The One Where I’m Getting My Groove Back

Back when MoP was new and everyone was busy farming their asses off and raising lots of vegetables and cooking lots of things … I was concentrating on making money. I farmed vegetables and immediately sold them on the AH instead of stockpiling them or leveling my cooking. As soon as I unlocked the Songbell seeds, I began planting them for Motes of Harmony and quit vegetables all together. The reason being I could use the motes to make extra Living Steels. Which I then sold for money. I like money. I always want more of it. Strangely, I never really have a lot of in-game money due to not actually playing on a serious daily basis and not having enough high level alts to help support my own crafting. Which means I never really made a huge amount of money off of Living Steel because I had to buy Ghost Iron Bars to make Trillium to then make the Living Steel. While there was a profit margin there, it wasn’t a very large one. Especially considering I only used my daily Living Steel transmute an average of 4 days a week. Or some weeks not at all. But I digress; I never stockpiled vegetables or leveled my cooking. That’s the main point here.

Guess what happened when I decided last week I wanted to become Master of all the Ways? I totally had to buy ridiculous amounts of vegetables and meats. I also had to spend lots of hours fishing so I could bundle them into groceries and trade them in for IronPaw Tokens to buy Soy Sauce and all the veggies and meats that were not available on the AH. I was able to grab some stacks of ingredients from the guild bank and I’m very grateful for that and hopefully payed generously enough to compensate for them, but I still had to come up with a lot of the ingredients myself. My in-game money averages around 15,000 gold (seriously, i have GOT to be better at doing dailies and running dungeons) and while I did accomplish what I wanted to accomplish by the time Saturday afternoon had rolled around, my 15k had dwindled down to around 6k. I feel so broke. But it was worth it to get those achievements and finally have that all finished up.

Now I just need to learn to be more dedicated to spending my time in game wisely. I get so easily distracted. I do seem to be heading the right direction though as I made myself buckle down and finish up my Klaxxi reputation by doing those dailies very regularly over the past week.

Maybe the fact that I’m really, REALLY, loving my Death Knight and now have her at level 86 and questing in the Valley of the Four Winds will inspire me to do dailies more consistently. She kicks some serious ass even though I’m merely facerolling my keyboard. I think dailies with her will go much quicker. Plus, she’s now mining ghost iron ore so she can help Elfi transmute living steel without having to pay for mats. It’s actually a little concerning to me that I seem to take down mobs in the Valley faster with my lvl 86 DK than I do with Elfi who has an ilvl of 480. I guess the real test will be if I ever brave up enough to take Morrissa into dungeons. Because I’m playing her by facerolling my keyboard, I’ve been hesitant to do any grouping. I’m such a sensitive little thing sometimes. I don’t want any big, bad internet strangers mocking me. But aside from all that, she seriously kicks ass.

Let The Boring Blog Posts Begin Again

Heads up, suckers! I have found my way back online. My grandfather has improved enough to be moved to a nursing facility near his house for therapy. That means my mother no longer has to stay with me and since he’s back to being 2 hours away and out of danger, I don’t have to spend my days sitting at the hospital. My free time has returned and as a direct result so has my derping around. I’ll admit, the first night I was able to login I did not stay online long. Even though it had only been roughly 5 weeks I had been gone, I had been so focused on other things and so stressed out that I let WoW leave my mind completely. Which resulted in me logging in to Elfindale, gathering my crops and planting new ones, and then standing there in the middle of my farm staring at my bags trying to figure out why I had all that shit and what the hell was it all even for. After about 15 minutes of this brainless staring at inventory, I gave up and logged out.

The next night I logged back in to find my brain had mostly returned to normal and I was able to do dailies, run a scenario and switch over to my DK for some leveling. Ah, it feels so good to be back. I’m behind in that I’ve not done any Thunder Island stuff, so I need to hop over there. However, I think before I get sucked into the island hub, I’m going to finish up some things on Elfi I never got around to, such as finishing off my cooking by completing all of the Ways and getting a few more reputations up to exalted. I will simultaneously work on taking my DK from 86 to 90 so she can fly while gathering ore for me.

In almost related news, screenshots:

Where I’ve Been and Where I’m Going

Where I’ve Been:
I have been out of game and basically offline completely for the past 28 days or so due to a family emergency. Except that’s not exactly as black and white as it seems. Most people have no idea what’s going on or why I’ve been absent, but even the people that do know the basics don’t really understand the family dynamics at work. So I thought I’d take a shot at trying to explain it real quickly.

