Valerius do Naxx

Right then, I’ll get right to it.

Last night was out first foray into the wrath-raiding content. It was an eventful night and probably surpassed all of our original expectations on how far we would get.To summarise, we cleared the whole of the spider wing, and then took down the first boss in the plague wing (although I don’t know if that’s its actual name). From a boss encounter point of view they were all quite interesting with their own individual quirks.

From a healing perspective (which is the reason you’re here), we took two priests and a shammy. This felt about the right level of healing, although im sure we can reduce this to two healers once we are better geared. The only boss that seemed to give us real trouble was Maexxna, mainly due to her raid wide cocoon effect, which relied on our HoT’s to keep the tank up. For one reason [tactic] or another we couldn’t keep the tank up whilst she was enraged. A quick change of tactics seemed to resolve this, and on we went.

All in all it was a very successful initial foray into Naxx and one that we are going to venture into again tonight to refine our tactics. All being well we may even get to see a few new encounters [fingers crossed].

Interestingly, on a personal note, my new healing spec seemed to work a treat. When accompanied by raid buffs, my mana regeneration was very good, and although I could probably use a little more intellect and spellpower it all felt pretty good.

welcome back?

Well, its certainly been a while since my last post. I wont give you a long list of reasons for my absence, its predominantly down to my own laziness, but also the fact I hadn’t really been playing my priest in the build up to wrath.

However!!!! Things are about to change. Northrend is here and with it a youthful exuberance for a game that can sometimes become tiresome. I have [as have most of you] been playing wow to death for the last 10 days and have worked my way up to the dizzy new heights of 80. Selfishly I did this in shadow which created a lack of healers in our guild, but that’s all about to change.

As of last night…. I AM HEALZOR!!!!!!!

Yes that’s right folks, I am back to my healing roots, and to be honest I loved it. I did a couple of runs last night just to get my trigger finger used to it all again, and it was fantastic…. Forgot how little I pay attention to the actual encounters though, and more about those 5 health boxes on my screen, which at times can be a little boring.

Anyway, I hoping to try a few heroics tonight and test my healing ability in those.

Also, I will try and become a frequent poster again if I get time. Im currently trying to work out a wow/life balance to suit everyone, which may mean less blog time [if that’s at all possible].

For now I leave you with something from Anna that really cheered me up this cold winter morning… enjoy and I’ll speak to you soon

On the first pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me, a Blue drake evaded in a tree.
On the second pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Two orphaned mammoths and a Blue drake evaded in a tree.
On the third pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Three squawking robots, Two…
On the fourth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Four talking murlocs, Three…
On the fifth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Five Fountain Coins! Four…
On the sixth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Six rabid wolvar, Five…
On the seventh pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Seven angry Vrykul, Six…
On the eighth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Eight loot crazed hunters, Seven..
On the ninth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Nine creepy spiders, Eight…
On the tenth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Ten Kvaldir pirates, Nine…
On the eleventh pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Eleven ghouls a-grinning, Ten…



On the twelfth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Twelve Lichking cutscenes, Eleven ghouls a-grinning, Ten Kvaldir pirates, Nine creepy spiders, Eight loot crazed hunters, Seven angry Vrykul, Six rabid Wolvar, FIVE FOUNTAIN COINS! Four talking murlocs, Three squawking robots, Two orphaned mammoths and a Blue drake evaded in a tree.

Priest Racials get the Chop

I read through this post a number of times, and I wanted desperately for my feeling of anguish to come out, but instead the post seemed to fall apart. It has no real structure and adds no real value to the ongoing debate, which is why I almost pulled it, but none the less, here it is.

A topic of much discussion today is the demise of the priest racial talents. Interestingly the views on this change aren’t as split as I had envisaged. The volume of people excited about being able to train some of these previously unobtainable spells is overwhelming. It leaves behind a minority of people such as myself who are left both shocked and maybe even a little distressed by the news.

I appreciate that we were the only class to have such unique abilities, but isn’t that half the beauty of our class. Every single race of priest was unique, we all had our own abilities to bring to the raid, and this in itself could change the tactic for any one fight. I still recall the days before Fearward was a non-racial ability, and how important it was for every raid to have a dwarf priest to hand.

