blizzcon 2009: part deux!

PICTURE SPAM INC:


Sarah Kerrigan makes for a pretty badass Facebook profile picture.


Lyn, the winner of the WC3 tournament.


Yay, cosplayers!


OZZY. Too bad we were way far back. But the show was awesome. I kinda wish I was closer to the front; he was spraying the audience with a hose.


And that's my boyfriend and me. ♥

so there was this little event called blizzcon...

...and it was epic. Legendary, even.

First: this year's swag made up for its lack of quantity with quality: we got a collectible Jim Raynor Noobz (n00bz?) action figure which apparently will not be available anywhere except for Blizzcon...and, of course, eBay.


Second: Everyone and their grandmother is talking about Cataclysm so I might as well join in.


I'll be honest: When I first heard the rumors about the new expansion I thought that a lot of it sounded really stupid. Azeroth changed forever? That wasn't so bad, but the new class and race combinations sounded a little off to me. Troll druids? Night elf mages? Holy cows? (I'm sure that joke is very original and has never been used at all before this moment. You saw it here first!) And the addition of goblins and worgen made me /eyeroll. BUT THEN. Then they announced it at BlizzCon and let me just say this, Blizzard is REALLY good at selling stuff. Seriously. Halfway through the gameplay trailer they completely had me.



We got to try out the starting areas for the two new races.

SPOILERS, OKAY?: When you load in as a worgen, your character is stuck in a pillory. You're in this gloomy, foggy village that feels vaguely like the setting of a horror movie, and are currently under siege by the Forsaken. Worgen get a sprint on a three-minute cooldown and can turn into a human form (for cosmetic purposes only, since you pop right back into worgen form when you get into combat).

When you load into the goblin starting zone, you're floating unconscious on a raft while a doctor tries to jumper-cable your ass back into the world of the living. The zone is the polar opposite of the worgen zone: it's colorful, lush, and tropical and it feels like you should be knocking back a couple of mai tais here instead of rescuing your comrades from the wreckage of your ship.

I want my Alliance puppy dog, but man goblin racials are sick. Anything that allows you to shoot rockets at people or rocket jump is nothing short of amazing. (So this means that all the current races are going to get improved racials, right? Please? I would like to stop being scoffed at for rolling a blood elf instead of an undead priest!)

The costume contest was amazing, as always. There were some really awesome ones this year. I do believe that Ms. First Place, the Diablo Mistress of Pain, was well deserved. I drool over that costume so. Much.

I like to think about what I would cosplay as when I go to BlizzCon, but because I procrastinate/am always broke I never actually come up with anything. But next year, I would REALLY love to go as this beauty:


I am still trying to collect my thoughts, which are jumping all over the place...so! More on BlizzCon later!

ding x2!

FINALLY! My mage hit 80 yesterday!


Amazingly I had enough gold just from questing, so I sprang for a dual spec: 0/51/20 fire for PvE (with Frostfire Bolt as my main nuke) and the cookie-cutter 20/0/51 frost for PvP. At the moment my gear is pretty craptacular (lol quest greens), so it's off to grind heroics for me. Once my gear is better, I may even try out arcane. That talent tree has always fascinated me.

Also, Mirror Image might be the strangest spell ever. Not saying it's not cool, it's just really...weird...seeing copies of me running around. And whenever they die I jump a little, just because the female undead death rattle is very jarring, and hearing it times three...well, maybe I just need to turn the volume down a little.


ALSO! Midsummer Fire Festival! It took a couple of days of running around with my boyfriend's warlock, but we both got the Flame Keeper achievement. Easy, and no dependence on random drops or having to log in every hour. Nice!


Then I went on a title grabbing spree.


Working on "of Undercity" next.


Took me freaking long enough!

Next: Arena! Specifically, 2v2s! Specifically, 2v2s with a rogue! Hint: It's pretty fun. ♥ Penance.

blizzcon 2009

I am going once again due to my boyfriend's epic browser-refreshing skillz!

See you guys there!

on mage leveling

Before I get to the topic at hand, allow me to squee just a little bit - a couple of weeks ago, I took my priest to Naxx10 again (run by my friends) and, well, let's just say I got geared up the heezy:

• [Agonal Sash]
• [Heroes' Leggings of Faith]
• And finally, the item I had been drooling over for a while: [Heroes' Shoulderpads of Faith]

Oh man, gentle reader (yes, the one of you that is out there!) you have no idea how long I have wanted my glowy angel wings. And now I have them! (Although I did not realize that the particle effect would look kind of funny from behind, but oh well.)

/end squee

And now: after months of procrastinating (actually, I prefer to think of it as a "vacation" of sorts), I have finally decided to level my first character, Adenine. But not as frost.

...Wait, what?

YES, that's right, she is fire now. She has never been a fire mage. I knew nothing about fire mages. Turns out, it's not as scary as I anticipated.

