I'm not really a "Dailies" sort of person.

My dearest warlock certainly has been busy lately! Like the title says, I've never really bothered with doing daily quests often (probably the reason why I still haven't gotten my Chef's hat and why I ended up dumping Jewelcrafting for Engineering...)... I don't know what inspired me, but I figured that since I don't have the recipe for Delicious Chocolate Cake yet, that I'd give dailies a chance. I did the Cooking dailies for Dalaran and Shattrath, and figured I'd try the Fishing dailies for the both of them as well.

I found this little guy in one of my reward boxes, so I'm quite the happy camper.  I'm always trying to find new little pets to add to my collection, so I was very glad to get the chance to meet him.

I (finally!) got my "the Explorer" title.  I was going through my achievements last night looking for stuff to do, when I came across the Exploration section and found that I only had a few more zones to do before I was finished.  Knocked those out in about an hour, and sha-bam.  Mandaconda the Explorer, proud owner of really cute baby crocolisk Snarly.

I'm also trying to up my reputation with the Zandalar Tribe by doing Zul'Gurub a bit, grabbing those Bijous and coins, while attempting to grab some neat mounts before they get rid of the raid instance altogether on December 7th. I just hit Honored before the server shut down, so wish me luck.

Brewfest is over now, and my hopes of getting that ram or kodo on my warlock have subsequently gone down the tubes until next year. My hunter is very happy though, the only one out of 5 toons that ended up with any mount at all from Brewfest (actually she ended up with 2 rams and 2 kodos).  Still, it was fun while it lasted, and while I didn't think to grab another 80 or so coins on my lock for the little pet, I'm still happy that she got her Brewmaster title, and is one step closer to her proto drake.

Speaking of, I'm still working on setting myself up for the last leap in my What a Long, Strange Trip it's Been achievement and mount. I've only got Merrymaker left, so I decided to grind a few quests out and make it so I can do the Fa-la-la-la-Ogri'la part of the achievement.  I even invested in a pretty handy little addon, called "Ogri'lazy" or something to that effect... Hey, in my defense, it was late, I was tired.

Enough about me though, what's next on the schedule?  Patch 4.0.1?  I've heard it's doubtful it will drop tonight, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.  The game feels like it's starting to grind to a halt, with everyone waiting for something new to happen.  The holidays can only distract us for so long...

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(¸.·´ (¸.·`¤Mandaconda¤

Dear Noobyconda,

I take time every day or so to drop by WOW Insider's website.  I came across October 1st's Breakfast Topic, which was "What would you tell your level 1 self?" and started wondering, what would I tell my warlock at level 1?

After a bit of thought, I came up with a list of five bits of knowledge I would pass on to young Mandaconda, and they are as follows:

1. Read the tooltips. I don't know if it was just me being completely stupid, or if anyone else had an issue with it, but reading the tooltips was not something I did.  WoW was my second MMO (after Guild Wars, and goddess knows I had no idea what I was doing there), so I didn't understand the basics of combat and the nature of the skills my warlock possessed, or eventually would possess.  For instance, I did not understand the concept of "damage over time" spells, or DOTS as they are also known as.  So, I would end up casting Curse of Agony over and over and over again.  Yep. Go me!

2. Don't be afraid to leave guilds if you don't like them.  I did eventually learn this lesson myself when I finally turned level 70. I only wish I had learned it sooner.  I joined a guild lead by a person that we shall name "J" for the sake of being nice for once.  I joined the guild, which was fairly active and had quite a few people in it.  A few people in the guild were fun, and I forged friendships with them, but the rest of the guild seemed very cold, and the guild leader was not very friendly.  She was actually sort of a bitch.

Eventually I did leave, and decided to take up making my own guild.  I didn't ask them to, but the friends I made in that other guild came with me, and J ended up harassing me because of it until she eventually quit playing WoW.  I do remember the sense of dread I felt, while /gquitting.  I think I was standing in The Valley of Heroes in Stormwind when I finally did.

3. Don't tolerate annoying people, and USE /IGNORE. If I could, I would be beating that into my lvl 1 self's head with a mallet.  People asking for money, asking for runs through instances all the time, telling creepy stories about their deepest fantasies for some reason, and people taking personal grudges against you for /spitting back at them. These are all things to avoid.  People are able to earn their own money, they're able to do instances with groups, creepers talking about doing their cousins can be remedied with a simple /ignore command, and the same goes for people who continually infiltrate your guild for no reason other than to be annoying.  Use /ignore.  Use it often as the situation requires it.

4. Read about your class. This goes hand in hand with my creative use of DOTS, but definitely look over information about your class.  Don't put all your points scattered across all the trees, follow suggestion 1, read the abilities, and make some sense out of them.  If you can't do that, then look it up online and see what other people are doing.  Figure out what sort of play style you like (Destruction, by the way. You can thank me later.) and look it up.  Read everything you can, and it will help you get better.  I would also like to take the opportunity to tell this to my current level 80 self.  Why is your DPS so low? You should be pulling out 3k more than you're doing right now, dummy!