I have felt an increasing trend in wow recently and more and more I find myself not playing my priest because of it. We now have 4 healing classes, and if you were splitting them over 40 people it wouldn’t be to bad, but over 10 and 25 it limits peoples chances of raiding. I understand this isn’t commonly a problem, but it bothers me, it bothers me that so many classes have become so flexible in the game, that it has removed the speciality of a class, and yet Im not always able to do the sole job I was designed for!!!

… I have gone completely off topic.

Admittedly I too am excited about the new expansion, the new talents and the fact I will now be able to use some of the previous locked racials, but I also mourn for those spells that have been lost, and the uniqueness that they brought to our class. In a world (of warcraft) where things are becoming ever more linear, surely its this uniqueness that adds character and value to not only the priest class but the game itself!!!

Wrath Release Date Finally Announced!

Mark it in your calendars boys and girls, the 13th of November is Wrath day (sorry I couldn’t come up with something more catchy). So what does this mean? It means that approx 10million people will be doing exactly the same thing come midday on the 13th……..

….. you got it one…. They will of course all be looking at the same “world server is down” screen!!!

Ok, so im sure that wont be the case, as far as I can remember the BC launch went off without a hitch (other than some dodgy disks), and Wrath will be no different.

What this news also means is that I have a lot to do in the next few months. I want to get my gold reserves up to at least 40k if that’s possible, and I’d quite like to build up my herb stock in the coming weeks.

Of course the most time consuming thing is going to be levelling my shammy between now and wrath. He’s only level 12 or something at the moment, and I don’t have much spare time, so my aim may well be to get him to 60 pre wrath, but we’ll just see how it all goes.

So, today’s question is…. What do you want to achieve before Wrath lands this November?

Without Rhyme or Reason

Its been over a month since my last post, man I’ve been slacking.

In my defence ive been spending some time of late considering the original reasons for the inception of this blog, what my target niche was and where its all gone wrong.

a) I don’t play wow as much as id like anymore. Around the time of creating this blog I was starting to get more heavily involved in raiding again, and I was really enjoying playing a healing class again! That went well for about a month, and I was enjoying blogging about all my new experiences. Since then there has been a lot going on in my personal life and not I or Misty have played anywhere near as much WoW as we’d probably like to.

b) because im not playing wow, its really quite hard to write about it. The times when I do get to dip into the game I tend to play on alts as I didn’t schedule in to raid etc… which means im not playing on my priest meaning I have noting to say about her in the blog.

c) Essentially, I pitched my blog to be all about being a holy priest, starting from scratch in end-game. Subsequently I haven’t been playing end game and so haven’t been posting. Now I really do hope that this all changes post WOTLK, but I really cant predict the future for this blog at the moment.

I want to take this opportunity to thank anyone who still subscribes to this in their reader, and im really sorry that I haven’t fulfilled my original scope for the blog. Im currently considering a redesign and name change for it, maybe to make it less focussed on my priest and more just about my wow experiences, but again, I guess time will tell.

Life After Kit

so, as i mentioned in a previous post we had a had adopted a little kitten for a short time. Sadly, he has now moved on to his permanent home and it has upset me more than i thought it would. We only had him for a week, although it felt much more, and he certainly became a large part of our family. Sure, he was a pain in the arse, and he'd snap at your heals whenever you got up, but we loved him.

So yesterday was an emotional day, but ive got to try and put that at the back of my mind today, as the builders are in. See at the beginning of the month, our up stairs neighbours decided to block their toilet. Now usually this wouldnt have been a problem, but at the same time their overflow was broken. Basically this means that the toilet continued to fill, but with it being blocked the water had nowhere to go. Eventually it overflowed, and a little bit later we had it coming through our ceiling.

The damage of this was so significant that today, im have the whole bathroom ceiling torn down and a new one put up. As i right this the builders are banging away. I expect that any second now another neighbour will knock on the door to complain about the banging, and thats why i cant be upset about the cat, because i need to be on top of my game for today.

So, not one mention of wow in this post, maybe i'll do one of those later today.

I got the Beta blues!!

So for those of us that didn’t get into the beta, all we can do is wait for the ever-closer expansion to be released before we get our hands on the new content. Of course, this doesn’t prevent us from reading all about it. I don’t know about you guys but my reader is jam-packed full of ever evolving WOTLK news. Where possible, I try not to read these in to much depth, as i don’t want too many spoilers (and in any case I have plenty of [current] content to investigate / read about / write about).

Interestingly though I have already reserved a name for my death knight, its not very original and im sure I’ll take plenty of stick for picking it, but I think its pretty cool. That’s all im gonna say about that for now, and you’ll have to come back and visit me post wrath to find out how uber cool (geeky) I really am!

