Brain Calgonated but who am I now?

Good morning musers!

I don't have words for the lack of blogging over the last month. I seriously underestimated what the tutoring schedule would do to my brain. Don't get me wrong, I have no regrets, but I think that I needed to be more honest with myself. If I can't play WOW then I can't blog about WOW. Blogging requires a minimum commitment of WOW time in order to aggregate enough events to make a decent post.

So you may be asking wth is up with the Title for this post? Well this weekend, which was absolutely lovely if I may say so, I spent with my loving wife & just relaxed and let my brain soak, no major thinking no students just mental calgon. It was just lovely. To top it off, my honey went to the gym after Sunday's festivities. Which gave me some uninterrupted WOW time. After banging out some dailies, I see on guild chat someone looking for an arena partner & I find myself saying on gchat, " I'd love to get a 2x2 or 3x3 team"

This leads to my first major change since I did a Major Post. I LOVE PVP! I dunno maybe it was all the stress of the last month, but I found BG's WG & now arena fun & relaxing.

But this is so odd for me, I was so anti-pvp for so long that my friend Doug busted my boomkin balls for wanting to do a 2x2 with him. He ripped into me how he had begged me to be in his 3x3 back in the BC days I had snubbed him. This was of course when he was scoring the Green Trophy Tabard of the Illdari, on Sat afternoon but I digress.

Onto other items of note

Guild dramarama: I'm still in Knights of the Blade, but I may be looking to leave, there has been guild leadership issues over the last month which have lead to progression issues & other items. I do like all of the people in the guild, but with the summer coming I may look to greener pastures. Still I may stick around & see if they're able to shake this off. Stay tuned for more dramarama

On the state of cowardice: This has to do with VOA 25 & Mr. Emalon. I've noticed a level of cowardice towards Emmy that makes me shake my head & wish for the good old days when I got yelled at for being a boomkin. Here is what I've seen since his arrival on the scene

1.) VOA 25 Pug gets organized

2.) People wipe on 1st Emalon mob due to n00bishness

3.) Players whine that we should do the easier boss 1st

4.) if easier boss is done 1st, whiners leave raid after scoring gear\badges.

5.) If Emalon is done 1st whiners leave raid.

Hopefully as players get better geared etc, this pattern will VOT, but it is leading to gear check's as a response to players asking to be invited then bailing on emalon.

That's it for today

Until another day

The Musing Moonkin

Remember Me?

Greetings Musers
Yes I know I've slacked on the blog for way too long! I feel so bad about it! Even though I have on my treo to post every four days, actually finding the time to post with my schedule was nigh impossible. I even had a couple of good ideas to boot!
In Any case with the slowdown in SAT work I should have mental juices to update my blog more frequently!
Until Then
The Musing Moonkin

Won't anyone think of the children?!?!

Greeting fellow musers!

In general I hate it when I'm right, since it usually isn't good news, but alas regarding my post about Noblegarden\Children's Week\Argent Tournament screwing up day to day patterns on my server has been proven correct. Only 1 out of 25 flasks of endless rage sold on the AH. Not because they were overpriced but because no one was raiding. I don't know what is going on with other servers\guilds but my guild has taken to raiding on Friday\Saturday to compensate for all of the the holiday's. I wouldn't mind this schedule except that Friday is now a teaching night for me & Saturday is off limits unless the wife is out & about. An important note gentle reader's it really is good to set days that you will not raid unless X criteria is met (in my case X is wife is away on business or out with friends.)

I am feeling ambivalent regarding the achievement's for Children's week. I don't know if it's because I'm on a dark humor binge ATM, or because I think that they took a event that was I felt was very sweet & added some dark items to it. (Hail To The King, Baby is just plain dark IMHO.) I've been mulling over some other changes that I think would fit this dark, bleak version of Children's week

1.) Orphans brought into Battlegrounds, Instanced Dungeons or Daily Quests where damage can incur can be killed. So you've accepted responsibility for your orphan how can you not expect that bringing your ward into a dangerous environment wouldn't have consequences. What did you think was going to happen? It's a kid for frak's sake. I feel that this will make earning the achievements involving combat much more valuable.

2.) New Achievement! I've singled out the kids who are mean to me: We all know that children; esp children who are orphan's due to War, Catastrophe etc can be mean to the 'new kid'. Show your love of your orphan by helping him\her get revenge on the kids who tease him at the orphanage.

3.) New Achievement! Laying Flowers On Their Graves: Help your orphan find closure with the senseless death of their parents by taking them to their grave\final resting place of their parents.

If you can think of any other changes that can be made to children's week let me know & I'll post them

Until another day

The Musing Moonkin

3.1. Aftershocks: Herd Mentality in full swing

Good Morning Musers,

I had this minor moment on insight yesterday after getting the Noblegarden title outta the way. I went over to the AH in IF to post some flasks & get some mats to make more flasks when I noticed that there were barley any flasks or mats for sale. Oddly price gouging of the assrouge variety was not in swing (though this was rectified by last night; frost lotus was up to 140% of market value on fenris's alliance ah's)

I then realized that while I was posting my wares that no one was actually in IF, players on Fenris were either wrapped up completing Noblegarden, perusing advancement in the Argent Tournament or god forbid trying to get both done at the same time. My curiosity intrigued I scanned the AH and discovered that it's cupboards were not fully stocked. There was gear on sale of course but not the rows and rows that normally would be available to peruse.