Approximately 28 days ago, my 86 year old grandfather was crushed under a tree that was being cut down by my father, but fell early and unexpectedly. It also fell the opposite direction of where they planned it to go. This is a serious injury for old people. He was knocked unconscious immediately, 911 was called and he was airlifted 2 hours away to a trauma hospital in the city where I live. My entire family lives within miles of each other in a small, rural community. I’m the only one who escaped to civilization lives away from them.

Grandad was critically injured. His left scapula was broken in 2 places, his lungs were bruised and 8 ribs were broken, his lower back was broken, his pelvic bone was broken on the right side and his right femur was broke in 2 places. The next morning they did surgery on his femur to insert a steel rod, but he was not stable enough to have any other surgeries. The rest of his breaks are being left alone in the hopes they will heal fairly straightly on their own. It took him 4 days to wake up after being put under for his surgery, but he finally did and was downgraded to stable condition. After another week in ICU, he was moved to a private room. However, he is still in the hospital in the city where I live.

I am the responsible one in the family. Even if I didn’t want to be, I’m expected to be. But I generally take responsibility on willingly. Probably connected to my whole Virgo and servitude thing. The day of the accident my mom called me and asked me to rush right over to the hospital because it was going to take them 2 hours to get there. So I went over and met with the ER doctors, heard all the gory details, was taken to see him in all his bloody (lots of scratches from the tree and ground), broken misery. I started filling out his paperwork and making decisions that needed to be made urgently. I am someone who is calm in emergency situations, so when my parents did finally arrive, I was still in charge of the situation. And I have remained in charge of the situation ever since then. Whether I want to be or not.

We all stayed in the ICU waiting room for 3 or 4 days after it first happened because the doctors told us he’d be lucky to make it through each day. Once he finally woke up after surgery and was considered stable instead of critical, most of the family went back home. Except for my mother. My grandmother is in a nursing home immobile and suffering from dementia, so she is unable to visit him. Which means my mom is the main person who cares for Grandad. Since she is retired and lives 2 hours away, she’s been living with me ever since the accident so she can be at the hospital around 20 hours a day and not waste time and money driving back and forth.

Not only have I spent the past 4 weeks sleeping in chairs at the hospital and then on my own couch at home, I’m also not getting as much sleep as normal and when mom and I are home together in the evenings we watch her TV shows and I don’t “play” on my computer because video games are dumb. Yes, I realize I’m an adult and this is my house. But some battles just aren’t worth the fight and I’m trying to keep in mind that she’s stressed out and been away from her own home for weeks now.

The good news is, other than the issue with all of his broken bones still being broken, Grandad is recovering nicely (but very slowly) and they hope they can move him into a nursing home down local to his home in the next two weeks for several weeks of rehab and therapy. Then my life will be my own again… I don’t mean that to sound as selfish as it does but hopefully you understand what I do mean.

Where I’m Going:
I am freaking going to Blizzcon! I can hardly believe it. Like most of you, I have been anxiously waiting for tickets to go on sale. I warned my mom in advance yesterday that I would be spending some time on the computer at 9pm (central time) because I needed to buy tickets for an event. I didn’t bother telling her what the event was; she would not have approved. When the time came and the button lit up that tickets were for sell, I clicked the button. I was approx. #6500 in queue and I could tell by how much stock decreased compared to how much the queue was decreasing, I wasn’t going to make it.

I was right, I didn’t make it. I was still at around #2400 when they sold out. Boo. But wait! I had been reading Twitter while waiting for my chance to buy tickets and I had seen that Vidyala was lucky enough to be at the front of the queue and had indeed snagged tickets. Then she mentioned she snagged extra tickets and thanks to the awesomeness of guild membership and online friendship, she sold me 2 of them. Also she’s just a darn sweet person.

I am so excited to be going and so ecstatic at having a chance like this to snag the tickets. Especially since I am taking a much needed camping trip this weekend to escape my current life of sitting in a hospital room most of my day. I won’t be home on Saturday, so last night was my one chance. Even though I haven’t been around at all lately, I have a great guild. I can’t wait to meet a chunk of them at Blizzcon this year!