Talking of death knights though, has anyone had any thoughts on which race they are going to use? I’ll probably wait to see what gear looks good on what races before choosing, although at the moment im thinking of picking a dwarf, mainly as it’s the only race I don’t currently have an alt for. what about you?

Money Money Money...

Just a quick one about gold reserves really. At the moment I have two level 70’s and a 62 (im also working on a mage, but shes really small). Both my 70’s have normal flying mounts, but no epic… despite this I only have 13k gold…

I guess my question is, how much gold do you have, and how did you get it? I wheel and deal, but never really seem to get anywhere with my funds!

Herbie!!!

Herbie!!!

Basically I need a new herbie. Cavalla used to be a herbie pre-tbc but then she took up the fine art of tailoring, which I cant drop now, nor can I drop alchemy as that comes in handy for the transmutes.

Tayend is both a miner and jewel-crafter, cant really give either of those up at the moment.

Masahashi is a leatherworker, and [you guessed it] skinner. Now im tempted to give up leatherworking, but I cant really decide. From what I see on the AH there aren’t many boe hunter leatherworking patterns worth having, although raid content provides some good craftables….

I guess im in a situation whereby I have to make a decision between dropping leatherworking (or skinning) to take up herb’ing, or do I create another character and have them as a herby. I really wanted to get my hunter to 70 before wotlk, but I think im looking at an impossible task of getting him and another to 70 in the next 2-6 months….

What are peoples opinions on leatherworking for hunters, is it worth it?

Have a break, Have a Kit-Kat

Im taking a little bit of a back seat again when it comes to wow. I’m still logging in for a bit now and again; in fact did my first gruul and mag run the other night, which was really exciting. For the most part though im not spending much time online.

However, that’s not to say im not keeping in touch… My reader has been super busy this last week with all the wrath news hitting the web. Incase you’ve been under a rock somewhere, the beta has begun, and invites have commenced. From what I can tell they’ll be doing it in waves, so if you haven’t already done so, go sign up for the beta under account management now!

Lots of news coming from the beta so far… and im sure there will be plenty more where that came from, but I’ll save my views on that for another day.

Oh oh ….. my post subject had a hidden meaning today…. As of Friday gone, we have a kitten in the flat…. Unfortunately for us, this isn’t a permanent arrangement, as we have bought him for my mums birthday next week. In the mean time though we’re really enjoying having him around (even if he wares us out silly), and when he’ all big and stuff, he’ll make the perfect hunters companion….

Ding Ding Ding!!!!

Ok, so those of you that are regular readers (hi Misty!!) will know that ive been leveling a hunter alt in between all those lovely Kara runs. Well finally i managed to get to 60!!!! Yeay!!! and subsequently have tamed myself a lovely looking new pet....

Isnt he pretty!!???!

Seriously though ive been waiting to tame this bad boy since i first saw him on petopia, and now i have!

Masahashi (Masa) is now at level 61, and tbh my main focus is to get her to 70 in the next few weeks and try and fit in a couple of Kara runs with her. Its really the first time that ive played a class which is designed to hurt stuff and im really enjoying it....

Anyway, after a week on holiday away from the laptop i have lots of posts on the reader to catch up on, so until next time....happy hunting!

Playing (wow) with your Partner?

As I think I mentioned in my original post, my partner and I originally met on WoW, and so the game will always be an important part of our lives. However as our relationship developed we were no longer able to play wow together. Admittedly this is probably a lot to do with my attitude towards the game, I take it to seriously and always want to be the best…. But it was also because we both played priests, and both had our own styles, theories etc etc…

I still think our best times were when I was playing my warrior, we (I) weren’t competing with each other for gear and things (again, I take all this stuff to seriously).

So, just before we bought a place together, my better half switched back to our old server, where she now resides with her main toons. For the most part this is a good idea, we don’t fight about wow as much and we have the opportunity to socialise with other people whilst both enjoying the game.

However, I really miss levelling with her. Sure we can go to a server and start to level alts again, but you always want to get back to your main (and main alts) to do instances etc and I find that you never really get past lvl 20 or so. I’d really love to go back to our old server before WOTLK so we can level to 80 together, but I worry that the same old problems will arise.

I know a few couples on WoW and for the most part they seem to manage their RL/in-game relationships fine. Is there anyone else out there who plays with their partner, or do you have to play on separate servers? How to you manage the strain of having a real life and ingame relationship? How does it affect the way you play wow?

