My Kingdom for a Ram

Despite what it looks like, what with the numerous posts on the subject, I don't necessarily want to post about WoW all the time. I love the game but even I understand that this makes me seem, well, just plain hopeless. But every now and then things happen that I just need to write about. In my geeky head, it is as if mystical goings-on occur that nudge my faith in super-cosmic powers just a wee bit more. Such a thing happened this Tuesday night.

Those that read my recent ramblings on aquiring a certain purple dragon, obtained by doing many Herculean feats revolving around in-game holidays for the better part of a year (some of those occuring during actual real-life holidays and events, so I leave it up to you to decide how much I ignored my real life friends, family, and duties for virtual duties), may remember that one such holiday was Brewfest. And some of those very attentive readers may even realize that it's been a full year since the last Brewfest and that this year's festivities were upon us just a few weeks ago. Ah, but how time flies.

Trust it to real life to get in the way again, however. My Disney vacation (post still in the works; there were A LOT of pictures) intersected with the start of the holiday so there were four days lost, during which I could have consumed virtual beer as opposed to the real beer I did consume (it was tasty, to be fair). But more importantly, that was four days during which I could not fight the Brewfest boss for a miniscule chance at obtaining one, or both, of the very very very rare mounts that he drops. I was...not pleased.

I went to work at once upon my return. Last year I had seen one mount drop in 14 days and obviously lost the roll. This year: the gods were kind! I got one of the mounts on my third day of trying! It was exhilirating. And I was only the tiniest bit disappointed.

The reason the boss drops two mounts is because they are faction-aligned. One mount is designed off the Kodo mount that is exclusive to the Horde (my faction) and the other is designed off the Ram mount that is exclusive to the Alliance (the filthy enemy). Except these Brewfest mounts can be used by either faction. And well, I already have Kodos. I have many Kodos. Several colored Kodos. This does not make the drop any less sought after. I was certainly happier than a clam, but...a Kodo is not a Ram (hey, that rhymed!).

I kept going. I diligently killed the boss everyday for my daily attempt. I heard many horror stories of people having to destroy several beautiful Rams because they already had one and the item could not be traded. The days ticked down and hope was dwindling.

Tuesday, the last day, dawned and i didn't even realize it, I was so sure the festival ended the next day. With a heavy heart I arrived home that day to face my last attempt for the year. Hope was rock bottom. There was no "tomorrow is a new day" for my character. This was it.

And then, the stars aligned! The fates swirled, gushed, spun, gargled, and spit out a shiny Ram! I could barely believe it! It was EXACTLY like every cliche movie ending where the main character faces insurmountable odds and then, at the last second, evil is vanquished, the bad guy is killed, the guy catches up to the girl, the ring falls into the fire, all of it, but BETTER because I had no idea it would happen that way! It was glorious. Just...beautiful.

Loremaster Sinnh

Loremaster was an achievement that I resisted for a long time. It just sounded like the most time-consuming achievement that would end up requiring a lot of grinding and running back and forth. What do you expect from an achievement that asks you to complete 2,705 quests? That's a pretty big number! So I always looked in awe at people sporting their Loremaster titles but I also felt bad for the poor bastards that must have spent hours and hours every day grinding out all the last quests. As you can probably guess, I ended up being no better...

Gold Tag

I was actually relatively well on my way towards the Loremaster title before I actively started working for it. I had gone through all the Northrend quests (875 of them) and picked up the Northrend Loremaster achievement as a way to earn gold for my epic flying training. With that, I was already well past the 50% mark, more or less (obviously, a lot of quests, probably 35% or so, were completed during the leveling up process).

Now I just needed to make up my mind. That extra nudge came when Blizzard released a new patch that would let you query their server in order to find out which quests you had and had not completed. Previously, there was no way to keep track, unless you had a fine memory :( and/or spent some time tracking and filtering quests on wowhead.com. But now Blizzard had released the key. Pretty soon, add-on developers integrated the server query into their programs and created a compact little tool for telling you what quests you were missing and where to find them. Suddenly going back to the level 20 through level 60 zones where I had quested nearly two years ago didn't sound so daunting. At least I knew where to go and who to see when I got there. And so I did. Others may bemoan that the achievement got easier with quest tracking and to those I say: the best part is that my title and tabard look just like yours :)

Every time I wear the tabard, my reaction is something like "oh, it's hideous...I LOVE it!"