Quick Update

I’m alive. I’m still playing WoW way too much. Just been concentrating on getting my mining alt up to Panda land so I can gather my own Ghost Iron Ore for Elfi to use in her transmute. I finally made it to the Jade Forest last night. Too bad I can’t fly or else I’d just stop here. Lol.

I’ve also been working some voluntary overtime and I’ve had a touch of the blues coupled with exhaustion. As a result, things have been quiet here but I’m quite certain I’ll be back to blathering about all my normal nonsense in no time.

Since I’m currently a tad bit emo, this seems like a good post to include the picture of my Blood Elf I took when she got smashed up against a giant mushroom in Zangarmarsh and the camera didn’t know what to do. It reminds me of a typical profile picture from an emo teenager.

The One Where I Gave Up My Red Hair

I absolutely love the color red. Not only is it my favorite color, but you can actually sell me all sorts of shit I don’t need just by presenting it to me in red. I’m sitting at my desk at work right now and just in a quick glance I see a red pencil holder filled with red pens and pencils, a red water mug, my red lunch cooler, my red tupperware sitting on top of my cooler, my red mouse pad, my phone’s red case… I could go on. It’s probably a bit ridiculous, but I don’t care. My Nikon 3100 DSL is even red.

Obviously I love the color red in my video games too, though it’s easier to theme things red on the Horde side than on the Alliance side. Which is why when I faction changed my Worgen druid to a Troll druid several months ago, I was excited to be able to choose bright red hair. I wish all my characters could have bright red hair, it makes me sad. I know there are several races that are able to have a natural red hair color, but I don’t actually care for that color. I want the true red. The fire engine, superman’s cape color of red. It was my favorite thing about my troll.

But you know what else I’ve discovered I love? Transmogging. And I have recently completed a transmog set for my troll where the items look so good together I voluntarily changed my hair color away from red to match my outfit. Yes, it’s that big of a deal. It’s such a big deal, I had to show it off to you guys. I think the hair color makes the whole thing even more awesome looking because it’s seriously like an exact match. Also, while I do like the staff I’m carrying (it’s a kick as staff with bonus animation) I would be interested in finding one that goes along with the pale green color scheme a bit more so if you have any ideas, let me know.

Here are the pictures of the transmog outfit I gave up my red hair for and a list of items can be found below the pics.

Items:
Head = Runic Leather Headband
Shoulder = Epaulets of the Fateful Accord
Chest = Lunar Eclipse Robes (different colors depending on faction)
Wrists = Contender’s Leather Bracers
Hands = Embossed Leather Gloves
Waist = Melador’s Mercurial Wrap
Staff = Sulfur Stave

One advantage to wearing a robe is I don’t have to transmog my pants.
One advantage to being a troll is my boots don’t show. (not actually an advantage, I hate my troll feet)
One advantage to not displaying your cloak is … your cloak doesn’t display.

The One Where A Gamble Paid Off

When I first started playing WoW, The Burning Crusades was already live so my first experience with an expansion launching was Wrath of the Lich King. By the time Wrath was ready to be launched, I had already fallen in love with the game and recognized that a new expansion was a big deal. I took the night off work and stood in line at a local Game Stop to purchase a copy of Wrath at midnight. Because I was one of the first 100 through the door (number 12, to be exact) I got a free poster of Arthas. Regrettably, I did not purchase the Collector’s Edition because I had not reserved one 8 months in advance and they had no extra copies available at that store at midnight. I blame this on my noobness. As soon as I realized how cool the Collector’s Editions are, how much this game means to me and how (at least it seemed at the time) uncommon the CE’s are, I vowed to never make that mistake again. I have the Collector’s Editions of both Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria because I was smart enough to put my name on a list well in advance for both of those launches, though it does seem now they are easier to come by.

Over the years, I have always stared longingly at Amazon and Ebay as Collector’s Editions of World of Warcraft (vanilla), The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King were listed for hundreds and hundreds of dollars each. Even though I could technically afford them, I just couldn’t allow myself to pay such large amounts of money for a game. Especially a copy of a game I already own a version of. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to never getting a chance to own the original game (vanilla) Collector’s Edition because of it’s extreme rarity, but I did decide to do a quick search for TBC and Wrath every few months just in case I found someone who didn’t realize what they had. Over the past year I had even allowed myself to consider buying a used copy with an already used game code as long as the box contained all of the other items that were originally included. But those would have to cost even less to justify purchasing them.