Last minute dot com

Again, not been much blogging of late, but ive been super busy…. The more warcraft I play the less time I have to post!!

Since my last update ive completed another Kara run…. No healing loot to speak of this time, but some off spec gear that will come in handy for grinding!

Other than that I haven’t really played the priest much, haven’t really had the available time to do any instance runs either so ive been mainly dipping in and out of my hunter for the last week or so.

Im just shy of level 54 now, so im still looking good to get to 70 pre-wotlk, although get my mage and lock to the same level seems doubtful!

Really enjoying the hunter, although I forgot what it was like to do everything in under par greens. It certainly doesn’t make levelling it harder, but it would be nice to carry some decent gear… even something that matches my level would be nice!

Tay (warrior) is now exalted with SSO!!! And I cant really be bothered to carry on doing the dailies there, so my gold is starting to dry up a little! Im not overly concerned as once I get to outlands on Masa the gold will start to flow again!

I almost forgot….. The reason for the header to this blog!!

Im going on holiday for a week! We only actually decided on Friday Night that we wanted to go away, booked it Saturday, and then we fly out tonight… talk about a speed run!!

Despite how quickly its all come together I really need a break at the moment. Im feeling a little run down and the last thing I wanted was a long summer stuck in the office! Plus my Girlfriend has just finished some exams and it will be nice for her to take her mind off things!!

So until my return… happy hunting one and all!!

The unseen Flaw (in my plan)

Following yesterdays blog, I had no intentions of going home and sitting in front of the pc screen to play WoW. However what I had stupidly forgotten was the allure of Warcraft, the addiction that needs to be fed.

See, some warcraft players will tell you that they’re not addicted, that they can quit at any time, and that they only play because they enjoy it, not because they need it. Other players will openly admit they cant go one single day without thinking, living and playing the game!!!

I, at the moment, fall into the second category, and have done for large proportions of time since its initial launch. See, for all the will in the world I wanted to go home last night, do house work, watch tv and NOT play WoW, but instead, I did no house work, watched no tv, and focused on my pc screen all night.

Subsequent to my post yesterday I aired some of my views to my guild, told them, in a round about way, that I was unhappy in being left out of Kara (rightly or wrongly), whilst not questioning the authority to do so.

(as a point of reference, I used to be an officer, I know what a hard job it is, and I know from experience how little respect people can have for the difficult decisions that are made by those officers. Therefore despite any difference I may have with people, I will always respect the role they play in the guild, even though I may not respect them)

Anyway, after all my bitching and whining last night and due to other people dropping out, I got to go to Kara. Again I think I did ok, nothing spectacular, but many thanks to Yit who provided me with valuable advice throughout. I know I have lots to learn.

I still want to try and take a step back, but I really don’t think I can! With WOTLK around the corner, should I really be bothering with Kara, should I be concentrating more on damage gear for the new expansion? Lots of choices and decisions to make!

For now, I’ll stay holy and enjoy what im doing, but also make an effort to get some “off-spec” gear rather than see it being sharded!!

Best Intentions

I started this blog with the best intentions, I was really enthusiastic just to write about WoW and get so many of my thoughts on paper. Unfortunately, as with most best intentions, things don’t always go as planned. Im not updating the blog half as much as I should or wanted to, and WoW is just getting me down in general. It constantly feels like one step forward, 2 steps back.

My guild take me to Kara, and then recruit 4 new healers…. Now I cant get onto either of two Kara runs!!! Therefore I cant progress and will never have the gear to achieve my goal of full time raiding again!

I started playing my hunter, but she’s so small and I just get bored after 10 or so quests (I’ll be fine once I hit 60…. I really like the outlands quests!)

I tried to pvp with a holy priest…. Not one of my brighter ideas it has to be said! There is some really nice pvp gear that I wanted for Cav, but if its going to take as long as I suspect and be as painful as last night, I think I’ll just cut my losses.

I’m going to take a few weeks away from WoW and away from blogging and reassess what I want to do.

Cavalla does Kara!

Friday was a good night, I got invited to take Cav into her first Kara run, and in fact my first ever Kara Run.

The guild had taken down the bosses up to the curator the night before, but that still left lots to kill.

Admittedly I was really nervous to start with, the guild had been clearing kara for months now and coming in with no experience and having to heal it was quite daunting for me. Fortunately I had some good support healing which took a lot of the pressure off.

