Norrathian Travels (EQ)

Since starting on the new Agnarr server, we also decided to make a couple of alts on our home server. I suppose those alts on Agnarr will have to wait a while for us to get back to them, while the server is nice, the players there for Krono really seem to be taking a toll on the nostalgic feeling of the server economy. I am hoping they wade back to the waters they came from, sooner than later. Not the biggest reason not to play there full time but time restraints kick in and sometimes it is easier to log into the home server with all the comforts of modern EQ.

Memory Lane (WoW)

Off to Duskwood! Some shots of my travels on the rogue alt, down memory land... sort of. Lots has changed in Azeroth but much still stays the same, in a way. 

Warlords! (WoW)

Warlords is finally here. I've been too busy enjoying it to sit down and write in my free time. I have to say Blizzard hit this one out of the park with Warlords of Draenor. I have seen so much good feedback, long gone friends returning, even our guild roster is bursting at the seams with returning players. What's so great about Warlords?

Play Log: Wildstar, WoW, GW2

I just love my house in Wildstar :)

So, I missed the last day for Vanguard. Real life interfered. I felt so bad! I am glad that I did log in and get a chance to take some last screens, my only regret is not getting to take pictures of all the players saying good bye. Nobody was anywhere to be seen days before. I will always have a lot of nice memories of the game. Many wishes of what could have been. It will surely be missed.

I have about a week of playtime left on Wildstar. So far I've played my stalker up to 22 and made a new warrior on the Dominion to 17. I wanted to check out the other faction's city, see how things were over there. Overall I think the questing is simply smoother and a far more enjoyable experience overall. Then again had I picked a different starting area for my Exile I might have enjoyed it more. I have to say I lean towards the Exile simply because that's where the population is.

Wildstar Visual Level Guide

Very handy little bits of info here, original post and info found on the forums all credit goes- here. 

Enjoying Middle Earth

I absolutely love this shot, my current desktop :)

I've been meaning to write more about our adventures in LoTRO, today I've finally had a chance to sit down to do so. We're still playing and really having a great time. Lots has changed since I last played, many years ago. It was easy for Dire to jump in and get to know the game, there is still so much I have forgotten or am still learning but it has been fantastic.

This time around I actually purchased a house! Money seems easier to make and I read it is even easier the higher level you are. That and the hobbit presents help (a daily claim), which sometimes you can get a pile of coins which sells for a little bit, which is very nice for starting out! It isn't a lot but at that level it surely feels like it. But yeah, my house... The house is small but there is a chest to store items and you can eventually upgrade, which I plan on doing soon (well, buy a bigger one). I was so excited to ride around the neighborhood and pick one out. I picked a house close to Bree, was a toss up between those and the elven style. I've always wanted one close to Bree though. That was a milestone for me, I have always wanted a house in LoTRO! I can die happily now ;)

Leveling is even smoother than I remember but I also know a few areas I skipped past because they really grated on my nerves in previous plays. For the most part it has been really enjoyable. I love the Bree area, once we got to the Lone Lands I missed the trees and lush areas surrounding Bree. It has been laid back leveling in the next area though, so I can't complain.

We've done a few skirmishes, they are not bad at all with two people in their 20's. We've wanted to do actual instances and tried to duo one, which we got to the last boss and couldn't pull it off. However, it was fantastic XP at least. Maybe once we get some more levels!

The classes have changed a lot since I last played. There are some interesting skill trees and you can initially have two specs and change on the fly. Many of the classes are much stronger than they were previously, but I find it refreshing as I remember dying a LOT last time I played. I even managed to get the Undying title this time! Which is from getting 1-20 without a death. Dire got to a smidgen away from 20, decided to tackle some harder mobs and barely missed it, he wasn't too happy about that.

Currently we're both playing loremasters. I also have a Captain on the side leveling slowly. I enjoy them both. The captain feels more like a classic paladin type class and sometimes it is nice to just be melee, smacking my weapon in faces. I love all the pets with the loremaster though, and then sometimes it is nice to send the pet in and not get your hands dirty. For now the LM is the main, it was a hard choice!

The deed system has been great, I love working on deeds. I am also a huge fan of the wardrobe, which shares cosmetic appearances between characters. Housing is a bit less immerse as far as decorating goes but I am still glad to have it and the open neighborhoods are so quaint and charming! You really can't find many games with open neighborhoods which makes them have a special feeling.

We're slowly climbing our way in levels. Having a great time exploring and doing as many deeds as we can. That's it for today, sharing a slew of screenshots!

A pleasant surprise to see a group of players preforming in the crafting hall as I entered. 

A cozy little house outside town.

Looking for a good place to go fishing.

Surrounded by flowers.

The housing tools for decoration. 

