The Return, along with a new UI

I've been around, doing mostly real life things, like finishing up school for the semester, doing seasonal work at Disney World, and starting my new internship at a ad agency. So, I went to log on today and discovered something really strange. My Blogger AND my Youtube accounts are both being moved over to associate with my Google account. So I had a helluva time getting back into this, so much so that I was contemplating just moving it and reposting everything somewhere else! Anyway, I'm here now.

Been working on Loremaster of Outland, did Zangarmarsh and Hellfire Peninsula yesterday. Working on Nagrand and something else today. Pretty standard stuff there.

A couple weeks ago I got fed up with my crazy old UI and started looking for something else. What encouraged me to do this was actually watching TankSpot's 10m Sindragosa strategy video with Mouse and he kept commenting how he really liked the girl's UI, which got me on the hunt to actually try to do it. With the help of Google, I actually found this addon pack at WoWInterface that contained everything you'd need to replicate Aliena's UI.

I spent about four hours just that night trying to make it look right, almost losing my WTF folder in the process. The next day weird shit wouldn't work. I couldn't get invited to groups, and my BGs wouldn't proc for me. I still can't Need/Greed/DE loot, which I just haven't had the energy to fix, although it looks great. There are a few things that need to be tidied up, like the Cooldowns v. DBM's warnings, all of which I will get to....eventually.

Why are images not working the way they did before? *sigh*

Loremaster

I've been quiet on the WoW front for the past couple weeks with all the final projects I'm working on for school. Not that I haven't, however, been playing WoW. In fact, I've been working on Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms, crawling through the 700 quests. I'm currently sitting in the Grim Guzzler, waiting for my hearthstone to be up, with 675 quests down (not including those I have completed in my questlog). I got all the way to the door two rooms outside the end boss for BRD and realized I needed the key. I will be skipping the rest of these unless I absolutely have to. I have a few left for the Lower and Upper Spires, which will be for tomorrow. I hope to coerce Ith into helping me. He owes me.

I haven't been logging very much on this, although I've spent a lot of time in the Plaguelands, which is an area I really like for the story. Very dark and sad.

I'm not sure I can take anymore Blackrock Depths quests.

Random Screenshot: The First Day of Epic Gems

On another note, I think I broke my blog. I have the organization set up to have comments, tags, etc at the bottom, and no matter how hard I try or how many times I redo it, the blog won't change. Wtf.

Moral of this story: Don't fuck around with your blog's settings. You will break it.

Children's Week, Or Why You're Not Allowed to Adopt a Child of Your Own

I like the message behind World of Warcraft's Children's Week: show the orphans and refugees from war around Azeroth to inspire them and help them in their dreams to become great adventurers like you or their parents (who coincidentally died adventuring). So, you take your little orphan to all the things they want to see, a spooky lighthouse, the Dark Portal, Jaina Proudmoore..(What I truly think is precious is that when you get to your orphan's idol, they're usually too shy to ask for an autograph themselves. Really sweet.)

When I got little Dornaa in Shattrath, all I wanted was to keep her. She was so cute, she had sweet little curious things to say. Being a Draenei also made Mitter want to keep her all the more. She even began to question her life as an adventurer, and wonder if, perhaps, she too should settle down soon. But then, here is this little Draenei child, without a family. Rather than procreate, shouldn't Mitter adopt this little girl? And raise her to be a priest? Or a hunter? (Anything but a paladin, really.)

It turns out that as geared-out max-level characters, we're not equipped to handle the rigors of raising a child. Certain things, like eating a ton of sweet in front of them, is just poor manners, where as things like the Hard Knocks achievement, are downright dangerous and negligent. (Although, I happen to think that out of all the classes, a priest is probably the safest one to leave a child with, except for a shadow priest. That's just scary right there.) Were I one of the matrons, I wouldn't lend out one of my charges to a death knight, for instance. Sworn to the Alliance or not, you still worked for the Lich King for a time. You deal out plagues and diseases, not exactly the kind of environment I see fit for a child.

Overall, I think the achievements for this holiday are far easier than most, with the exception of School of Hard Knocks, the PVP one. It's also the one that questions Mitter's parental potential the most. In order to get School of Hard Knocks, you must:

1. Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm
2. Assault a flag in Arathi Basin
3. Assault a tower in Alterac Valley
4. Return fallen flag in Warsong Gulch.

I made the mistake of doing these on the first day. So, Eye of the Storm was by far the hardest. I always avoid assaulting/capturing in BGs, so I really don't know even where to turn most of this stuff in at. When EoS started, all of the Alliance booked it to the flag. One person would get it, and half of the Alliance team would loiter around the flag spawn until the Horde capped everything. I did this with Mouse and a couple other guildies. Mouse hates achievements, and he hated this one far more than the others. I actually can't believe I finally got it, during the third EoS.

Arathi was easy, just needed to be fast, which I am when doing these achievements, like my own personal Crusader Aura. I anticipated Warsong Gulch being hard, too, with half the team loitering around the Alliance flag spawn. A Horde rogue entered and NO ONE touched her. Kindly, she picked up and dropped the flag repeatedly. I hadn't even thought of it! So, I went over to Horde side, waved, and did the same. This is truly the funniest thing I've ever seen.

It took two tries in Alterac Valley, but I finally got it. :D

Saturday Raid

This is my little guild's raid group for ICC10. It's our only raid, once a week, so we have to really churn it out to get through bosses. Our group is made up of a lot of RL friends, although a couple we've met along the way. I'm so proud of how far this little guild has come. I don't ever want to raid with anyone else.

It raises the question about the difference between 25m and 10m raids. 10 mans always seem easier, more like an alt run, whereas 25 mans are where the "good" players are, the hardcore players, and the better loot. It might be considered by some to be ridiculous that I put up screenshots for a ten man group. I like ten mans more. Each person is 2-3x more important. I like the intimacy, particularly as a GM that likes to really know my guildmates and the people I raid with. (And I always feel like just a number in a 25man.) I don't lead raids, that's Mouse's job. Anything outside the raid is my responsibility, but when we zone in it's up to Mouse.

Recently, Blizzard posted this about Cataclysm's raiding change.

"The first of the refinements being made is that we're combining all raid sizes and difficulties into a single lockout. Unlike today, 10- and 25-player modes of a single raid will share the same lockout. You can defeat each raid boss once per week per character. In other words, if you wanted to do both a 10- and 25-person raid in a single week, you’d need to do so on two different characters. Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel. Obviously the raid lockout change doesn't apply in pure Icecrown terms though, as this change goes hand-in-hand with a few other changes to raid progression in Cataclysm.

We're designing and balancing raids so that the difficulty between 10- and 25-player versions of each difficulty will be as close as possible to each other as we can achieve. That closeness in difficulty also means that we'll have bosses dropping the same items in 10- and 25-player raids of each difficulty. They'll have the same name and same stats; they are in fact the exact same items. Choosing Heroic mode will drop a scaled-up version of those items. Our hope is that players will be able to associate bosses with their loot tables and even associate specific artwork with specific item names to a far greater extent than today."

 I...don't mind this. At all. In a way, I'm going to miss the option to do both raids each week. However, I want 10m groups to have access to the same gear. This will put better, more serious emphasis (I think and hope) on 10 mans.

I know a lot of people are a bit upset about this. What do you think?