Token Female Gamer

I didn’t know I had any firsts left in World of Warcraft. Then again I was pretty sure I was done raiding, so what the hell do I know. =P

Yup, for the first time ever, my warlock has her four piece tier set bonus. What makes this even more amazing is that it’s the current highest gear level. That’s right, tier 13.

The highest gear was only ever available to high end raiding groups, this means militaristic 25-40 people, methodically dying week after week, until the gear and learning curve were sufficient. Then it’s just grinding through the raid over and over. Sounds fun right?

Most like torture really. Loot hasn’t been much of a motivator to participate in such masochism, since the days of EverQuest anyway. And so I have forgone set piece completion in favor of sanity.

But with the latest patch, Looking for Raid (LFR) was added to the game. This is a cross server collection of 25 people, very much like the looking for group system. What makes this really work is that they dumbed down the encounters to such an extent that hardly any coordination is required and completing the event takes very little time.

So lots of success to be had in LFR, high end gear is finally available to all a wider range of players. But like all LF experiences you still have to deal with 24 other random people, replete with ninja looting, complaining, afk-ing, quitting, failing, and so forth.

Thankfully my warlock now has her 4 piece tier bonus, so I never have to LFR with her again. Sadly my druid isn’t quite as lucky.

It’s only the beginning of the holiday season and I am already so burned out. This might have to do with the thirty some people that crammed into my very small place for thanksgiving. After that whole ordeal, I find myself in a motivational slump.

Which is terrible timing (learned my lesson, don’t invite 30 over and feed them!) It’s a busy time. Family obligations, various fairs to attend, and massive amounts of game releases make for very little extra downtime.

And then a new WoW patch was released. And Word of Warcraft is so easy; my husband plays, my characters are already established, our guild merged with another small one so more people are playing. It requires so little thinking and motivation from me, I just piggy back onto the husband’s schedule.

Turns out that I now find myself raiding three nights a week and gearing up two characters. (WoW took advantage of me in my moment of weakness!) Bit more then I was aiming for, but then I should know better. WoW has always sucked me in whole; I’m not so good at applying the whole ‘in moderation’ virtue to WoW.

But I have to say that the 4.3 Patch has made the game much more fun. By that I mean progression is possible, without agonizing grinding or learning curves.

Plus the new tier 13 Warlock set bonuses are awesome! This is probably the first time ever that I have actively wanted to complete a set bonus. Doomguard more often? Yes please!! No more Shard fussing? Finally!

~sigh~ World of Warcraft is like a pit of Quick Sand. Seems like I’m stuck here for a while and the more I struggle the worse it will be. Portal 2 will just have to wait a bit longer. Oh well.

So the latest World of Warcraft patch (4.01) went live yesterday. After two hours of patch downloading and two hours of patch installing and finishing with another hour of post patch patching, I was finally able to get into the game! This is what greeted me:

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Its about time for another little World of Warcraft update. And though I have been trying to keep WoW topics from overwhelming the site, I do still spend quite a lot of time playing it still and could go on and on. Thus I am consolidating all my latest news into one post.

Almost forgot to add that the Midsummer World Event began today which is the last world even that my warlock needs to complete the purple drake flying mount achievement.

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Although I have tried a wide range of characters in World of Warcraft, I have not played a healer since beta. Strangely enough the two characters that I have leveled past fifty are both ranged DPS with pets (Hunter and Warlock). Clearly it was time to branch out!

The not playing a healer thing had a few different reasons, the most prominent being: (1) the changes to priests in beta broke my heart and I refused to play one ever again! and (2) my husband plays a holy priest as his main (making reason one very easy to uphold!). Since I enjoy playing WoW with my husband, playing another healer has seemed rather superfluous.

But recently the mood has changed around here. Husband of mine seems to want a bit of a healing break. Maybe he was jealous of my leet deeps, or he was feeling the urge to stray, whatever the case, he is happy to alt it up with me. So he is tanking while I am healing in our awesome druid duo. (Getting pick up groups has been a breeze!!)

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After having finished all the holiday event Achievements with my hunter I swore never to do them again. But the super fast flying mount reward is just so incredibly spectacular that I had get one for my warlock. (I should just ban the word ‘never’ from my vocabulary!)

Which of course means suffering through all the holiday achievements. Thankfully the current one, Noble Garden, is not so bad. It took me only one evening of play. Plus I got to run around as a bunny for most of the evening. Whatever changes they made to this event (I know lots of the holiday achievements got an overhaul at one point or another) worked wonders, because I didn’t finish it seething with anger. Nice change of pace. =)

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(Its such an awesome title how could I not run with it?!!? Probably should have been Monthly WoW Woes, but that certainly doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.)

DPS (Damage Per Second). The never ending quest for the all time highest damage output EVER. What is the DPS ceiling and how can I get there???

Since both of my World of Warcraft characters are DPS-centric, this question comes up for me often. My love-hate relationship with recount doesn’t help, as I can’t seem to get by without it, but playing with it is almost as impossible. Would I do better without it? Keeping track is eminently distracting. Though having such a clear display of ones performance (compared to everyone else) is highly motivating.

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Okay, so maybe not all woes, but all it is certainly time for my weekly WoW ranting. (Hmm maybe I should do this weekly, might be cathartic.)

Somehow I have gone from being mildly interested in raiding, to raiding consistently four days a week. Since the new dungeon came out, Ice Crown Citadel (ICC), I got invited to be a guest (Hunter) on a regular ICC10, which turned into semi permanent. Then my little guild started running an ICC10 (Warlock does guild runs) and we got invited as a guild to join an ICC25, which has been taking two days a week so far.

The guest gig currently has the best success rate, as it’s a more consistent set of people. Our guild is too small so we always have to pick up a few extra random people (same with the 25man run). But overall the challenge is exciting and succeeding is invigorating.

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This is something that has been circulating in some of the WoW Blogs I read occasionally. Even though I don’t consider this a World of Warcraft Blog (though it could easily become one!) I thought it might be a good way to pay my respects to WoW.

And respect it deserves. World of Warcraft: The Lich King expansion has probably been my favorite game of the year (2009). I know, it was actually released in 2008, but I played so much of the game this year, I think it fully qualifies. =)

I’m pretty sure that I played WoW more this year then I slept. And so I award WoW the “Better than Sleep” award. =)

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My warlocks run of fabulous mounts continues.
The Magnificent Flying Carpet!

As soon as her tailoring skill was high enough, I had to make this. Its far too awesome too pass up. Although there have been quite a few Aladdin jokes.

The description makes me chuckle every time. “This is a very fast rug.” Cute!

<3
TFG