Fishing with my captain.

Dire working on his jewel craft. 

Some players preforming outside The Prancing Pony

Questing in the swamp.

On my way back to town I stumbled across this lovely area. 

Enjoying a rainy ride through the field.

My little bear pet :)

Level 20 LM pet, he's awesome!

Interior of my house. 

Going though a dungeon with Dire.

I don't think he likes my colorful outfit...

Doing our first skirmish. 

Heading to The Shire. 

Home sweet home!

Four Years, Time Flies!

Last month marked four years for this blog, yay! I've been wanting to do a post but I don't really have anything different/ meaningful to say about it, lol. I appreciate the readers who do stick around and visit. I definitely always appreciate it when people take the time out of their busy days to comment, I know how hard it can be to keep up and take the time to do so! So thank you, thanks for even poking in here and reading my rambles! This summer also makes 13 years since I first 'virtually' stepped into my first MMO, EverQuest.

What has four years brought? Well, this entry will make 1,157 posts. The fact that I've stuck with it still baffles me. I am very proud that I have, still there are times I feel I can't keep up, that maybe I should quit- I just try to do what I can; because in the end I love it. I love reading, writing, playing and sharing games and the things that happen in these wonderful online worlds! Plus, who'd I show all my screenshots to?!!

Since my first few posts, what has changed or stayed the same? I still have a love hate relationship with WoW. I love the game, hate the constant changes to classes and how things work in general. I honestly do love the game. It is fluid, polished and easy to get into. I found a great love for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, though I can never seem to get to the cap, one day I plan on changing that! I sometimes eat my words, especially as with Guild Wars 2, which I am enjoying once again. Sometimes you have to take things for what they are to enjoy them! I always find myself missing EverQuest, when things felt more simple, I just wish combat didn't cause me to get so sleepy... How the years have changed things!

Recently I had someone ask my what I did in WoW if I didn't raid. My raiding days were long over before this blog. I did raid through WoTLK, which was actually fun, but my days of sitting there tied to a raid are long over. Truly. I have no desire for that these days. What do I do? Professions, exploring for treasures, may it be achievements, mounts, rares. I do daily quests, pet battles and just putter around. I've found I am very casual anymore, I enjoy it. I like to excel and work with other people, I just can't sit still for too long, lol. My poor heart took enough stress from the days of EverQuest. I like it laid back now.

Anyhow, a few new things this week. Patch 5.4, we've had more of a taste of the isle in WoW. I really can't complain about the isle, it gives us something else to do. I think I will also do LFR with the new raid, SoO. I'm gearing up my alts, which has been pure bliss to someone who just likes to play and explore instead of raiding much (besides LFR). The isle is over crowded, you can't always tag a rare in time (um, most the time), and the rares have diminishing returns on loot (less each time). But I still have to say I enjoy something else to do. The isle has been fun, mindless in some ways, but good ways. I've been able to gear up my warlock and hunter and enjoy playing them. I'm finally able to take a break on the druid without having to spend loads of time getting back into my alts. The warlock is taking the lead, it is still awesome, even with all the changes that came to the class in 5.4, I do miss many things still. Grrr.



GW2 has another chapter of the living story out- Tequatl Rising. A big, meanie dragon. Really, it is mean. To the point where I was pretty let down. Finally I get high enough to try some higher level content and our server cannot take down this boss! That, the horrible AE crud all over and the fish heads, which instant kill you. Yes, fish heads. Exactly what they sound like, giant fish heads that kill you instantly if you run over one. Lovely. I was a bit underwhelmed at this event, but there are other things to do. If it were my main game I'd probably be more annoyed. So, we'll see how it goes doing the weekly for the cosmetic wings. I need to get going with that. I got to see a dragon. Cool? Cool screenshots I suppose.

Mostly I've been playing WoW, soaking up the new isle and working on my lock. Dire and Nelf (my son), have been playing a lot with me and it has really been fun. I enjoy that. What happened to FFXIV? I just got sidetracked, RL got very busy. Things with the house still, family visiting from out of state and so on. So a new game that requires more time really fell off the table. I need to log in and just get back into it! I managed to log into Vanguard and putter on my pally, because sometimes I just HAVE to have my old-school MMO fix. None of this dodging crap, none of those bright circles and silly things on the ground which require lightning reflexes. It was nice. I managed to get my paladin a level, woo.

That is it for this week. Thanks for visiting, as always!

Monk Love

In my last post I spoke about retiring my lock, however things are looking up for the class in 5.4. The KJC nerf/changes are looking less severe, allowing us to still move and cast certain spells without a movement penalty, while remaining a passive ability. I am glad Blizzard is taking community feedback into consideration with these changes. The class really is in a good place and has a unique feel. In all of my years of playing, this class has never been so much fun, this was also my first class in WoW back in 2004. I don't think I'll be playing her as my main but I'll still putter around with her.

