Friday, March 6, 2009

Addicted to Heals

I "rolled" this blog when Ideale hit the 40s, mainly to document my progress, share some "noob" tips I ran across, and "infiltrate" enemy territory for kitties (and originally it was going to be entirely in-character, but I chickened out). And I've have a lot of fun with her and Cinnamon, getting to 70, figuring out what I liked to do in the game (not PVE), and generally having a good time.

But in the meantime, I leveled Ahami — and found my niche and my favorite role in the game, healing. I started out leveling resto just to see if I could do it, because all of the leveling guides said not to; and because healing did look fun and I wanted to try it out. And I fell in love with resto shamans and with healing in general. I still play my hunter, but mostly to hunt worms and rhinos or for the very occasional RP or PVP match — the vast majority of my time in game is being spent on Ahami or my other healers, and they're the ones I'm doing research for, doing new things with, and working on, while Ideale has stagnated somewhat.

My focus for the past several months has changed to reflect my in-game interests, and I was getting a little annoyed with: a.) the blog title being misleadingly hunter-centric; b.) Blogspot; c.) feeling guilty that I was not writing about my hunter in my hunter blog; d.) feeling guilty that I was not reading and linking to more hunter blogs.

After ignoring my better judgement and not only rerolling my priest to be a "real alt," but rolling shamans, druids, priests and paladins across several servers the past few weeks, and after reading this post on Sandwich Rations, I figured it was time to stop fooling myself and any potential readers who might be looking for a hunter blog.

So ... I rerolled, and I'm heading over to Addicted to Heals. There are still some changes inc — the template will be changing, as I've actually started knocking out one themed around (gasp) WoW. But I figured that at least most of the posts would line up with the blog title that way.

And now, the Kitty Collector is closed (although if I do collect more kitties, I will post about it, along with maybe a couple hunter stories now and then).

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Missed connections

Can you imagine if there were a missed connections-type forum, a la craigslist, for World of Warcraft?
You were an orc death knight with a handy way of punting gnomes and capturing flags. I was the troll shaman who healhealhealed you. Want to time our queues for Warsong Gulch sometime? I hope you read this!

Sorry, I had an excellent Warsong Gulch run this morning and worked really well with the flag carrier and his buddy (I thought, at least). You know that feeling you get when you have a truly excellent battleground (or raid, or [insert out-of-game pastime here]), like you're afraid you'll have eight or nine horrible matches to make up for the accidental awesome one? Yeah.

EDIT: Tambien, is it just me or do you get crazy amounts of honor in Wintergrasp? I'd done, like, two battles there until this week. I blew all my honor yesterday and I've already got almost 15K back again, one winning and two losing Wintergrasps later.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Alt-o-rama

1. I am never leveling an alt again.

Don't get me wrong. I will continue rolling and playing alts. They're a blast, I love learning new playstyles, and sometimes I just need a break from the daily quests/gather stuff/rep grind of end-game. (Not the PVP, but I'm not always in the mood to shoot and/or heal people in the face.)

But I'm going to PLAY alts rather than LEVEL them. Ideale and Ahami were a blast because I just played them, my way and at my pace, instead of leveling them. Onashne is still a ton of fun — but every zone between the Arathi Highlands and the Western Plaguelands was a half-touched blur. Taking your time and savoring the "leveling process" is much more fun than shooting up 22 levels in a couple weeks.

2. My first three characters were my troll shaman, an undead priest, and a human rogue. I rolled all three within the first couple days of buying the game, and leveled them pretty much side-by-side for 20 levels each — which took a long time because I had no idea what I was doing.

The rogue I never really developed as far as story went. In fact, I only rolled her because I thought people would be RPing in an MMORPG (silly thought, right?) and didn't know enough about the lore to feel comfortable as anything but a human or undead. (The troll shaman was because I really, really wanted a shaman and liked Horde better — I spent my first few levels praying that no one would interact with me until I figured out no one on Whisperwind RPed. Ahami was much more developed than that original troll shaman, and is much more fun to play.)

The Forsaken priest, though. Oh, I pored over the WoWWiki entry on the Forsaken, and read every snippet of lore I could get my hands on. I came up with a backstory for her. I had dreams about her story (don't laugh). And she was the first character I rolled over on VeCo, but like Ideale, she was abandoned at level 8 while I tried other servers and dabbled with Alliance, because I couldn't get into shadow priests. I'm not sure now whether that was because she's just NOT a shadow priest, or because I hate the style — when I leveled her the first time on Whisperwind, I'd put all my points in discipline because I didn't know it wasn't a leveling spec (actually, she's just lucky I actually put all her points in one tree — the shaman and rogue were not so favored). I picked her up briefly when I got a real life friend to roll a warlock on VeCo, then dropped her for another hunter and eventually deleted her to roll Silang.

But probably my biggest regret about the game is that I never leveled my priest. And I had two open spots after consolidating bank alts, so a few days ago, I rerolled her. And I'm so glad I did — I missed her!

3. I still kind of hate warlocks. Which is too bad, because crazy Malisya's fun to play. Maybe I'll put her on Feathermoon with my other "fun to RP but taking up too much space" toons.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Word.

Too Many Annas breaks it down pretty good right here.

I have nothing constructive to add to this, so that's all I will post right now.