Happy Hallow-Ding!

Happy Halloween from Tawyn (aka Pike) and her little menagerie of pets. I hope you all enjoy yourselves, whatever you're doing.

Oh, and in other news:


DING 60!

The pre-BC big one!

Ten more levels to go, but I'm really in no rush to get there. I really enjoy the whole process of questing and leveling up and exploring, and I don't want to just rush through Outlands to the finish line. Although with nearly 500,000 XP to go until level 61, I don't know how fast I could "rush through" anyway... heehee.

If you haven't noticed, I enjoy posting a lot of screenshots. I think they make things more interesting. And I have fun posting them, so it works out!

Random Ramblings!

So my Sitemeter tells me that I've had like 100 new visitors just in the past few hours thanks to a link on Big Red Kitty. To coin a term, I have been BRK'd. Wow! Thanks BRK! And welcome to any new visitors. Please feel free to browse around my little blog, and pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable if you so desire. *passes out cookies and tea for the readers, and a variety of pet foods for their pets*.

(Edit: And a link on Mania's Arcania too? Wow, thank you!! I might just have to make another "shout-out" post sometime soon.)

Now then, Outlands:


This screenshot was taken shortly before heading through the Dark Portal to get to Outlands. Yes, I've had my hearth set to Shatt since level 50 or so, but there was no way I was going to miss out on going through the portal.

The irony is that the screenshot is already "outdated", so to speak, since in the short time between then and now I have already managed to replace two pieces of gear as well as my ranged weapon, all with stuff that is better than my old-world gear to a ridiculous degree. I already love Outlands though-- it's fun, it's challenging (the "yellow" mobs are more like "orange" mobs, and I love that challenge), and of course, there's all the new gear!

So here I am, on the fast-track to level 60 (ooh, remind me to do more farming... need epic mount cash) and enjoying every bit of it.

Other bits of interest: My teal kitty has been christened Locke. This name has a double meaning for me; firstly, John Locke was a 17th-century English philosopher, just like Thomas Hobbes... so there is an in-joke there, a nod to both the Calvin & Hobbes comic and to BRK. Secondly, Locke Cole is a character from the Super Nintendo game Final Fantasy VI, which is one of my favorite video games. Locke the kitty and Tux the owl have been taking turns playing in Outlands with me, all the while being lavished with roasted quail.

Also, I have decided that I'd like to improve upon my PvP skills. I've been doing a lot of battlegrounds recently (since once I hit a level ending in 8 or 9 I hightail it over to the battlemasters... you might say I have a bit of an addiction) and while I would call my self an "okay" PvPer and I tend to be towards the top of the damage charts at the end, I still am not a "good" PvPer. A lot of times in PvP I'll get caught of guard or people will sneak up on me, and then I seem to spend the duration of that duel trying to get back to range and doing very little non-pet damage. It's definitely time to practice my technique here.

I do have an interesting PvP story to share. I was in Alterac Valley the other day, and was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere when I ran across a lone orc warrior. He was level 51, and I was level 59. Now I know it's battlegrounds, I know player-vs-player combat is the whole point here... but I couldn't bring myself to attack him. Not with eight levels separating us. Besides, since we were both out in the middle of nowhere I figured he must have been doing a quest or something. So I hopped on my mount and rode right past him. Not long after this I paused to catch my bearings and decide where I wanted to go. And who should come jumping on me but that level 51 warrior! We fought, and obviously Tux and I triumphed. But I have to say that little incident left me admiring the orc player's courage and mindset. He knew what PvP was all about. He was willing to try taking on a player that was eight levels higher than him. Whereas I, well, I love a good battlegrounds game but I'm really just a carebear at heart. It was an interesting juxtaposition of two different playstyles and I /salute that orc warrior, wherever he is.

Alrighty, enough pseudo-philosophical rambling. Back to Outlands!