Once I decided to get started, I heeded Rock's advice, who slapped me upside the head (metaphorically speaking) because I was going to do Outland Loremaster before doing Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms Loremaster, and that was just crazy balls because the upcoming expansion will make the current Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms Loremasters go the way of the dodo, thus it would make sense to focus on the ones that might be going away. So thank you, Rock.

THEN I settled on starting with Eastern Kingdoms, as rumor has it that it's the easier of the two old world Loremaster achievements to do. And it's true! There are a ton of quests there, much more than you'll need for the EK achievement (I didn't even step foot in the Badlands and I still got the achievement). Most of that time was spent weeping in corners in the Blackrock Spire dungeons because I was horribly lost, and coming quite close to tearing hairs out when some random quest giver sent me to those dungeons for the umpteenth time.

By the time I got EK Loremaster, I could navigate Blackrock Spire with my eyes closed. It’s all about the little victories.

It is still on my bucket list that I have to do the Fallen Hero of the Horde quest line that starts somewhere outside Stonard. I even got the achievement without doing any of that, but I hear it is quite epic. Some of the highlights I did do for EK included: the Tirion quest line in Eastern Plaguelands to save his son; the ghost Pamela quest line to bring peace to a little girl's soul and restore her dad through a pretty badass battle; the quest line to obtain the key to Scholomance, including unlocking the ghost town of Caer Darrow; and the Blackrock Spire quests that reward you with wolf pup and spider pets.

Then I moved on to Kalimdor. People weren't kidding that Kalimdor would be a pain to complete. It is quite a battle to seek out the last 30 or so quests you need to finish. It's even more maddening to spend a couple hours on a single quest only to turn it in and find out it didn't count towards the achievement (there was much swearing involved). But Kalimdor does have some of my all-time favorite zones: Winterspring, Un'Goro Crater, Azshara, and the Shimmering Flats in Thousand Needles.

I love that the majority of the Un'Goro quests are a love letter to Nintendo: there's the quest to kill the gorillas that drop empty barrels, the quest to help “Linken” remember his identity by bringing him his Sword of Mastery, and the quest to help Larion or Muigin who reward you with a zapper to kill carnivorous plants. I also found a very out of the way quest in Azshara to help Kim’jael retrieve, among other things, his stuffed chicken and his wizzlegoober :) Wailing Caverns has a neat storyline and the quest to recover Cuergo's Gold is pretty amusing. However, hunting down five different animals in the Barrens to get items that begin quests does stick out as the most time consuming pain-in-the-rear portion of the entire Loremaster experience.

The quest line starts when you discover a sunken raft with a compass, a map, and a key.

But, with the old world zones out of the way, the rest of the trek was relatively painless. All that was left was three zones in Outland. I say that like it was just a trifle, but Netherstorm had 120 quests to complete, Shadowmoon Valley had 90, and Blade’s Edge Mountain had 86. So there was still some work to be done, but at least Outland marks the start of Blizzard's revamped quest mechanics, where quests didn't take you halfway across the world to continue or complete. Most quests are contained inside the zone and progressing through the quests is just a much better experience overall. I especially loved Shadowmoon Valley, which has the extremely long and lore-filled The Cipher of Damnation quest line. I also liked the Blade’s Edge quests to help the ogres and eventually become their queen, and the quests from the troll that got buried up to his neck and is out for revenge.

You can barely see me but there I am, right in the middle.

Finishing Loremaster in Outland really made me sad that I didn't experience end-game content during the Burning Crusade expansion as I have during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. I haven't even stepped foot inside most of the Outland dungeons, even on my alts. That's definitely something I plan to do on my death knight or my alliance shaman.