I also spoke about switching over to my hunter to focus on, but... I really am not enjoying it as much these days. I gave it a go, just wasn't feeling it. The class is fun but the pets seem so buggy and not as well designed as lock pets. I mean hunter pets don't even taunt in old raids, which sows there is clearly a different design with the pets from both classes. Maybe I imagine things but the pet doesn't seem to snap aggro like a warlock pet, even as a BM hunter with a tank pet. I constantly have to kite and feign death because the pet still bugs out, getting behind the mob when tanking, running across the screen as if in a dance with it, aggroing everything as far as the eye can see. Still, after so many years, this bug seems worse than ever. I am wondering if it is even worse because of the changes to blinkstrike? So, I have decided to put the hunter on the shelf for now.

Which left me with a few options, suck it up and play my druid as a main. Painfully stick with balance as a dps spec while I gear up resto and enjoy healing in raids and group content. Quit.... That was a strong consideration at one point. Or pick up a lower alt and level another to 90.

For now I am playing on my baby monk which I took a break from when my brothers came back to the game. One brother doesn't play much these days and the other is busy with his own things, which leaves me more bored than I've been in a long time. The only downside is that once I get rolling with an alt I don't want to mess with any other characters, so when Dire asks me to join LFR, I have to refuse so I can get this new character where IT can run LFR, lol.

So, yeah, back to the monk. How to describe the monk? I wonder why the hell I've been wasting my time with my other characters. Kicking myself, repeatedly. I leveled as brewmaster (tank) and windwalker (dps), for a bit, neither really were what I was looking for. Finally, after watching my son (a few months ago) level his monk as mistweaver, I decided to give that a shot. I can quest, do daily quests, heal, all of that in ONE SPEC. I get a bonus from my healing to attack power, how awesome is that?! Why can't all healers just have this type of playstyle? I love the mistweaver!

Someone mentioned to me recently that the class was much harder to heal than a druid, when I mentioned what my main was. I think the class may have a higher learning curve with many things but I find it fits me like a glove. I don't feel it is hard to heal with at all. The only time people really die is if they get stupid. We'll talk about that in a moment. The spec has a great range of healing tools and really is a fun change of pace. Often I find myself at least third on damage. Yeah, I go around beating on things and keeping my group alive. This I do to balance my Mana Tea incase I need it, and also because it is fun. The class reminds me of the disciple from vanguard SoH, a lot. Healing is always my main focus but it is a real refreshing change. Plus, with spinning crane kick, I get to heal and aoe, awesome! Spinning crane kick is a must when you have stupid tanks pulling like they are trying to kill the group.

Which leads me back to my point on dying. It really is hard to let someone die. Tanks like to run off way ahead while I'm looting, or topping off with a Mana Tea, or if I take a sip of coffee, scratch my leg, breathe... Which really can be irritating. LETS PULL THE WHOLE ROOM. I don't mind that much but it makes things really rushed as they run off before the mobs are even dead.  A few times, I've decided to take my time, actually loot mobs, see if the tanks would kill themselves. Indeed they do, some have ran off to bosses and died before the group had gotten there. Then I hear how we're all going to die and it is my fault... Blah, blah. Lol, nah.

You see, you need me far more than I need you. At this level and scaling, I could keep any dps up as a tank, it is just nicer to have mobs not bouncing all over. They come back to life with a new attitude, actually bringing mobs back to me, and even asking me to queue up again. But I can't do this on every run, I'm not here to school tanks on proper manners an courtesy. Most groups I don't even bother, I just blow through it soaking up all the xp I can to push me closer to my goal. I just would like tanks, because it is always, always tank, in these dungeons leveling, to learn try (as they are in heirlooms, they know what they are doing) to work as a group. Oh, how the times have changed.

Yes, I really love the monk class. It suits me so well. I wish I had been playing it a long time ago. The class really starts to shine in the 50's. Until then it might seem a bit lackluster. I have had many compliments on my healing, it really is hard to kill a group when you have a competent monk healing. I cannot wait to have my hand at heroics and raids. While things will be different in those settings, I always like to push the bar to see what I can pull off with my healers.

I've been chugging along, doing far more instances than one would ever want to do, due to how much xp they give, much quicker than questing alone. I'll get to 90 soon enough. I picked her up at 45 and now she is sitting at 66, not too shabby!

I don't think I've ever seen this model until I did this quest. Aspect of Deathwing, kind of creepy! I always knew he had a human form, read one of the books about it, just never seen it in game.

Another quest, with a flying motorcycle and where I got to pick the hottest 'chick' to ride in it. Naturally the choice was a BE male.... ha!