Big Teal Kitty

That, my friends, is Rak'Shiri, the oh-so-elusive Winterspring spawn that is the prized catch of Alliance hunters everywhere (since hordies can summon the same type of cat for a quest, so they don't have to go hunting for him. =P) He has a sort of teal-tint to him, and that is one of the reasons why I picked him over other cats... because teal has long been my favorite color. This also explains my character's hair color... but I digress!

My wait for him actually wasn't that bad. I camped out at Frostsaber Rock for a couple hours last night, with no luck, but a lot of guildies were on at the time chatting up a storm so I at least wasn't lonely. Then, this morning, at roughly 4:30 am server time (don't worry, I work the early morning shift, so I'm used to it... and I'm an hour ahead of my server anyway) I logged on again to see if he was there. I didn't see him at first, but I did manage to catch him out of the corner of my eye when I was on my way out...

Taming him was certainly an adventure; I was pet-less, obviously, and there were mobs everywhere. After several false starts and mashings of the Feign Death button (I maintain my stance that Feign Death is a girl's best friend), I laid down a freezing trap and began the taming process. Not long into this, I was jumped by a stealthed mob. Helplessly I watched my HP dwindle but then, in the nick of time, my new kitty was tamed and helping me fight the offender. Unfortunately this meant I hadn't had time to feed him or teach him growl, so he wasn't a lot of help, especially since more and more mobs kept showing up. We fought valiantly for a while, but eventually I hit the bucket. I didn't mind though, because I now had my lovely Big Teal Kitty.

(Adding to the overall amusement of the above story is that I was wearing the Leper Gnome costume the whole time.)

It will take a few levels to get my new kitty up to speed, I think, but it'll be fun. And obviously I will never, ever fully give up Tux. But it's about time I had another pet to play with... just in time for Outlands, too, since I also hit 58 last night. He does need a good name, though. It was my boyfriend who ironically came up with the idea of naming him after a philosopher a la Hobbes (the irony being that as far as I am aware, he has never read BRK), so I'll be thinking!

Oh, and thank you all for the suggestions on blog readers. I will be looking into them this weekend.

Blogs, and bad hunters (not together, fortunately)

It never ceases to amaze me how expansive the blogging community is, even in a single subject (in this case, WoW.) I've been finding myself linked to in blogs and even mentioned in blog posts (thanks again Matticus! It was a very interesting article too) so I keep finding more and more blogs to read. I'm afraid I may run out of room in my Bookmarks Toolbar Folder before long. I need to find a nice, easy way to keep track of all the blogs I read-- is Google Reader good? I need some recommendations.

While we're on the topic of blogs, I also want to mention that I do in fact read every single comment that is posted here, thanks to Gmail notifications. I even read the ones made on really old posts. I just wanted to mention that because I've been getting some comments on older posts recently, and I wanted to make sure everybody knew that they are all read and quite appreciated.

Anyways, I've been coming up with a lot of things I've wanted to write about lately; but I think this post is just going to focus on... bad hunters. Yes, hunters seem to have a bad rap for having the highest quantity of bad players. To be quite honest I'm not surprised. The amount of people I've run into who don't have "Hunter 101" down is astonishing. (I think Hunter 101 probably consists of one sentence: "Send your pet in to hold aggro for you and shoot things from afar." Seriously I think some hunters have not yet made that connection.)

I once grouped with a level 40-something hunter whose strategy in an instance went like this: use multi-shot or volley to get as many mobs as possible to aggro onto you, and then melee everything. Yes, I'm serious. Now, it's one thing to be a self-professed delusional hunter and do stuff like that for fun ;) , but it's another thing to seriously use that as your main method of attack in an instance. (For the record, that guy wound up aggro'ing everything in a particularly bad room and everybody died except me, and I even managed to dispose of all the offending mobs. I was pretty proud of being able to survive such a bad wipe. It's moments like that-- moments where the odds are stacked against you, and you experience the thrill of coming up with a way to survive-- that really make me love being a hunter.)