We had a couple of wipes as there were a couple of us who hadn’t done Kara before, so understanding some of the boss fights took a while. Other than that it was a very successful run.
We one shotted, Aran, Illhoof and the Prince, which I thought was really impressive.

Cav got a new necklace, which I have now realised will be replaced this week when I get exalted with SSO, but I got all excited in the moment!!

Following this massive balls up on my part I have now done a Kara “wish-list” and wont bid on anything outside that list…. Hopefully

Looking forward to hopefully getting in on this weeks run too, and spending the rest of the week working on my hunter (now lvl 47)

This Week

I’ve been a bit slack on the posting front this week, mainly because I was grinding my arse off in order to try and get a kara run, but alas, my gear still wasn’t up to scratch (need to find approx +100 sta somewhere).

So between matt grinding for my whitemend set and doing a bunch of Sunwell dailies I haven’t had much time for anything else.

Which reminds me, I drafted a post Monday evening, but never got round to publishing it

Dailies are quite new to me, I’ve never been a huge fan of them, a lot of them are quite time consuming, and so I just don’t do them. That was until I came across the daily hub for Sunwell, great group of dailies, can all be done within an hour, perfect little rep grind. Im doing it on both toons atm, and the 250g for 2hrs work comes in handy too.

Are you a daily’oholic or just grind whatever you need at the time? What do you think of the sunwell dailies, should all dailies be that simple?

Gearing

Quite busy at work today, but time for a quick post.

I was reading Dwarf Priest earlier today, and hes updated his loot table following patch 2.4. There have been some interesting movers and shakers since the patch, but this is still one of the most reliable sources for priest loot (imo).

Whether you’re preparing for raiding, or in the middle BT, this list summarises what should be in and around your “I’ve Gotta Have it!” list!

If you have the time, also read his calculations behind this it all, very interesting reading, but also quite heavy, so you’ve been warned.

One Last Thing

Just before i get back to work i wanted to tag the following blogs that ive been reading today. All very insightful and interesting to read, and i'll be sure to update the blogroll when i get home from work..

http://kestrelsaerie.us/
http://pugnaciouspriest.wordpress.com/
http://egotisticalpriest.com/

Raiding Spec's

Raiding specs

I was reading a post over at egotistical priest about different talent specs for different roles in the game. I’ll skip past the more obvious pvp/solo builds as they should be pretty self-explanatory. (May do a pvp post a bit later).

We then get to the stuff im particularly interested in which is the “instancing and raiding”.

The gist of it is that for 5 man instances you should have a holy or hybrid build, but once you get to raiding you’re expected to be shadow. The caveat in this post was that they’re only summarising what they have read on the boards and every priest is different.

That’s all well and good, but it highlights to me that guilds just aren’t looking for holy priests anymore, and that just doesn’t sit well with me. I haven’t raided post TBC, so I cant comment personally, but surely holy priests still provide value in raiding, other than just for spirit buffing?

Out of Touch

Reading the recent comments on the blog im starting to realise more and more that ive lost touch with WoW, but more specifically priest mechanics!

I thought that i knew it all when it came to my class and my role in groups. More and more this is becoming unclear to me.

Ive noticed increasingly that groups dont seem to look for a holy priest! There are so many capable healing classes out there now to do the job we used to do so well.

Is there space for four healing classes on wow? Are holy priests becoming obsolete? Will there be another shift in power before WOTLK?

that was a lot of questions, maybe they were more rhetorical than anything, but i would like to think that there is still space for holy priests on warcraft.

Pre Vs Post Burning Crusade – A Healing Comparison

So I posted in the middle of the night that I had just done my first stint of healing on my priest since the release of TBC. However I just wanted to talk a little more about how the game mechanics seem to have changed.

See before the burning crusade I would run instance after instance, but no matter how well geared I got, healing a five man could still be quite challenging from time to time. Flash heals were a priests bread and butter, we simply didn’t have the time to cast greater heal, that extra 1 second cast was the difference between a wipe and a boss take down.

I’ve read a lot of blogs about peoples healing styles, but generally now the flash heal has become obsolete in boss fights (although still a legitimate tactic for trash), and no matter how many times I read this, I still couldn’t really believe it. Until last night.