And pretty soon that was it. Loremaster, done. Add one more poor slob to the pile. To be fair, it really didn't end up being as time consuming as I thought it would be. I even got several other achievements along the way, like The Keymaster, and I maxed out my reputations with the other Horde factions and got The Ambassador. I even got The Seeker achievement (Complete 3,000 quests), which I actually completed before I got Loremaster. That seems backwards to me, but I guess I ended up doing WAY more quests than I needed to. The craziest part is that there are still a ton of quests I didn't do, so I wonder how many there actually are in the game. According to my character's statistics on the WoW Armory, I've completed 3,170 quests. Lord! 0_0 And I wonder why I don't really remember them all.

Another fun quest in Netherstorm to save Bessy the Cow...who doesn't love cows?

What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been

[Warning: EXTREMELY long WoW-related post ahead]

When achievements first came out in WoW, I looked at this achievement as something only a hardcore player would do. Not only does it take a year to achieve, it requires the player to perform a variety of tasks that range from easy to mind-numbingly repetitive to downright infuriating. AND you generally only have a week or two during which to do those tasks. AND every other player in the server is going after the same thing at the same time. For the uninitiated, WoW has in-game holidays that mirror real life holidays, such as Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, etc. For each holiday, there are holiday specific achievements and one meta-achievement (which means an achievement for completing the achievements). And there’s also What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been, which is the meta-achievement for completing all of the meta-achievements of all the holidays. There are 8 holidays that are required for What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been, and all together those meta-achievements add up to around 70 achievements. So in a nutshell, we’re talking about completing over 70 achievements throughout the year, but only during specific times of the year. WHY on earth bother to do this, you ask? The reward for completing What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been is the Violet Proto-Drake, a flying mount that flies 310% faster than the normal speed. It’s the fastest mount in the game, a step ahead of the lowly 280% mounts. So there’s that…

I didn’t have much desire to attempt this when it came out, since I was still leveling up and I had never really participated in holidays and dear god that sounded like A LOT of work. But a little less than a year later my character was finally 80 and the first holiday during which she would be 80 was coming up (coincidentally, because of the timing of when the achievements came out, this was also the holiday during which players would be able to complete their long, strange trips and get their mounts…so maybe I was slightly influenced by all the shiny new purple dragons flying around, is what I’m saying).

And so I decided to venture into what still seemed to me to be a mad endeavor. I started hesitantly at first, telling myself I was just doing the holiday achievements for fun…but as one holiday after another came around I started to notice that I was getting increasingly more and more worried about completing each holiday’s achievements. I still looked forward to the holidays coming up, but I was also FREAKING OUT during each holiday. When the last holiday finally came around, I breathed a huge sigh of relief but I was so done with stressing out that when I got my Violet Proto-Drake, it was slightly anti-climactic…I probably said “good riddance” more so than “woot!.”

Well now I get to relive my year-long accomplishments and sincerely agree with The Grateful Dead: it was a long, strange trip. In order of appearance:

Brewfest

The one that started it all, an homage to Oktoberfest, complete with beer, beer goggles, pink elephants, rowdy drunken dwarves, and racing rams (which I don’t believe are featured in the real event…).

Most fun achievement: Down with The Dark Iron. You have to defend your festival (and most importantly, the beer!) from a pack of meddlesome dwarves that spring out of the ground like moles. Best part? The only weapon you seem to have are full beer mugs, so you chug and hurl the mugs at their heads, and get increasingly drunk as you do so.

The beginning of the grind: right out of the gate, this holiday has one of the more grindier requirements. You need to collect about 400 tokens to complete some achievements, and you get those by completing daily quests. No, you don’t get all 400 in one day, silly…then there’d be no point in doing them every day, now would there?

What eluded me: the holiday boss drops not one, but two unique mount models. Have I ever seen one drop? Not a chance. Did I group with someone who happily relayed that they won both in one day? :(

Hallow’s End

WoW’s Halloween, the fare is pretty standard, there are costumes, you go trick or treating to the different villages, eat candy, kill the Headless Horseman…that last one isn’t standard, is it?

Most fun achievement: also the best title for an achievement, Bring Me The Head of…Oh, Wait. Out of all the holiday boss fights, I adore the Headless Horseman fight the best. The setting is awesome (haunted graveyard), the voice acting is fantastic, and the fight mechanic is so much fun (he flings his pumpkin head at you as a distraction and during his last dying moments summons a pack of pumpkins to give you the hurt).