5. Definitely show up in the Arathi Highlands around July 10th, 2007.  Yes, I know it sounds weird, but do it.  You'll meet the most amazing person in the world there, and you will fall head over heels for each other.  Even if the times get rough, if his internet craps out for a while, or if you get bored of the game, still stick it out and keep him in your heart.  You'll move to Australia someday to marry him.

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(¸.·´ (¸.·`¤Mandaconda¤

Malvenor on Youtube

There's a few Cataclysm spoilers in the above video, but if you choose not to watch it you are missing out.

It appears that he has been around for a while now, but I just recently discovered Malvenor, a machinimist that specializes in the RP and Lore aspects of WoW Machinimas.

Above is a movie he made focusing on two dwarves in Loch Modan, going about their day and coming across an interesting troll. It touches on the daily lives of the citizens of Azeroth rather than the MMO players lives, which is something you do not often see in popular wow-oriented videos these days.  The amount of skill and effort put into it is breathtaking, and I am very much looking forward to his next video(s) in his "Faces of Cataclysm" series. So if you haven't gotten a chance to already, I highly suggest taking a look at some of his work!

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(¸.·´ (¸.·`¤Mandaconda¤

/Picard Facepalm

Herald Volazj Damage Done meter in
Heroic Old Kingdom today... 

So I did a random with fiancee Bulkham today on my pally.  He tanked, and I ret-pally'd it up.  We got H.OK today, which made me cringe at the load screen.  We got a fairly interesting/disappointing group today.

The Warrior, as seen to the left on this Damage meter from Herald Volazj fight, was more than enough to make me cry on the inside.  Yes, I do know that the Herald Volazj fight is kind of broken up into awkward pieces, which is why everyone's dps is low overall.

Mr. Warrior was specced into his Protection tree, complete with tanking gear, but had queued up as DPS.  He never broke 1k dps.  Overall for the entire instance he did 11.1% of the damage, with an average of 913 DPS with his 3297 gs.

The Shammy and the Priest were a bit better, but not by much.  The shammy had a 1085 DPS average overall for the instance. He had a 4128 GS and did 9.9% of the damage overall.  The only thing I can complain about was that they kept blasting the mobs away from the tank and melee dps, which was a pain in the ass.

The priest was healing, so I can't whine about that.  He told me he was healing in PVP gear, but looking at his armory page now, I don't think he was.  He had a 5400 gear score, and seemed to have little trouble keeping us up, so that's no big deal.

Why do these people plague me so?

I understand people may be fresh 80s.  I get it, I've been there, several times in fact. But if you've got >4000 GS, you should be pulling more than 9.9% of the damage in the instance, and if you're a DPS, you should not be specced as a Tank.  I thought that these were pretty simple ideas, but clearly I was mistaken.

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(¸.·´ (¸.·`¤Mandaconda¤

Brewfest! YEAH.

Probably what drunken dwarves see while lying on the ground.

Ah, the holiday season is fast approaching us.  I have been anticipating the change of pace from "WTF U SCRUB L2P STOP WIPING BLAH BLAH IM A KINGSLAYER SO I R TEH BEST" to "Hey, check out my Wolpertinger!" for weeks now.  On my love, Mandaconda, I've only got the Brewmaster and Merrymaker titles left to get before I can get my glorious mount.

It's funny, though.  My hunter, Veradae, seems to get all the luck when it comes to mounts.  I've been trying to get the Blue Drake on Mandaconda for a while now, and Veradae was the first of my alts to get it so far.  Then, unsurprisingly, she ended up grabbing the Brewfest Kodo from the boss last night.  Typical.  I guess animals just like her better.

How purdy.

In other news, I got to take Thadea and Veradae to some ICC's this week.  Thadea got a Mark of Sanctification or whatnot, but she can't spend it quite yet.  I also finally got to replace her blue cloak with a nice epic 264 one from the frost badge vendor.  As for Veradae, she's now got a new necklace (from Pit of Saron, but hey), an ungemmed (leather .... :(  ) chest piece, a new ungemmed staff, and a fanceh rep ring to play with.  Thadea's GS is sitting happily at 5336 while Veradae's is 4886. Not bad, overall.  Levielle is at 5033, with some help from dear fiancee's pally tank and his insta-queues, haha.

Pumpkinspice, my mage, is going alright, dinged 63 last night.  Made a new guild for her: [Definitely Not Alliance], for no reason other than to get rid of [The Brood].  Well, mission successful, haha. I guess that's it for right now.


Personal Brewfest Update: 
Mandaconda is now sporting the title "Brewmaster," and while she hasn't won any Brewfest mounts yet, Veradae has won the ram and ANOTHER kodo.  Jeesh.

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(¸.·´ (¸.·`¤Mandaconda¤

Girls don't play WoW!

Ha.


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(¸.·´ (¸.·`¤Mandaconda¤

Imagination Time.

Imagine this:  You've been in queue for upwards of 30 minutes, you're level 56, and questing in Winterspring.  Suddenly, the queue pops.  It's BRD!  Sort of a mixed blessing, but you're willing to put up with this instance one more time in order to bring yourself that little bit closer to 57.

So you accept, happy that your queue popped at all at such a late hour.

After zoning in, you buff the group with Intellect and move on your way through the now unlocked door to your left.  The group seems fairly normal, thank goodness.

Oh wait.

No, it's the group from HELL.