I'm still trying to explain this logically, I think what I saw on my server and may be happening on other server's is a classic example of herd mentality. If enough people stop doing their daily routine to pursue a special event (holiday, sporting, etc.) It will affect day to day needs whether in a community or on a virtual world.

The question I have though is how long will this disruption continue. My gut says that with Children's week Starting on Saturday we will still see disruptions with day to day server needs for at least two weeks. By then people will have done enough Argent Tournament quests that they will start to pursue their usual goals.

Until another day

The Musing Moonkin

A Noble Idea

Good Morning Musers!
Well it was noble of me to think that I could keep a hard 'n fast writing schedule, but RL reared it's ugly head and prevented me from keeping up beyond daily tweets. This was compounded by the fact that two server events were going on & I had guild runs to do & I had real life obligations.
So let's see what's been going on
1.) Naxx 25 Cleared: Yes I stayed up till 2am on Sat to finally knock this achievement off the list. As you may be aware I tutor all day Saturday, So I had been up since 6am and had taught 3 kids that day. (AKA it wasn't a quiet day for me.) I actually passed out during phase 3 of the KT fight. It took my GM screaming at me to move out of the Purple Rings O Death to wake me up. While Naxx may be easysauce I firmly believe now that it's best done either as an afternoon event on the weekend or over two nights. There's just something that happens around the 2nd wing were people start going AFK. I don't know what it is but suddenly people will post bio BRB, afk phone etc.
2.) Gear Upgrades: This has been bittersweet for me, I tend to get attached to my gear & I set goals on what I'd like to replace with what etc, but sometimes you have to go with what drops. I had to make peace with that and take what the random die roll generated.
3.) Petopia: I do love holiday events esp when it get's me closer to my goal of 75 pets!!! I have grown quite fond of my Argent Page as it is quite nice to have a pet to kneels before you periodically!.

That's it for now. I'm off to enjoy a tasty Lunch!
Until Another Day
The Musing Moonkin

Feeling like a plucked chicken!

Good afternoon musers

First off I hope that your server has finally become stabilized. Fenris became somewhat stable last night, though there were still some hiccups here & there.

Well I wanted to post my current talent build but the armory isnt' updated. Needless to say right now I feel very un-moonkinie (if that is a word) I took the points I put into Typhoon & Starfall & put them into Imp IS & Imp FF. While this does up the dps across the board i feel like I've cut some of myself off. I know that Typhoon really is for PVP & Starfire is situational at best but still I miss them.

Normally I don't post questions to my readers but for those souls that do mull over my scribblings have you noticed this feeling before when you sacrifice BOOM for viability?

Until Another Day

The Musing Moonkin

3.1 Quick Thoughts

1.) Job Well Done!

As always Blizzard takes what worked & didn't work in previous major patches and improves on them.

Positives

- Argent Tournament is fantastic. What got me was the fact that you have to earn the right to compete in the tourney & from what I can gather this takes at least 3-4 days to acquire all the tokens. This means that all day players only have a slight advantage against casuals.

- In addition it opens up a number of items and achievements. I like the fact you can trade tokens for faction rep.

- Mounts Swimming is fun, hilarious & ever so useful.

- Fishing quests actually make sense, though the question for me is do I or don't I focus fire on getting that Turtle Mount?

- Completing the Epic Flight Form quest line is now a feat of strength. Oh Yeah!

- Level 213 idols being available for purchase. Goodbye Idol of Steadfast Renewal! Hello Idol of the Shooting Star!

Negatives

Major

- Mana Regen Nerf: Before I vent, I have a feeling this nerf will itself be nerfed. I understand the dev's view that mana regen was way too high (it kinda reminded me of a sci-fi weapon's power pack being drained then quickly replenished) but still the 40% nerf was a bit much. My guess is that it was nerfed that hard so they can 'adjust' it to say 20%.

- No Alchemy Daily Quests WTF?!!? I was so looking forward to this. I am seriously considering giving up my Alchy Stone for a epic trinket now.

- Dual-Spec: I'm going to have to agree with a couple of my cohorts, this was the worst 1000gp I have ever spent in world of warcraft. In my opinion, the concept of Dual Spec is good, the idea behind it is good, the implementation of it is good. Where it fails is the reality of players. What I saw last night was scores of alliance players on Fenris 'expanding their minds' only to say a few minutes later WTF, when am I ever going to be Shadow Priest or a Ret Pally.

Here's my point. To be an effective player, you need to know your class & spec. Unfortunately that takes time. There's no way around it, you want to be a good PVP'r your going to be in the battlegrounds or arenas for hours, you want to raid end game? Expect to put in hours reading strat working out theorycraft, determining what is sacrificed for what etc.

I can back this up with my own experiences Bear Tanking last summer, reading how to feral tank is one thing, but actually doing it took about six weeks before I had it down in normal dungeons.

I guess this ties back to my belief that once you find your ideal self, you should stick to it. In the end you find your alts unsatisfying.

Minor

Mini-Map needs to be fixed couldn't see my arrow on the new one.

That's it for now

Until another day

The Musing Moonkin