Most stressful moment: you’ll hear PLENTY about the abomination that is the random number generator for this holiday. Part of the meta is to loot a pumpkin pet and a pumpkin hat…which are random drops…which might not drop during the entire event…which has happened to people…talk about a sigh of relief when I finally got that darn hat.

What eluded me: I saw the Headless Horseman’s mount drop once during the entire holiday. Rock’s character actually tied during the roll but lost the tie-breaker. In the two years I’ve done this holiday, that is the only time I’ve seen it.

Winter Veil

It’s a goblin sponsored Christmas! I love this holiday because it really does put you in the Christmas mood. There’s actually no holiday boss for this one but there is a quest line to save Metzen the Reindeer (named after one of Blizzard’s creative team members).

Most fun achievement: With a Little Helper from My Friends. A lot of people stress out over the PvP achievements (and rightfully so if they’ve never done it or just don’t like it), but the sight of a pack of winter gnomes assembling for battle makes this achievement completely worthwhile.

It’s a merry Christmas: I love, love, love that you get to open presents under the tree on Christmas morning. The sight of all those players up early amassing under the tree is too funny, and SO Christmas!

What eluded me: actually, I managed to get all the pets on my main character (I pilfered pets from my alts).

Love is in the Air

I like this holiday so much I dedicated a whole post to it . This is easier than rewriting stuff here :)

Most fun achievement: first of all, the entire holiday is a vast improvement over what it used to be, and a lot of fun all around. But, that said, there isn’t one achievement that really sticks out as being the best. Dangerous Love would come close because the boss fight at the end of the quest line is my second most favorite boss fight.

Inspiration: for one achievement, you have to share a romantic picnic basket with someone and find true love. The image of Rock’s and my character sitting under the umbrella with hearts above their heads was so cute it became my wedding invitation.

What eluded me: the new boss fight also comes with the chance of looting a big rocket mount (complete with zebra-striped seats!). Alas, I did not see a mount drop the entire time. The Rocket is a Lie.

Lunar Festival

One of the less traditional WoW holidays taken from real life, this is a reference to the Chinese New Year. I’m not very familiar with the actual Chinese holiday but I believe some of the similarities are honoring the elders, fireworks, and gifts contained in red envelopes. But my ignorance is showing so, moving on…

Most fun achievement: eh, I’m pretty neutral on this holiday because on the one hand, it is incredibly time consuming since you have to visit a ton of elders located all over the world; but, on the other hand, all of the achievements are very easy and the entire holiday is the least stressful one. Plus, it was relatively fun to watch ANTM reruns while flying from one elder to another.

Most interesting and least interesting boss: the holiday boss for this event is the only boss actually located in the world (as opposed to inside an instance), and it requires around 10 players to kill easily, and it doesn’t matter what faction the players are (everyone gets credit). So it is very neat to see a bunch of players, of all levels and of either faction, gather around to kill him. Sadly, he doesn’t drop anything remotely interesting, that I’m aware of.

Noblegarden

WoW’s version of Easter, complete with bunnies (oh, so cute, bunnehs!), colored easter eggs, chocolate eggs, and flowers everywhere.

Most fun achievement: Spring Fling. Even bunnies are looking for love in WoW. If you park your pet bunny next to someone else’s bunny, they’ll fall in love, and little eggs pop up that hatch into baby bunnies!

Second most dreaded achievement: during the holiday you need to collect about 350 or so chocolates (I forget the number) in order to complete the other achievements. You get chocolates by finding hidden easter eggs in four specific towns…where every other player in the world is also trying to get 350 or so chocolates…my plan B, if I didn’t get the chocolates during my normal playing hours, was to wake up at 3 am…thankfully, it didn’t come to that.

What eluded me: another holiday with no boss :(

Children’s Week

Here we go. This is THE holiday most hated by the WoW community. See where it says “second most dreaded achievement” in Noblegarden? This is where you’ll see “the number one most dreaded achievement” that I also wish I could take out back and shoot in the head. But, besides that, I don’t dislike this holiday in general. I don’t think there is a real world counterpart to adopting a war orphan for a week and training him in the finer aspects of military life, including killing your enemies, touring dangerous locations, and killing deposed kings.