It's even worse when other people are grouped with bad hunters and then they feel less inclined to group with hunters again, later. My boyfriend occasionally runs instances while I'm gone or busy; many times I have returned home to be met with "Pleeeease get on WoW and group with us, we just had to kick this horrible hunter who can't use traps/feigns death at the worst times/can't control his pet/keeps wiping us/*insert something else here* and we need you." It's flattering that he and his friends turn to me when they need a reliable hunter, but it's sad that it's so hard for them to find reliable hunters in the first place.

Now maybe it's just easier for me to pick out bad hunters because hunter is really the only class I know much about. Maybe I've grouped with lots of bad players of other classes and just haven't noticed because I'm not very experienced yet. But I don't know, I'm pretty sure I have met poor players of other classes (the rogue who was out-DPS'd by my pet, when I was Marksman-spec'd, comes to mind... granted I don't know much about rogues, but that struck me as rather, erm, less-than-stellar), but bad hunters are just everywhere. It sort of makes you wonder why that is so. Maybe this is just one of those classes where you really need to have a "Eureka!" moment before you finally get it. Or maybe it's a more gradual process... or maybe it just depends.

There are definitely good hunters out there, though. And it always makes me happy to see those. As I have said before, that's what I'm aiming for... being a good hunter. I don't think I'm there yet but at least I know I'm not bad. It warms my little huntery heart to see really good hunters in battlegrounds, even if they're of the opposing faction and beating me into oblivion =) So keep up the good work, guys!

Tweaking my UI (and my spec, again)

So a couple of days ago, I got this random urge to mess with my UI again. So off I went in search of new addons...

My first stop was actually Bartender3. However, I didn't like it very much... it just seemed sort of confusing and counter-intuitive to use. (I do acknowledge the likely possibility that I just gave up without trying for very long!) Anyways, I dumped Bartender for now and began using StellarBars instead. Now, StellarBars doesn't offer a whole lot of customization... basically it's for people who like the general "look" of the default UI but want it to be a bit cleaner and maybe have a couple extra options. But it works for me I think.

Next I installed FuBar and a couple of plugins for it. I imagine most people know what FuBar is already, but if you don't, it basically adds a couple of thin "bars" to your UI which you can plug various "mini-addons" into. Also some stand-alone addons, such as Omen, plug into FuBar as well.

So now my UI looks like this:


I think I like it overall, but I would still like to do some further tweaking and maybe give Bartender another go sometime, if I ever feel like it. Oh, and I'll definitely also be keeping my eyes open for other FuBar plugins too.

Also, I respec'd again. Back to Beast Mastery. I'd been sort of planning to return to it at some point, but I originally didn't want to for another few levels, after I'd hit 60 and got an epic mount and all that. But the other day my brother dropped by for a bit... he's a 70 troll warrior on another realm, and he informed me firstly that "There is nothing scarier in battlegrounds than a beast mastery hunter and its Night Elf pet" (heehee), and secondly that "Outlands will be really fun for you, especially if you're beast mastery." I'm not sure how he came to that conclusion because as far as I know he hasn't leveled a hunter himself past 30 or so, but anyways, he managed to convince me and not long after that I was running to the Dwarven District of Stormwind, throwing down gold and respec'ing back to BM.

The Big Red Owl is back!

To be completely honest, like the recent comment I left over on BRK's blog, the different hunter specs are like my kids (well, I've yet to try Survival, but I love the sounds of it) and I can't just pick one. I think maybe I'm doomed to respec all the time for the rest of my hunter career. Ah well.

Pics or it didn't happen! *grin*

There are really three parts to this blog post:

The first part is, I want to say thank you to all of you who commented on my last post about taking my time through Outlands. Thank you for the tips and support, and I think I'm going to be telling any over-eager friends that I will let them know when/if I need their help, and that I don't exactly need it right away.

Secondly, Kestrel posted over at his blog that when it comes to girls on the internet... "Pics or it didn't happen!" ;) So off I went in search of a picture...


