My Week(s) in Pictures

So I've been dabbling in various aspects of the game over the past few weeks. My obsession with Pet Battles has dwindled to a healthy "Oh that's a nice break" rather than the mega "I must tame them all!" mantra. I can get a little manic when it comes to this game, and I was pretty into the whole pet battle thing -- so much so I burned myself out.

Enter the "it's a new fiscal year and my IT department has money again" in January and work has been nice and busy lately. The double combination of faffing in game and not having much game time has made for some interesting sessions.

Consider my paladin questing in Townlong, and I'm told:

How does it KNOW?

Luckily, my skin's a bit on the thick side, so I was able to shrug that one off. Not too long after, I got my dynamic duo 'chiever:

Ta Da!

Now that the pally was at 90, it was time to experiment with some solo raiding. I have gotten out the the grind for mounts, and I've started clearing Kara again in hopes that the horse drops. No such luck.  After running a few scenarios and getting some halfway decent blue drops (and getting rid of my mostly quest greens), I've been able to solo AQ and not get stuck at the Twin Emperors. I tell ya, that was a heavy feeling of impotence to not be able to pass those two.  But now, I've gained exalted rep with AQ and picked up a nice set of flying purple people eater mail mogs, as well as gotten lucky in AQ with each of the pets needed for Raiding With Leashes.

Same with Molten Core, though I *still* need to slog that one out for rep for a few more months thanks to the brilliant decision to only award rep from boss kills!  Ugh! But, that and Black Wing Lair have been generous with pet drops, and all I've got left is Naxx. And the bosses in Naxx are not being pet friendly with me.  I need all Naxx pets.  /sigh

Speaking of Naxx.... It's a bit irrelevant, but it's still an achievement:

Only 2 Expansions Late!

The funny thing was no matter how I tried, the only way I could get Shocking! was by soloing and not having anyone else there to muck it up.  Hmmmm. =)

Then, I figured let's actually do some new - current - content.  So I checked in with the Shieldwall and started that. All I can say is "Whoa!" I'm liking the story line bunches and I'm looking forward to getting in and doing the dailies (in my case the bi-dailies) to advance the story line.  I had seen Navi mention about this cool achievement from the Shieldwall (once I actually got caught up in some blog reading, but that's a different story) so I had to try my hand.  I got lucky, and on my second day I got my Dudes achievement!

The Achievement Name is cooler than the Achievement itself

I'm currently swapping back and forth between my Alliance Warlock and my Horde Druid to see which one will get the 3rd and 4th level 90 achievements on my account. After playing primarily Alliance characters, the Jade Forest from the Horde side is pretty cool. Plus, those ookin' Hozen make me laugh with the stuff they say.  As I was exploring the clickies in a base, for example, I uncovered this literary gem:

Those ookin' Monkeys can pen a hai-ku!

Oh, and the inn-keeper at the hozen staging area?  He's called a Hozen Bed-Haver.   Epic!

Dead Guy Ale

I expect every forsaken rogue to be drinking this...  Thank you.

Sold in the Undercity and your local Kroger too

Lost!

You ever get that feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? The Game knew more that I did when I logged in.  See, I felt normal, but apparently I was in the wrong zone. So it told me so.

Wrong place, Wrong time!

Uhh... Ok! What zone should I be in?

Ding 90!

I'll preface this with a nod to truth written by Chuck Palahniuk in Fight Club:

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.

In other words, I know I'm not the first, nor will I be the last. Despite that knowledge I'm chuffed to say... "Ding!"

Yippe kai-yay, Mother Clucker!

I'm very happy to finally ding 90. It took me much longer than I would have imagined. In both Wrath and Cataclysm, I was not a server-first kinda guy, but I was still max level PDQ. In MoP, I totally got sidetracked in the leveling process. First, it was a case of the "lookits",  Look-it that!  Look-it this!

Next, duh duh DUH.. Pet Battles.  I did not get an iota of leveling or questing done while the frenzy of pet battles was upon my brain. So damn addictive.  So damn fun!

Finally, quests.  I love what Blizzard has done with the quests in MoP. I can pop about like a cracked up bunny rabbit should I so choose, and in fact I did, which resulted in several un-finished quest lines. Again, this was a case of the "lookits".  Each subsequent quest line looked so cool I just had to get there.

Now that I'm 90?  It sure isn't gonna get any easier.  So many blue question marks! Cooking... reputation farming, some poser prince that claims to be Deathwing's kid... All very interesting and totally distracting.

What to do next?

Too many rares!

So I'm merrily gallivanting around Stranglethorn Vale leveling up my team to take on the next Pet Tamer when I see this:

One Blue Too Many!

Two rares in a single pet battle! Ugh! I waded through how many crappy gray pets to finally score a rare, and then I have to waste one of 'em?  I really loathe the ability to only trap one pet per battle.

I have to admit: I cried a bit while killing the rare water snake. But, I got over it quickly!

Color coded pets brought to you by Pet Battle Quality Glow.

Tuesday Highlight

So far... hell yeah! Very much digging Mists!

I've rolled a Pandaren Monk called Foomanchoo, and I'm loving the starting area and the quests. I thought it was really cool when I learned how to Roll! Stop and consider that -- a pudgy character learning to roll! Too great!

So here I am rolling through the newbie area and I get a quest to burn some scrolls.  Maybe they gave bad advice or somehing?

I was floored by the 'wisdom' contained in my first scroll.

#Truth

Where's my monkey pet?!?

Illidan was right: I'm not prepared

and so it begins...

Patch 4.3.4 ...

and I had all these grand plans, absolutely none of which got done.

Life Lessons from Questing

Mor'norokk speaks Truth

Rule to Live By

Stop it, you tiny angry woman! I'll tell you everything! What do you want to know?

Enough said. Following this truth makes my life much simpler. I have to believe I'm at least as smart as an ogre, right!

Crazy %$#^ You Only See in WoW

Druid Porn?

Ok, so I wanna know what was going on in the minds of the devs when they designed Mount Hyjal. This may be seen in the Grove of Aessina. I've run 6 different characters through here (and saved the poor fawns each time), but I just noticed this the other night. /boggle

Not to be obvious, but they could have chosen different flora for the ground cover, couldn't they?
I'll spare you the picture, but from behind this poor tree has a large vertical crack at it's base. /speechless