Most fun achievement: Aw, Isn’t It Cute? is doubly fun in that you get to do a neat quest line and get a neat pet as a reward. The quest line involves taking three orphans out for some sightseeing (like a Big Brother, Big Sister kind of thing). The reactions from the NPC’s involved and the orphans are very, very cute and more than a little heart-warming :)

The MOST dreaded achievement: people have written EXTENSIVELY about the pain that is School of Hard Knocks. The PvP achievements required would be easy enough to do as they are a main component of the mechanics for that particular battleground, were it not for the horde of other players that are out to simply kill you (the enemy faction) or to diabolically impede your progress (your own f-ing team!). This achievement really does bring out the worst in people, from griefers who are there to purposely make other people miserable, to the regular players who are just there to get their damn achievement regardless of what it takes and how many teammates they have to screw over to do it. It turns battlegrounds upside down for an entire week and does the exact opposite of what the Blizzard team “envisions:” instead of getting people interested in PvP, it turns people off entirely. Argh, end rant.

What eluded me: actually, I can complain a lot about School of Hard Knocks, but I didn’t have as hard a time completing it as I thought I would. Hell, I even did it twice because Rock was too lazy to do it for his own character. I was definitely the most stressed out, out of any other holiday, but I was lucky enough to walk into battlegrounds where people, even enemy players, were actually helping each other (the enemy team purposely losing the flag and such). But I even complain about this because that is NOT what battlegrounds are supposed to be. I would much rather see them change the achievement to win a certain number of battles or kill a certain number of players. At least that is in keeping with the spirit of the battleground. Ok, now end rant…

No, wait, did I mention you only get one week to do this and that the holiday was on the same week that my family was visiting for my wedding and during which I got (obviously) married? Not a good time.

Midsummer

A reference to Midsummer celebrations during the summer solstice, the event has activities that are all fire related (breathing fire, juggling fire torches, dancing around a fire pole).

Most fun achievement: Torch Juggler was the most fun achievement because I was completely dreading it until I realized how ridiculously easy it is to do :) And because when I was coaching Rock on how to do it I got to say “just click those keys like it’s Space Invaders at the arcade,” and he got it!

Once more around the world: the last of those holidays where you travel all over the world to visit or collect or do something. It was fun and cute during Hallow’s End (you’re trick or treating, how can it not be fun?), tolerable during Lunar Festival (I did it in October, it wasn’t so bad), and downright annoying during Midsummer (oh my god how many more places? I have to visit the alliance places also???).

What eluded me: another grindy holiday where you can complete quests every day to get tokens but it is literally impossible to get enough tokens to buy all of the special items…so I’m missing a pet.

Oh, god, I’m done.

Something in the Air

Ah, Valentine's Day. Funny how, even though this is one of the few years where I'm actually dating somebody, I didn't do anything particularly special on February 14th. I guess you could count laundry, bathroom cleaning, and grocery shopping special. Jalapeno poppers from the local mexican restaurant were involved after Rock's and my hard work, so there is that. So while Sunday may not have been a romantic, chocolate-stuffing affair (and in general I'm not one to get too excited about this day anyway) there is something different about Valentine's this year: I've pretty much been celebrating it all week long.

This doesn't mean that I've suddenly become a poster child for heart-shaped Hallmark cards. I mean, I did pester Rock all last week about how he had to buy me a heart-shaped chocolate box, but it's not the heart-shape I care about: I just like any holiday that gives me an excuse to eat large amounts of delectable chocolates (in fact, won't Cadbury cream eggs soon be taking over the seasonal aisle at the grocery store?). And I have been more than a litte giddy about the awesome roses that Rock got on Friday, which came with chocolate frosted cupcakes and was a complete surprise. They look beautiful, and even though I've always felt bad about cutting flowers up, and even though I know I'll feel terrible when the roses start to wilt, I just love how they look. So pretty!

I am liking these SO MUCH :)

When I say I've been celebrating all week long I mean that Valentine's for me pretty much started on February 7th when the Love is in the Air holiday event kicked off in WoW (bet you didn't think that's where this was going...or maybe you did, I am pretty predictable I suppose). Yes, since last sunday I've been trading virtual love tokens, eating virtual chocolates, spraying virtual perfume, and looking for love under a virtual picnic umbrella. Achievements have been gotten and my character is now known as Sinnh the Love Fool. For the next week, while the event continues, I also have the chance of aquiring a Valentine's ooze pet and/or a Big Love Rocket mount (though I'm never that lucky).