A dragonling from a quest chain, kind of sad storyline, works as a trinket. 

'Brewmaster' Cupcake The Monk!

Catching Up

My boy is all grown up and 90, look he's already taller than me, lol. 

*Waves* o/ I suppose if you'd rather play than write, you must be enjoying the game. I'll be moved in two weeks and I should be packing, it is a slow painful process with me, heh. I'm trying to get it ramped up so I don't have tons to do at the very last moment, so that is the reason for the lack of posting, as I mentioned in a previous post, that and I just rather play than write sometimes! I did have a friend ask if I was alright, since I hadn't posted in awhile, which was nice to see someone was missing my posts :)

I have been purely playing WoW in my free time. One of my brothers has come back, he's been thinking about it for some time, his account was hacked about three years ago and I talked him into getting some assistance with it so I could use a SoR to help him get back into things. Blizzard really helped him a lot with it after several conversations, so he is pretty happy now. I suppose he got five free levels in the process with the Scroll of Resurrection. It is nice to see him playing again, but then his computer broke down and ate up a little free time, but he should be back on by the weekend.

My son is also playing again, yay! He hit 90 with his shaman, and I hit 90 with my druid (finally)- yesterday. We did a scenario straight away to get us some blue weapons from the quested one- Arena of Annihilation and he's wanting to gear up and do some LFR stuff so I might just take one of my characters along with him when he does.

As a welcome back to the game I ran my brother through a few old raids to get him the achievements and some transmog gear, he had a blast seeing them again. He raided in AQ when it was current and MC so he had a lot of fond memories. I also took him and my son through the Black Temple which was fun. My brother really likes things like that, much like me, so it was really great for him.

Yesterday my son and I decided to run the Black Temple on our fresh 90's, while what we were there for didn't exactly drop, we did get some cool transmog stuff. He probably carried me through it this time, lol. I did throw out lots of healing, which was cool to be able to do. My druid isn't as tough as my warlock, she runs out of mana a lot faster on AoE and she cannot cast while being flung all over.

I did briefly go feral while leveling, and I truly hated it. And while I'm speaking of leveling, I hold a personal grudge against the person who designed the Dread Wastes, I hated leveling there this time, lol. Hated, hated, hated it! I used to be feral with her but it just didn't mesh with me this time around. Balance isn't perfect either, I hate the lunar and solar eclipse junk. I really think the mechanics are too clunky and annoying, that is probably because I've played the class for so long, since the vanilla days and while it wasn't nearly as strong in many areas as it is now, it didn't feel so..... clunky. I just don't feel the design of the balance spec was a direction it needed. I still like the class, I like the spec better than the others, simply because I want to be ranged dps with her. It is nice to be able to glyph to throw out heals while in my form as well, that was a great addition. Maybe the warlock just spoiled me! I do like the Druid for being able to be balance and have some support in things like scenarios, that is just awesome, so it is hard to decide who to play with others.

My brother and I hanging out in Ironforge, lol.

Other than that, I made a monk. The monk is great! I recommend going brewmaster until 30 or 40, then it gets easier if you want to go windwalker. I really like the class a lot more than I thought I would. I made it to 44 then parked her to wait on Dire to catch up his new little pally alt. She's been waiting a few days now and I'm itching to play her some more. Oh, and my hode main has migrated to the Alliance, since the guys prefer playing alliance. It is weird seeing my scrawny little Blood Elf as a chunky-monkey Human, I'll get used to it I suppose.

It is nice seeing family online, in vanilla we all played together a lot, BC we played together a fair amount, WoTLK we briefly played together. I am the one who stuck with the game, even taking breaks I always return. My other brother will be playing soon too, he is buying a new account and starting over with his girlfriend, I'm looking forward to when everyone is playing again! I have transmog runs already being requested, good times XD

He asked a GM to kill him, after much.. erm... persistence he finally was granted his wish, lol. 

Speaking of transmog, I finally (FINALLY) had my head item drop from the Black Temple- Cowl of Benevolence. I love it. I do need a robe that matches it a little better, I need to look around and see what I can find, I'll check out and scour MogIt (the best transmog addon out there!).

That's it for today, have a great weekend I'm sure I'll be posting a bit more next week because I feel so lazy when I'm not posting! There will be a little bit of silence due to the move but that should be short lived. Safe adventures!

My Druid on her way to the Klaxxie, I love their story, they are pretty bad-ass.

Doing a world boss, thought this was a neat shot while we waited!

A raiding with leashes pet dropped, I let my brother have it, he was very, very happy. I need to go back and get me one too!

Illidan has us frozen in place, lol.

My druid's current transmog, I need the head (mask) item off Illidan but for now this will do, I love the shoulders.