Wednesday 29 October 2008

Argent Knight to guard me

Well, I came across some people farming Necrotic rune things so joined in. (And got a lovely comment - "Nice to see a skilled Girl player").

I went and bought me a guardian knight... (can't remember the name of the trinket right now..)


Isn't he handsome?

The thing that really made me laugh was when his time was up....


He bubble hearthed - LOL - I just love Blizzard humour at times. This one will keep me giggling for weeks :)

Saturday 25 October 2008

NEW PET - Vampiric Batling - LOVE!

I gotz a new pet tonight...

Love him, hug him, squeeze him...


Also - if you're lucky enough to get and be able to use the Arcanite Ripper then right click it and see what happens - son is a very happy boy tonight.

Busy, busy, busy

So many achievements, so little time.

I've not been terribly well and blogging just hasn't caught me recently. Things have been very busy IRL (yes, I have one of those) and almost as busy in game too. So a quick synopsis of what's been going on...

I am taking a holiday from my Council position in the guild. All the whispers, organising, petty arguments, drama and stuff have taken their toll on me and rather than step down from the Council completely (which I almost did), my lovely, wondeful colleagues have agreed that I can go on holiday.

This is what my fantastic friends wrote on our guild website - it made me cry...

Seph is not to be, under any circumstances, bothered by guild shit until she says she is ready. She is still of course here, but any questions you'd ask that you wouldn't ask a normal members is off limits. We are 6 (or at least 5) other members that will be there for those questions.

This has gone on for long enough and we need to take care of Seph. She's just a person, an amazing one, but still with limited capabilities.


Since I stepped down, the relief has been immense. I respecced COH and have relaxed in raids - it showed... taken from our guild first kills in MH - Anetheron and a try on Kaz'rogal...


Analysing the results made me realise just what I love about my priestess.


Just look at all the different heals I used - so much choice, so many variations. Most of it was COH, but I was playing with it and getting used to it, but I think I managed to use practically all of my healing spells at some point in the events.

As a guild we've been playing with raids in the newly nerfed instances and having a great time. We've done 3 out of 5 in MH (while still only 2 in SSC and none in TK), then decided maybe we'd better go back and finish SSC - so we went and one shot the first 4 bosses - 2 of which were first kills for us. I know it's been nerfed "TO THE GROUND" (a reference to Ghostcrawler and ret palas - go search the internet and widen your blogging reading if you don't understand), but we had great fun - a wonderful sense of cameraderie, fun, teamwork and I felt it brought us closer together as we wait for what Wrath will bring us.

Oh, there's so much more, but my kids are demanding attention...

...oh - one last thing - after a year waiting - I FINALLY got my Sinister Squashling. It brings my total number of pets on Sephrenia to 67. And since patch day, we've not had the Croc quest once - damn random events - grrrr.

Thursday 16 October 2008

Sephrenia Jenkins

Well, patch day was horrible. My realm was last to get back up, was there for 15 minutes, then off again. I finally managed to get in at about 9pm. Add-on Hell. Am slowly working my way through them, but it's hard when your realm is off AGAIN this morning.

I find it VERY frustrating at the lack of communication and information from Blizzard. Any posts complaining about the realm in the technical support forum are locked with a "Not a technical issue" message, but there is nowhere else to complain. It's stupid.

Anyway, during the few hours I actually managed to play last night I "achieved" quite a bit. I got my pet skunk from the Shop Smart, Shop Pet...Smart achievement

I then gathered a few friends and we tried to remember how to get into UBRS! Barkie had to go back to the bank to fetch his key thingie - thank goodness he'd not deleted it.

Me, Barkie druid husband, Dracco lock with evil form, Spaceball mage with stylish new haircut and Justigar paladin explorer ventured in. We had trouble getting in - you can't do it heroic - durr! We got to the rookery and had a blast about, but weren't fast enough for the achievement, so waited for respawns and all ran about madly gathering whelps. We achieved our aim - sadly in all the madness and fun of the kill I let the mage die, but then they expect that, don't they?

Here's the family Jenkins.....


This achievement rewards you with a title - "name" Jenkins. It's a bit of silly fun and just the sort of thing I really love about the game.

Thanks to Justigar I also managed to do going down as levitate doesn't work for it, but a Paladin bubble does.

More to come once I can get back on my bloody realm.....