Cut to two weeks ago when I happened to think about doing a quick eBay search at work and found a deal that seemed too good to be true. A mint, unopened, factory sealed version of The Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition for a buy it now price of $165 and free shipping. Oh the agony. It’s a bit much to spend but it was an amazing price for that product IF the product was actually as described. To make matters even scarier, the seller had only 2 reviews… he was basically a noob seller, an unknown. Both of his reviews were positive, but still that’s a big risk. After a quick question posed to Twitter and a few hours of agonizing over it, I decided to take the risk. It’s tax return season so I had more extra money than usual and I knew PayPal offered a buyer’s protection for purchases that weren’t shipped or advertised correctly. I clicked the button and bought it.

I didn’t receive any type of confirmation from the seller himself, just the email from eBay letting me know my purchase was successful. It was several stressful days before I got an update the item had shipped and then a week of waiting for it to arrive. But finally, last Friday, The Burning Crusades Collector’s Edition was in my hands. Unfortunately, I was rushing out of town for 3 days and while I could have taken it with me, I decided to wait until I was back home to break it open and see if it was truly an unused game code.

I’m happy to report it was exactly as advertised. I am now the very proud owner of all the items included in the box (all still completely wrapped and unopened, as was the box itself) and I have a new Netherwhelp pet in my collection. I still don’t know that I’ll ever get this lucky with a copy of the vanilla CE, but after a few months have passed I will start watching again for a copy of Wrath. I just hope I get as lucky as I did this time around.

After attaching the code to my account last night, I knew that as soon as I opened the pet in the mail I would get the achievement. I positioned myself to capture the perfect screenshot but as you can see, at the moment I grabbed the pet from the mail, Elfi turned around and put her back to the camera. Grrr. Oh well, it’s not like I can get a redo, so it is what it is. I’m still super excited. And yes, the seller got excellent feedback from me.

The One Where I Took The Plunge

Yesterday I wrote an unplanned post about how I just don’t seem to be too focused when I’m logged into WoW. It was prompted by hearing patch 5.2 will be dropping very soon and I just jotted it all down in about 5 minutes based off the emotions the patch news triggered with me. The post got a bit more attention than my posts normally do and I just wanted to take a quick moment to assure everyone, I do enjoy this game and I do have a hell of a lot of fun even when I’m not accomplishing anything. It wasn’t intended to be a complaint, just sort of a “lol, seriously where does the time go” realization. The problem is not that I don’t have fun or that I feel I must be somehow progressing to validate even bothering to play. The problem is I want to do all of the things. I have always been this way in all areas of my life. If you put any faith into astrology, you could chalk it up to the fact that I’m a Virgo.

I am 100% just like that (minus the whole working out thing… while I do have a storehouse of information about diet and health I haven’t quite gotten myself to use it on me). I am a perfectionist. I am a worrywart. I LIVE to serve. That doesn’t mean in the menial sense of fetching you drinks while you lounge on the couch (though I absolutely do tend to wait on people hand and foot to the point of annoying them) but more in a “whatever you may need, I will do my best to provide you with it” kind of way. I believe I can solve everyone’s problem by applying my logic to it and I want to solve problems for people. Except math problems. Get the fuck away from me with your math. Ugh.

The servitude thing is why I spend a lot of time picking shiny flowers to send to friends for flasks, or put in the guild bank for raid flasks even though I’m not on the raiding team. The perfectionist thing is why I jump from one activity to another one every 15 minutes, because I want to be good at pet battles, transmogs, gold-making, dps’ing, etc. all at once. When I am struggling a bit being good at something, like dps’ing, it really hurts my feelings and I tend to begin to worry about it. Yep, I’m a worrywart. Ask Alas, she can tell you. This worrying will build up and frustrate me and if I don’t feel like I’m resolving the issue then I will simply start to avoid it. Which is why I am so hesitant to actually run heroics and had avoided LFR while desperately wanting to jump in there all at the same time.