What I enjoy best about the WoW holiday is that it's absolutely silly but it's also rather twisted. You don't gift people chocolate to show you care. You pelt them with chocolate samples produced by the Crown Chemical Co. for a cut of the profits. You get rewards for gifting bracelets to the different faction leaders. That sounds nice, until you realize that you are making the bracelets from the bones and teeth of the beasts and humanoids that you slaughter. And there's a mini quest to track down who is really behind the "love sickness" that is plaguing everyone (turns out it's some evil apothecary that wants to use rockets to deploy mind controlling chemicals to everyone at once...evil he is). It's events like this that really remind me how much I love this game :)

My Draenei Character: The Battle Within

Disclaimer: I realize I haven't moved too far from book reviews and WoW posts on this site...I assure you I am capable of writing about other things. I will attempt to do so...someday.

I have a shaky relationship with the Alliance from World of Warcraft. My very first WoW character ever was a night elf warrior. She got up to 22 before I dropped her for some forgotten reason (possibly I got bored running around the bleak landscape of Darkshore but maybe I just decided to save myself some grief brought on by Rock's incessant nagging that I roll Horde). I'll admit, the starting landscape for the trolls is much prettier, all reds and oranges and bright sunshine and crystal blue waters and breakdancing trolls that greet you with "How ya doin, mon!" So I was quite happy with my Horde home. There was a brief stint where I leveled up a gnome mage to 20 or something just cause they're so darn cute and tiny, but I stuck with the Horde.

I stuck with the Horde, even despite their abysmal showing at certain battlegrounds, particularly Alterac Valley. My poor little troll shaman couldn't last 5 minutes without being viciously killed by the Alliance. It was during these particular moments that the grass looked way greener on the other side. But the Alliance races didn't appeal to me, the humans look boring, the night elves were boring, the gnomes are cute, I'll admit that, and the dwarves, well, just no. I know, there's no rhyme or reason as the saying goes, I just wasn't interested.

Until, that is, the Burning Crusade expansion introduced the draenei. Part of me really wished the Horde got the draenei instead of getting the annoying blood elves, but the side of me that looked longingly at all those battleground victories by the Alliance realized I had finally found an Alliance race I would like to play. And how could you not? The draenei are so weird, they have goat legs and cloven hoofs, a lizard tail, tentacles coming out of their jaws, and huge glowing eyes. And their skin ranges from purple to blue. And they're technically aliens that crash-landed from outer space. Awesome.

Just look at those hoofs! And the horns! It's like the designers were drunk drawing this.

I immediately leveled up a draenei paladin to 37, at which point I decided PvP servers were not for me and I switched to a non-PvP server. I was busy leveling up my new Horde character so I forgot about the draenei until a few weeks ago when I started leveling up a draenei shaman. She's currently 30. But now I am faced with a decision, one that has stumped many others before me, that has incited dozens of articles and webpages dedicated to sorting out that all-important question: shaman or paladin?

No other two classes are compared against each other so often, and with such zeal (I think....). Once upon a time, paladins were only available to the Alliance while shamans were only available to the Horde, so the two classes were intentionally pitted against each other by Blizzard. That changed with BC when the classes became available to both sides. So even though technically these two classes aren't supposed to stand against each other anymore, the debate is still there. I know I'm still wading through it.

I started a paladin because I had never played one before and they certainly seemed to have an easy time of it by getting into their little bubble that absorbs all damage, and healing to full health in an instant, and wearing plate armor. But I think I was getting bored with the paladin, there just didn't seem to be anything too interesting going on. When I started my second draenei, I decided to try a shaman because I just really like shamans. As I write this now, I realize there's no good reason why, I just do, so I did.

But now I've decided to really evaluate that decision. I mean, I already have a shaman, I already leveled up my troll shaman all the way to 72. Why bother leveling up a second one? Shouldn't I try something new? Was the paladin really that boring? Won't I get my butt kicked a lot less if I'm a paladin? Don't shamans get invited to less groups than paladins? Aren't shamans more fun? Do I really want to start a draenei for the third time?