Friday 10 October 2008

Biker Chick

Remember I bought a [choppa] and was sad because I couldn't use it? Well, they're not soulbound - so I sent it to new level 80 priest as she couldn't buy one because the vendor has gone.


It is SUCH a pose - and great fun. I am so chatting up all my engineer friends nice and early to make me one.


Don't I make this look GOOD? I do like the hairstyle and colour as well - Seph (the real one) will be having a transformation next week. Can't wait.


I re-specced (AGAIN) and played a little bit with heals - I think I could get used to crit heals like this one... and that's without any amazing gear...

Wednesday 8 October 2008

More ZA action - ANOTHER guild first

This week has seen some more ZA action in the guild. We went on Monday and tried to do two timed chests. We were 4 seconds off the second one - 4 seconds - argh! But at least we know it's certainly do-able if some of the dps die a little less, we mount faster, eat more food, potions, etc. We had a go at Jan'alai again after, but had some new folks who had not seen the fight before, so were unlucky.

Last night, we went back for the new reset. Sadly we had a couple of wipes on Akil'zon, mostly due to people not moving in quickly in the storm, but we got one timer done. As we had a hunter with us this time, once we'd seen off the bear we moved to Halazzi, to give him another shot. We had a wipe because we forgot about his cleave and our poor paladin couldn't stand a 17K hit, we had an "oops" ressing blip, and then all went smoothly. We swapped Paladin for Bear as MT and all went much better. In the last 25% we lost MT, but the Paladin carried on while the healers spammed their heals for all their worth. The Paladin died at exactly that same time as the boss did. There was much rejoicing (at the Boss death, not the paladin) and we achieved another guild first.


I'm looking forward to going back and doing all 4 animals, then having a go at Hex Lord Malacrass some time - that sounds like an interesting fight - along the lines of Nefarian with the boss stealing things from the players.

It's strange, but I find it so much easier to heal bears than any other tank. I'm not sure if it's something to do with the fact that my husband plays a druid and we did so many instances together, or if it's something to do with the mechanics, or is just a "Seph thing". Hmmm.

Tuesday 7 October 2008

Random Thoughts

Haven't really been up to much recently - made 4 chrs on the beta - a priest, a warrior and a mage (both for son to play with) and a druid for husband. I was somewhat disappointed that the new lvl 80 chrs don't know how to fish - was looking forward to playing with fishing some more, but I can't.

Also sadly disappointed that you can't just buy motorbikes any more. I wanted to try one of thise and race irresponsibly round Dalaran.

I took the new druid Barkie out for a fly. Crytalsong Forest looks beautiful. Lovely purple-white trees.


A druid friend and I got to talking about druid forms and decided it would be good to have a "Mammoth mount" form to match the new mammoths in WotLK, so that the druids could carry friends around on their backs. I think he wants to be able to jump off aldor rise with 2 friends on board and shift to birdie form instead and watch them plunge to their deaths, but it's still a great idea :)

My mage transferred - son played pvp with it - I played with Polymorph cat...



I also found a new flight carrier...


Fun, fun, fun.... I can't wait to get all this stuff for real now. I've been checking out the latest news on priests in the new patch at Dwarf Priest. Some of the new priestly spells look fun. Divine Hymn looks good (especially for a chicken priest like me who often runs away when faced with multiple foes). As does Hymn of Hope - mmm more mana. Only a week to wait, then it will be pain and agony as I try to respec, sort out all my add-ons and all that horrible "change" stuff.

Friday 3 October 2008

Setting your RAS

Kind of WOW related, kind of not....

My lovely husband is a Business Coach - he helps people get the most from their Businesses. Since he gave up being an IT Director at a well known company our lives have changed so much. I'm not a great one for change. I like to know what I'm doing and where I'm going and I'm happy with the status-quo. That being said I actually do a lot more change than I pretend to dislike...

One of the things he teaches people is about setting their RAS - it stands for Reticular Activating System and is to do with how your mind works. I'm not going to blab on too much about it, but basically what you program your brain for, you are more likely to achieve. If you're thinking about a new car, for example, and choose a Jaguar (let's say). You never see any about until you decide that's what you want, or even get one. Then - they are everywhere! You can't miss them. Where they hell did they come from? Truth is they were already there, you've just programmed your brain to notice them now.