Now, this could have been because my tank was particularly well geared (although I suspect he was in kara gear, possibly pre kara), but damage taken seemed less intense. By that, I mean there were very few damage spikes, where I would have to rush for a shield or a flash heal. Through the trash I just used renew with the odd flash heal, and for boss fights I did the same, just replacing flash with greater heals.

I probably need to run some more instances before making any real judgement, and im sure that in burning crusade raid battles healing will be just as intense as when I first ran BWL, but to me it feels like damage mitigation has been buffed to a point that healing a tank has become even more sustainable without real strain.

Gone are the days where Flash Heal is a priests only hotkey, healing just became a bit more interesting.

How did Healing change for you after the burning crusade?

Respec'ing and my First TBC instance as a healer

Very busy night tonight, it was my first burning crusade instance with Cav, and while it was only Old Hills Brad (OHB) it was nice to feel relatively in control of everything. Werent any really hairy moments and went pretty smoothly. We'll ignore the fact that we then went on to do BM and failed miserably, and focus on the fact i had a good night.

No new loot, although as i was healing i got around to making Primal Mooncloth Robe which is very nice.

As i now intend to use Cav for healing i took this oppurtunity to try out a new spec, and think its pretty good, its a Holy/Disc Hybrid so should suffice for the time being.

hopefully this was the start of something new, interesting, and progressive, but we'll see.

WOTLK To Hit Before Christmas 08

Its no cast iron guarantee, but we now have our biggest indication that WOTLK will hit our shelves before the year is out. Whilst no official release date has been announced, Vivendi yesterday released their statement of account for the first quarter of 2008, which stated

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, is scheduled to be released in the second half of 2008.

Given that this statement is provided to all share holders in the company you can place some reliance that this is there “anticipated” release schedule, although I still think this will slip into Q1 of 2009.

I guess only time will tell on this one, but watch out for an official release date in the next few months.

Maximizing the Day

I spent most of last night working on the blog. I’m relatively happy with the outcomes although I need to do some work with feedburner in case anyone out there wants to subscribe to this. Any thoughts on the layout, things missing etc are welcomed!

In terms of this whole blogging business my main concern at the moment is how to fit it all into the day. By the time ive got home and done all the relevant housework it doesn’t leave me much spare time. Im going to try and start reading my feeds at lunch time, posting before I go to bed and fitting in everything else in between.

How does everyone else juggle their work life, social life and blogging? It seems impossible

It’s a big bad world

Before the burning crusade, I was a fully fledged, full time, got no life, raider! I would consistently spend 40+ hours a week playing wow, and a large proportion of that time in MC, BWL, AQ, ZG, and the remaining few hours grinding to pay my repair bill.

Interstingly, whilst I think I’ll rant about it later I just want to mention it in passing. The amount of people that have never heard of Molton Core and Black Wing Layer is astonishing to me, I bump into more people that haven’t heard of it than have. I can deduce from this that over 50% of the current wow population (on my server at least) are completely new to wow since TBC!

Anyway, back to the topic in hand.

Since TBC was released I have pretty much solo’d my way to 70 (on two toons). On Cav I still don’t even have my kara key, and shes supposed to be my main. In total I think ive run maybe three of the BC instances, and even then I was probably being carried a little bit. This brings me onto my dilemma……

My guild is currently recruiting for some new raiding healers, which is really enticing to me as I really want to see the content. My girlfriend is being supportive of this idea (in theory) at the moment, although I don’t want WoW to cause any unnecessary problems (past experience tells me it will). So all that said, whats stopping me? Ive decided it’s a fear of failure.

See I used to be an MT (pre-tbc), and I always though I was ok at it. Of course I haven’t done any group (let alone raid) healing since that time, and im a little worried that a) I wont be able to hold my own, and b) If I am crap the illusion that I used to be pretty good will disappear.

I think im going to try and arrange to heal some heroics this week/weekend and see how I get on, if its positive then maybe I’ll sign up for the next kara run….

I think I need to talk to Lois about this a bit more though, I can see myself being sucked back into this more and more each day (hour).

Show me the Money

Whilst browsing the AH last night it struck me that the value of some pre-tbc items is ridiculous atm…. For example a stack of thorium bars are currently selling from 40-50g!!

Admittedly I then spent an hour grinding thorium to earn some quick cash, but even then its still excessively over-priced.

This got me thinking!! What pre-tbc items are selling at inflated prices on your servers??