It's nothing exactly stellar... and yes I know I look a lot younger than I really am (I am in my mid-twenties! Really! Honest!) but it's the best I could dig up for now... and my boyfriend really likes this picture (he actually took it) so I guess it can't be all that bad! =P And yes, that is a Firefox shirt I'm wearing. Geek pride all the way, baby!

Lastly, I wanted to expand a bit on a comment I made in another blog. Grumpy had an interesting post on his blog, called "Do you regret your choice?" It asks if you ever regret rolling a hunter because of all the flak that hunters seem to get with being "easy-mode" and "overplayed". This was my response:

"I have to say that sometimes I feel a tad bit embarrassed to be yet another "female night elf hunter", but on the other hand it reminds me that if I want to stand out, I have to become a really good hunter. That was one of the first things to really inspire me to start looking up hunter information online and start practicing my skills-- I decided early on that I wasn't going to be "another night elf hunter", I was going to be "a good hunter".

I don't regret being a hunter because I love the class so much. But sometimes I do wonder if it's just because it's the first class I ever played so maybe it's like a "first love", so to speak. I wonder if, had I picked another class, I would have fallen in love with that one instead. I guess we'll never know..."

And yeah, I think my comment pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter. Is it annoying to often be lumped with "all the other millions of bad night elf hunters who need to learn to play"? Yes, it most certainly is sometimes. But to me, that's all the more incentive to truly become a good hunter. I want to become good at my class and stand out. I know I still have a long way to go, but I think that I'm at least on the right path.

It's true that I also have been wondering if I would love hunters so much if it wasn't the first class I picked. I want to say I would have anyway, but we'll probably never know. I'm glad I picked the class I did though, and yes, I'm proud to be a hunter. Most overplayed class? According to Warcraft Realms, yes. The easy-mode class? Debatable, but I'll accept it. But nonetheless, I'm proud.

Teetering on the Edge of Outlands

I am level 56, over halfway to level 57, and a young hunter's thoughts are turned to Outlands...

Yesterday, just out of curiosity, I actually went to Honor Hold (I'd been warlock summoned there before, for my alchemy/herbalism training, and I'd also set my hearth to Shatt a few levels back, so I already had the flight point) and wandered out amidst the level ?? elite demons to do some exploring for just a bit. I wound up running into some level 58/59 mobs who I disposed of, and I've gotta tell you, your first "Outlands kill" does feel good.

But I quickly returned back to Azeroth... I have some quests there that I want to finish up before I do move on to Outlands "for good".

I have to admit though, I have sort of been taking a "semi-break" from my main for a couple reasons, not the least of which is that some of my friends and guildies seem to be a bit too well-intentioned for my tastes, and being well aware of my level, they are ready to hold my hand and rush me through Outlands, helping me to do all the quests and get all the gear that they "already know are good". It's great of them to offer their assistance, but I've always been somebody who does things at her own pace, taking her time to experience the game and its story on her own, to the best of her ability-- I don't really want too much assistance here.

One of these people has a Karazhan-running hunter on another realm; he's taken it upon himself to tell me exactly which Outlands gear and weapons I "have" to get. I appreciate his advice and don't doubt his experience but I feel like I can figure out which gear to get on my own, because I seem to have done well-enough on my own so far, gear-wise (this particular person even said so)... so I don't see why I should be needing all this help all of a sudden. If I do need help or advice I can always just ask when I get to that point.

Anyways, because of that, I've been sort of messing around with other characters where there is less pressure. I have a mage that I've really been starting to enjoy playing, and I have a dwarf hunter who has recently tamed a wolf named Clifford; if you ever spent a lot of time reading as a kid, then I'll presume you get the inherent joke here. (Otherwise, I will direct you here! And still make you figure out the joke =P) There is something fun about dwarves that I can't quite pin down. I love my night elf hunter but dwarf hunters, especially female dwarf hunters, are so unique and refreshing sometimes.

Tawyn and Tux have not been abandoned however! I'm still playing them, just not as much. I am looking forward to hitting level 60 sometime soon, though. Even though I didn't start playing until 70 was the big one, I still think 60 is an admirable milestone (sort of like 40).