Over the last few days I've been mulling over people's behaviour and some things that have happened to me. This morning the universe provided me with the exact response and thoughts that have been going through my head. Bre posted An Open Letter to Vonya and in it was a reference to a post by Vonya that so eloquently describes my feeling I could have almost written it myself. It's called Entitlement. Make a cuppa and sit down and read it - it's AMAZING.

So - that got me thinking even more - what are you programming your RAS for when WotLK comes out? Are you convinced that your guild will fail, or are you happy with the knowledge that you've got a strong team and will go on to bigger and better things and grow together even more. Are you sure that your loot will never drop, or are you thinking that the nice bit of kit would look lovely on your character? What you're thinking and how you're thinking will ultimately be your reward...


It reminds me of a famous Henry Ford quote "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."

I think my failure to get my much wanted pets recently could be because I've set my RAS to never get one, to have to do certain bosses over and over again. When I won my [Phoenix Hatchling] I went in the instance for the first time, knowing it was to be mine - and it was.

Apologies for the deep and meaningful stuff on a Friday, but my brain has gone into overload. I'm going to have to change when WotLK comes out - I'm going to have to change sooner than that with the patch before it. This time I'm looking to embrace the changes and be positive. If you think life it hard, it is. If you change your RAS, re-program your brain and think positively about your life and people in it, it has a far better chance of being just that.

So - my final(ish) comment for the day - if you see someone today without a smile - give them one of yours. Being called a happy person is a wonderful feeling, even when you're having an off day. It saddens me to think that some people live all their lives having off-days, with the occasional really really bad day. It must be awful.

At last - another ZA kill

Well, it's been a while coming but my guild finally has another ZA kill under its belt. A group went to play on Wednesday, which I sadly could not attend and they made good progress and learning on Jan'alai. Keen to continue we managed to get another group together last night and after a few unlucky tries we managed to kill the dragon hawk boss.


It's a fun fight, very mobile as you have to move about a lot to dodge the fire breaths and the fire balls. I was a little concerned that my priestly healing didn't match that of our druid and paladin, until I looked at the dispel list, where I saw that I managed to rack up 80 odd dispels on our paladin tank. No wonder I didn't have time to heal much - I was far too busy clearing him of his nasty buffs.

We moved on and tried Halazzi, which is harder, but apparently do-able without a Hunter (wanted - hunters for our guild). We got him to 25%, but sadly had a wipe, at which point people were getting tired and it was getting late, so we called it for the evening. I feel sure that this boss will succumb to us soon as well.

It was a fun evening and nice to see us moving forward again.

Thursday 2 October 2008

Not so much Guild stuff of late

I realise I've not been posting so much guild stuff recently. I think it's because most of my guild know about my blog and so I kind of lose my chance to vent because guild drama spills over into my blog or I get whined at for saying how I feel, even in the comfort of my own space.

We've had some drama recently. Over the past few months we've grown quite a bit and taken on almost two other guilds that have died. It's interesting to suddenly find out that there are (or were) other similar guilds to ours on the same server. I thought we were kind of unique, but it seems not.

People have left, people have come back, people have vented their emotions - I thought in an adult guild we would get away from all of that, but it still happens. Sometimes I really have to sit back and remind myself that this is a GAME. We play for fun. We play to escape from the real world.

I play for friendship - playing, instancing and raiding to me is like going out to the pub. Some of the people I play with I have known for 2 years in the game. I'm actually going to meet some of them soon because 2 guys from Sweden are coming to visit us next week - it's very exciting.

Anyway. We've had some settling in issues. It kind of reminds me and ties in with my kids going back to school and settling back in after the summer holidays. We've had to do the same. We're back to generally filling our 25 man raids (with a little bit of begging on occasion). We downed Lurker, had a go at Morogrim and ventured into Mount Hyjal. It's feeling good.

But now that the new patch is on it's way people are getting edgy about what it may bring, or rather what it might take away. The selfish gene is raising its ugly head again. It's hard in a casual guild to do all the things that please all of the people and often as a Council member I find that whatever you do will annoy some people. It's a delicate balancing act.


Things are going to change - about the only thing that is constant in life is that change will happen. We're going to face a lot more changes as WotLK hits us, but I'm hoping that all the hard work we've done in the past and the experiences we've been through together will guide us through and the guild will emerge stronger from it.