Family First

So no warcraft tonight, other than taking a few screen dumps for the blog. My girlfriend has had a rough couple of weeks so im going to cook her favourite meal tonight and relax on the sofa (put the laptop to bed by 7… promise!) for the evening. That in mind, I think I’ll have the laptop in the kitchen while I cook, so I can work out what my immediate WoW objectives are, and then start to progress them on Wednesday.

Happy hunting!!

Define Casual

Its been less than a day since I resubbed and im already feeling the burn. Everywhere I go on the interweb I read about casual wow players, and every time I read this I wonder… what is a casual wow player. Is it not raiding that makes you casual, is it only playing 2 hours a week, or is it less than 10 hours. Is it purely based on time spent in game.

I only ask this because after less than one day resubbed, and three hours of gameplay im hooked.

Im not casual, I don’t just play when I can, I want to play it now, tonight, tomorrow, next week!! Whats worse is im writing this post sat at my desk at work. Ive spent all day thinking of wow (whist managing to do some work), and yet to my fellow players, friends and guildies, I am classified as casual!!!

Now, im going to close down the internet and do some work, and pray that I can find a wow / life / work balance before the week is out.

Warcraft is important to me, its in my blood, but im not going to let it consume me this time….

Introductions

EDIT: Before you read this, know that I wrote it in Late January 2008, around the time that I started blogging for my own benefit. I always intended to publish it online, but never got the time. Since this was written I have had a 3month absence from wow! However that’s all about to change!!! Enjoy this…. My first post, and the many more I intend to make in the coming months!

Firstly, Welcome! You’re either here because ive told you to check out my blog, or you’ve unknowingly stumbled across me. My name’s James, although my friends around Azeroth will know me more commonly as Cavalla. (or if you know me from outside of WoW, more likely, wondeboy).

It took me a while to decide what I was going to name my blog, and what I was going to talk about. See I spend a huge percentage of my life working and sleeping, the other 30% of time is spent on hobbies and my significant other. My girlfriend and I met on warcraft some time ago, and about 18months ago we started dating. Now we live together and that’s really when my life began…ok…. this sounds very soppy and not really what I had planned at all…

Misty I love you, but for now back to the blog.

As you can probably gather I’ve been playing warcraft from the word go. My first ever character was actually a gnome warlock, but given my lack of mmo experience, I couldn’t really get to grips with the vulnerability of a caster, and so I re-rolled a nelf warrior. Tayend and I got to about level 45 together, until I got bored. I think it was around that time that I started to play other consoles and other games, and I just didn’t have time for wow anymore. So I quit…

Fast forward 6 or so months and I was missing wow, I was still keeping in touch with my old guild, the more I spoke to them, the more I wanted to return…. One night, completely out of the blue I re-subbed, and re-rolled, this time with Cavalla my human priest… Levelling a second time round was actually quite refreshing, going to new places with a new toon. It all seemed to happen so fast though, within 10 days play time I was level 60 and I wanted more….

We set up alliance with other guilds, we wanted to hit all the new content… and eventually there was an official merge of guilds, my old Guild, the one I loved so much, was gone… The Defiance was no more…… It was getting to that point again, I was losing my love of warcraft…. Soon after I quit for the second time, but that wasn’t the end of the story…..

This time I went completely cold turkey, I didn’t look at a warcraft website or talk to my old friends, I just went …. It was the best for everyone, but it changed nothing. Within less than two months I was back again, and to a mixed reception… There had been some recruitment in my absence and they weren’t that happy with the way I waltzed back into the guild…. None the less I came back pumped and spent many a night battling away at new content in MC and BWL (which I will mention in my first “proper” blog).

The Burning Crusade Came and went, I levelled Cav to 70, she got her flying mount, blah blah blah… My girlfriend I then stopped playing warcraft for a while, I cant remember why exactly, but we did. We got on with our lives, bought a flat together and that was it.

Until a couple of weeks before moving day… All of a sudden I wanted wow, and I wanted it now! 6 months later an its January 2008, and im still playing warcraft, all-be-it, differently to how I used to. I don’t raid, I play for fun, part time if you will. Originally when I came back Cav got all the attention, getting her some new gear, doing some quests, having fun…. Then I took Tay from 60-70… mainly because the 70 grind is awesome in outlands, and now im playing my hunter Masahashi and my Warlock (the one I first started) Treacle.

So I guess that’s a not so brief summary of who I am (wow-wise) and where I’ve come from… My original plan is to update this as regularly as possible, I guess we’ll see how it goes…

Chow!!