On and on, believe me, I bore myself, it's not just you. In the end, I have no idea. I can barely decide if I would rather have a waffle or an english muffin with cheese when I go out to breakfast. I wish WoW people read this and I could get bullied into picking one. Or that more people read this and I could put it to a vote. As it is, I will probably agonize about it for a few more days until I finally settle with the path of most laziness and decide to not start a character over and be content to have my shaman and get my butt whooped by paladins and always think: "darn it, the grass looks greener on that paladin's lawn..."

True Love

What is true love? How do you know you’ve got that something in a relationship that makes you say “I love this person, and they love me?” Love might be that he has dinner ready every night because he knows I’ve been on a long, stressful drive. Or it might be randomly buying me a chocolate cupcake because he knows chocolate makes any day instantly better. Or putting up with my random sad/whiny/angry moods when I’m being a real jerk and picking a fight and he just wants to be left alone, poor guy. Or taking me to my favorite steakhouse, even though he doesn’t like red meat. But the real proof, I think, was surprising me by transferring my level 72 shaman from our original player vs. player server to our new non PvP server.

For days now I’ve been working myself up to actually spend money to transfer my character. We moved to a non PvP server because we couldn’t go 30 minutes without getting killed by some jerk in our PvP server. There was no way leveling up to 80 was going to happen that way. So we gave up on our dearly beloved characters and started fresh in a server where PvP combat is optional. It worked really well and in no time at all I had a level 71 hunter and he had a level 73 shaman. But I never forgot my original shaman. She was the first character I leveled up to 70, back when that was the leveling cap. She was getting close to maxing out her engineering skill (which, I do believe, is one of the hardest professions in the game). And she actually had her flying mount and epic gear already. But I couldn’t make that final decision and just transfer her already.

Then last week I log into my non PvP server and I do a double-take. Standing in the login screen is Sinadia, in her epic gear, and it takes me a good 10 or 20 seconds to put it together cause I’m bewildered as to how my long-missed shaman has suddenly appeared in my new server. And that was five days ago and I still can’t believe that Rock rushed home to his computer after work (on his bike, no less) to log into my account and pay to transfer my character and make sure she was all ready to go before I got home. It is the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me :)

So there she is. She did get a slightly new name because Sinadia was taken on the new sever, but Sinnadia is close enough I suppose. I can’t wait to work on her engineering skills again and see if I can build myself a motorcycle (why, yes, I did pick engineering as a profession because I’m an engineer, but I think this post has already established that I’m a nerd). Now I need to come up with something equally outstanding and awesome to surprise Rock with. Any ideas?

Mood: lovey
Music: Broken River Prophet's "With Infinite Arms to Cradle the Flames" (it's finally mine! so awesome...)
Movie: City of Ember (soooo you're telling me that all this time you haven't figured out how to use fire for heat and light and cooking? oookaaay... and the best the builders could do for an exit strategy was a water park slide of death? i guess that was to make sure only the fittest survived to repopulate...i see what you did there)

Happy Birthday Rock!

We here at Occasional Sin Enterprises wish to extend our deepest sympathies to fellow blogger Rock over at Nobody Comes Here Inc., on his yearly oldening day (thank you Bbungles for my new favorite term!). Don't overdo the cake and make sure to thank your mother :)

As this will be my post for the day, I also have to squeeze in a couple of screenshots from my latest WoW adventures. It seems to be Easter over at World of Warcraft (except it's called Noblegarden Festival and it's, oh, late April...still, it's an egg hunt). Everyone playing this weekend, me included, looked like a bunch of idiots running around collecting virtual eggs. No, I know, I know, someday I will write up an eloquent post in which I explain my theory on how WoW is really a way to indulge in obsessive-compulsive behavior. Nevertheless, there I was. The hunt was not entirely unfruitful: I got a spring bunny pet and I got turned into a spring bunny too. I particularly love how even virtual cats are essentially lazy critters. So true.

Mood: celebratory
TV/Music/Book: The Return of the King Extended Edition cast commentary