But before I could set foot in Northrend, I had to do something of the utmost importance:


New haircut FTW! Now moving on...

I read Ekye's mage guide on the Ensidia website (link is over there to the right somewhere). Excellent guide. I decided to go with his 0/51/20 build, for the fact that I will eventually be wanting to use the ever-so-sexy [Frostfire Bolt] as my main nuke (also includes the glyphs he recommended for MAXIMUM DEEPS).

Now, a few observations: one, I forgot how much effin fun it was nuking the shit out of things. (I guess leveling as a holy priest does that to you.)

Two: FIRE - HOLY CRAP WHY DID I NEVER TRY THIS BEFORE?! Seriously. Wow. I love frost, always have, always will...but damn have I been missing out.

Three: I did not anticipate how squishy I would be. Or how quickly I would run out of mana. Hurm. Must remember to investigate further.

Four: Jame's Horde Leveling Guide - okay, not really an observation, but I'm pretty sure that if I tried to level without it I would take much too long (most of the time spent leveling Illythia went something like: *runs around for twenty minutes* "Hurrrrr where's the next quest hub guise?"). As of tonight, Adenine is 72 (I started leveling her about two days ago). My goal right now is to get to 80 as quickly as possible, and this efficient little guide is working quite well for that.

Next post: Old school raiding, and Children's Week!

naxxramas = death

I went to Naxx10 for the first time last week.

First time as in, ever. I hadn't even been to Naxx back when it was still a 40-man. So I was pretty nervous, but it was nice that I actually knew people in it. The run was organized by a RL friend and main-tanked by my boyfriend on his warrior; another of our RL friends came along on his tree druid for leet heals.

When I first came in, we were going to kill Heigan the Unclean, which apparently requires you to know the safety dance. I did not know the safety dance, so even though I did my best to follow my friend the tree druid around the room, this happened:


Ouch. Well, on to the next boss, then!

Next was Patchwerk. From him, I scored the [Drape of Surgery].

Grobbulus was kinda fun. He dropped [Handgrips of Turmoil].

Gluth was uneventful.

But then there was Thaddius...

Fight seems simple enough, right? Depending on the charge of the debuff you get, you run to the left or right side of the platform. Except, well...lag strikes again:

Illythia receives loot: [Ouch]x2.

Wait, there was something else:

Illythia receives loot: [Cowl of Sheet Lightning].

Yay! On to Sapphiron!

The way he spawns is just too cool.


The way he pwned my face, however, was not:


Apparently I did not stand behind that iceblock correctly.

Kel'Thuzad took some time, but we eventually got him to die. Let me just say this - the first phase of that fight is probably the most annoying thing ever. I mean, what is he thinking? "Hey, maybe if I make some random skeletons and abominations attack these adventurers ONE AT A TIME they will grow weary and leave me alone!" You have a whole room of those guys, KT. Not that I don't appreciate you making it easier for us, but if you really wanted us dead, why don't you just, you know...send them all in at the same time?

So, a few things I need to work on from My First Time in Naxx10:

1. Mana conservation
2. Not dying
3. Avoiding tunnel-vision

But I still had fun and I hope I get another chance to go. It's definitely much more fun when you're running it with at least a few of your friends.

After the run was over, I wasted no time in getting my shiny new gear gemmed and enchanted with these pretties:

• [Sparkling Sky Sapphire] in the gloves
• [Luminous Monarch Topaz] in the helm
• [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] for the meta socket
• [Arcanum of Blissful Mending]

I'm being a bit lazy about finding someone to do the +28 spell power to gloves, but I'll get to it.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, mining is no longer a pain to level when you have an epic mount. Hence, I have actually caught up on this profession, and can actually mine nodes that are at my level. GASP!

/flex

Last week, I logged into WoW for the first time in a while and found this sitting in my mailbox:


OMG, awesome, right? But wait, there's more:


WHAT OMG YAY!!!!11!!eleventy!!1

So one of my RL friends had just quit WoW and as a parting gift he sent my boyfriend and me 5000 gold each so we could get our epic flying mounts. I don't think I've ever sent so many OMG THANK YOUs over AIM in my life.

So, here's a big shout out to you, buddy! Thanks a bunch!

At that point, I had already been saving up some gold by questing, so I had enough left over after buying the training skill to get this bad boy:


Yes, that's an [Armored Blue Wind Rider]! And man, is it sexy.

Now that I was powered by a 280% speed increase, I felt like getting stuff done.

First! I went off to Explore Northrend (and all I got was this awesome [Tabard of the Explorer]).


Then, I thought, hell. Why not go all the way?!

And so my self-imposed quest to explore the whole world (of Warcraft, lulz, didn't see that one coming, did you?) began. It was, as expected, really slow. But it was also surprisingly quiet and uneventful. Alliance left me alone the entire time (and for that, I thank them).

Hours later, my long, arduous journey came to an end in the Blasted Lands.


Success!


Next: powerleveling professions. D: