Patch day, and I’m…

Waiting….

Yes, I’m still waiting, and waiting… I want my stag form! With a dose of a nasty virus currently doing the rounds, and straight off the back of a 14-hour sleep last night and into today, I’m quite behind the 8-ball with downloading updates.

In the meantime, I’m living vicariously through my twitter feed 😦

The day a ‘careless whisper’ turned into a new friendship

I had the most amazing experience today of my short blogging life! I was whiling away the hours of my Sunday, playing my baby warlock (who has only just hit 85), when I got a ‘careless whisper’ from a baby mage ‘Miniices’ that started the following conversation:

Miniices: ‘hi there 🙂 I was wondering if I could ask a question about one of your guildies?’

Me: ‘sure?’

Miniices: ‘I was REALLY slow 🙂 I was looking for Arkham. Did he log on to another alt? Or did he just go offline?’

Me: ‘lol no he’s offline – why?’

Miniices: ‘ he was there one sec ago >.< damn :)’

Me: ‘Can I help?’

Miniices: ‘lol I’m a fan of his. Well, his blog.’

Me: ‘o.o from his blog? aaah’

At this point, I had a ‘gut feeling’ about who this could possibly be, as the person she was talking about was Mortigen, one of our long-standing officers and author of Typhoon Andrew’s – Eye of the Storm, a great blog with a history that goes back to 2006. I won’t ruin it for you just yet though, as the conversation continued…

Me: ‘well he’s just logged on to another toon, so whisper Diamon’

Miniice: ‘please don’t tell him – I want it to be a surprise!’

Me: ‘no probs.’

Some time passes, and I asked Mort if my hunch was correct in guild chat. I took it by his silence that he was rather distracted with his new ‘friend’, but he had said ‘this is awesome’ so I then whispered her saying:

Me: ‘Mort is quite chuffed’

Miniices: ‘really? I’m so glad!’

This is where it got AMAZING.

Me: ‘Are you Navi?’

Her initial reaction to this was ‘I’m good ty’ and then it clicked for her.

Miniice: ‘oh! You know who I am!!!’

It was NONE OTHER than the wonderful and sweet Navimie, of The Daily Frostwolf!!!!

Now I must admit, I immediately had chills down my spine, as I’m a long-term lurker on her blog, and had only just read about a horrible experience she’d had a few weeks back when trying to contact another of her blogging heroes for Navispam on another server (which I won’t go into, but suffice it to say I ‘almost’ did something I’ve never done before, which is to stand up for a total stranger on the internet! You can read all about it here at the Big Bear Butt – he was one angry bear, who wasn’t scared to call out the asshat involved!)

So I played it all cool, but I had a massive smile on my face as I told her I read her blog regularly, to which her response was ‘NO WAY!!! I’m all starstruck now! Well I must get a shot with you as well!!’

I got onto my druid main and met her and Mort for some screenies in Stormwind, then we went and met her on her Nagrand Horde toon Navimie in Shattrath for further ‘close-ups’ with yet another great blogger, Dragonray of Azerothian Life.

I honestly felt like all my christmases had come at once! A new blogger, meeting two of her own heroes on a lazy Sunday!

Navi switched back to her Ally mage, and we had a long and lovely conversation about all kinds of things, and realised we’re very similar-minded! I invited her to hit me up any time if she wanted to join our guild on her little baby mage, explaining it would be an honour to have her.

Her response?

‘I feel honoured!’

And thus, a new friendship was born.

If ever you happen to come across Navi on her travels, you’ll find out for yourself what an enthusiastic and amazing chick she is. I tip my hat to you Miss Navi, and look forward to chatting with you again next time you’re in Nagrand’s neighbourhood 🙂

Ultimate honour – Dragonray, Navimie and Mort all in the same place!

(oh, and I’ll update with a proper screenshot once I get hold of one – in my excitement I forgot to take one!)

Guild Ox reverts to old ranking system, and I’m stoked!

In preparation for MoP, Guild Ox have announced this week that the ‘points system’ for rankings is being reverted as follows:

Mists of Pandaria is only seven weeks away so we have commenced our preparation.

