I love. But the pallys in my guild are just so good at ruffling my leaves. Oh and this 'thing' also applies to folks in my guild who used to have Paladin mains (/eyes Nico).

Additional Note: I just realized that today is the five year anniversary of this blog. Yep, my first post was on 9/4/07. I find it incredibly amusing that my five year anniversary post ended up being a post lamenting paladins. It's like it was fate!

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