One of the changes that you are about to see is a modification to the ranking system used by GuildOx. Our recent MoP survey, which had over 2000 responses, gave us much clearer insight into what type of ranking system people wanted. We had close to 80% of people say they wanted a simple ranking system or they did not mind what system was used. We also had many, many comments about people being confused or unhappy with the points system and suggesting some interesting (!) alternatives. Some folk found it too difficult to understand the points system, others did not agree with the encounter points weightings and many were just plain unhappy with guilds that killed bosses after them to be still listed higher in the rankings.

After running with a points system now for some time, we are experiencing the pitfalls that are associated with such a system – mainly the complexity in understanding where you will be ranked and the subjective nature of the points weightings.

Consequently, we are shifting back to the system where you are first ranked on the number of tier bosses that you have killed and then by the date/time of the kill. We will continue to normalize timestamps for heroic content. You will see this change happen early this week so we can test it for MoP.

The bottom line – your guild will be ranked based on the time/date of the last boss that you killed. Simple, easy.

Quite frankly, this is a long overdue and positive change to the ranking system. Our guild <Insidious> stalled in progression due to changes in the raid team, but played a pretty mean game of catch up once we had rebuilt.

We ‘thought’ we had finished 12th in 10 man rankings, only to be pipped at the post by a stinky Horde guild for a final rank of 13th on Nagrand US.

Without Guild Ox reverting the ranking system, we ran a high risk of being overtaken by other guilds with no kills for a number of weeks who had happened to have the right team to kill an earlier boss weeks (or even months) before, which would have given them the ‘points’ to overtake us even 2-3 weeks after our own 8/8H kill.

Kudos to Guild Ox for listening to the masses and making the system based on ‘we killed it 10 minutes before you’ rather than ‘we skipped bosses and killed the highest point value boss first on heroic’!

An open letter to the Blizz RNG loot gnomes

No loot makes for one sad kitty 😦

Dear Blizz,

I really feel like doing it right now – alt+Q+Q. After 26 weeks of raiding/clearing Dragon Soul every week, on both normal and now mostly heroic, you just refuse to give me or my rogue melee buddy a break. I think you KNOW what I’m talking about – Vial of Shadows and Seal of Primordial Shadows.

I’ve run LFR TWENTY EIGHT TIMES (which should demonstrate my dedication to that extra bit of dps without saying anything about the levels of insanity actual raiders experience in that environment – /wrists) , and the trinket has dropped ONCE, only to go to a bottom dwelling enhance shaman. Never seen the ring – ever. Looking at the math (not my strong point) I see that I have at least killed the first 5 bosses in DS on all difficulties 50+ times. And trinket seen – ONCE – in LFR. I have begun to wonder what the point is in continuing, especially with MoP just around the corner, where we’re forced to vendor all our hard-earned heroic gear to replace them with quest greens.

Now Blizz, we haven’t killed Spine or Madness on heroic yet, and heroic tier gear has, for the most part, been warrior/shaman/hunter tokens (GG loot gnomes >.<) which has seriously hindered our ability to gear the team evenly for these later bosses… problem is, up until recently we were running with only one of those three classes regularly, so our resto shaman has pretty much completed all 3 shaman spec HEROIC tier sets, while the rest of us drink ourselves into oblivion to numb the pain, and the lack of token drops for other classes (we often run with 3 druids, a rogue, a mage, 2 priests, a shammy, a paladin  – getting my drift? Doing the numbers? Yes, that’s half a raid team sharing the same tokens THAT NEVER DROP!!!) makes it rather difficult to progress without the accompanying output increases that come from upgrades. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not loot whores, but seriously – enough is enough.

Putting best in slot, key items on a global loot table is total retardation. Giving them an average 1% drop rate is even more insane. I mean, we didn’t even see Wrath of Unchaining drop until we were well into heroic modes on the first 5 bosses, and that’s a 30% drop chance!!! Now that bloody thing drops regularly, and often goes to DE.

And Blizz, don’t even get me started on mounts…. not one. mount. ever. In all tiers of cataclysm. It’s enough to make baby jesus cry.

The Daily Blink as muse…

So let’s get down to it – the idea for this blog actually came via the hilarious Daily Blink, and this particular comic. After all, I am normally a sane, rational kitty who turns into complete hellcat thanks to LFR…

Yes, all normally sane females DO turn into raging lunatics in LFR!