Luckily I have people in my life who know me well enough to understand I don’t act this way to be a pain in their ass, but because it’s who I am and no matter how badly I want to, I can’t control it. Which is exactly why after Kimber read yesterday’s post she was the first to leave a comment and tell me she was dragging my ass through LFR. And she totally did. We did Mogu’shan Vaults 1 & 2 and Heart of Fear 1 & 2. I would have loved to do Terrace of Endless Spring as well, but unfortunately I ran out of time and had to get ready for work. It was awesome. Kim hopped into Skype with me so she could give me some helpful hints or answer my questions without either of us bothering with push to talk. In our first group, the raid wiped once on Gara’jal the Spiritbinder but that was my only death the entire night. We one shot everyone else. It was bloody brilliant. I am assuming from all the bad things I hear about LFR groups that we just happened to get very lucky with some good runs. I’m glad we did, because my confidence needed it. I didn’t top the meters by any stretch of the imagination but I also didn’t come in at the bottom. Most importantly, not once did anyone call me a douchebag, or yell at me to do something different, or anything of the sort. I had sort of expected to witness general trolling and asshattery from everyone towards everyone, but really all 4 groups were very quiet and did their shit right. We did have 1 guy get kicked for needing on a blue trinket, but I didn’t vote to kick him so it was out of my control.

All in all it was a brilliant night. I had a lot more fun than I expected, the fights weren’t as hard as I expected, and douchebaggery wasn’t as evident as I expected. Plus I got to spend a few hours making as much fun of Kim as I could. I even got a few good drops and my ilvl is now at 180 so I am actually able to get into the new, upcoming LFR as soon as it’s enabled. BONUS! The drops I got last night were Spaulders of the Divided Mind, Fragment of Fear Made Flesh, and Light of the Cosmos.

All in all yesterday was excellent. Big thanks to my friend, Kim for helping me realize I actually can do LFR and big thanks to everyone who read yesterday’s post and left comments for me and retweeted it. You guys all rock!

The One Where I Wonder What’s Wrong With Me

This is nothing new, I wonder this all the time. But it’s back on my mind thanks to the news that patch 5.2 will be released in a couple of weeks and I am not prepared for it. Again. As usual. I would love to figure out why I stay so behind. I spend A LOT of hours logged into this game over the course of a week and still I’ve never capped Valor, don’t remember to tend my farm every day, have yet to step foot in LFR, only run an average of 2 heroics a week, still don’t have my Cloud Serpent mount, etc. etc. The list goes on and on.

I can’t blame it on transmogging because I only have 1 (recently completed) transmog outfit for 1 character. I can’t blame it on pet battles because I only have 1 team formed and they are at level 15ish. As far as dailies go, I hit exalted with the Tillers and got everyone to be my best friend very early on but since then the only other rep I’ve completed is Golden Lotus. I haven’t even started several of them. And this is my main, Elfindale, I’m talking about. I have a level 90 on the Horde side who’s accomplished nothing more than opening up all the farm plots. And no, I don’t tend my farm every day on that toon either, thanks for asking.

What the fuck do I do with my time in-game? It’s something I’ve been asking myself for the past 5 years. There is something about WoW that causes me to develop situational ADD, I swear (does not affect me when I do heroics or actual raiding). I log in with no sense of “first this, then this, then this” and I find myself mousing over other players in the area because I like what they’re wearing or to see the name of the mount they’re riding. Then I check my mail. Then I stare at Accountant for 5 minutes and wonder why I don’t make more gold than I do (psst.. it’s because I don’t do enough dailies or heroics or anything at all really).

Then I fuck around with all the stupid shit I carry in my bags that I have no use for but cannot bring myself to delete because OMG THE NOVELTY OF THIS THING (I’m looking at you, Ancient Amber). Then I go to the bank and organize it and look at all the stupid shit I have in there which I have no use for. I stand there several minutes and contemplate deleting things. Then I realize I should be doing something, so I head out to the Shrine’s patio and survey the vast land of opportunity before me. Then I pull up my bags again and wonder if I should store some of the useless crap in the bank with the other useless crap (volatile orbs, landsharks, ugh). I’m also chatting with the guild and/or real ID friends during all of this, which likely slows me down a hair but I will never stop doing. In fact, I would love to have more real ID friends for chatting. Battletag Elfi#1350. Hit me up.

Now where was I? Oh that’s right, standing around not accomplishing anything. I tab out to catch up on Twitter. Tab back in. Remember I wanted to look up how to get that cool object/mount/gear/pet, tab back out to google it. Read every comment on WoWhead just because they’re there. Tab back in. Catch up on guild chat. Scroll through last few minutes of general and trade for God knows what reason. Oh hey, I should fly out to the farm. Take flightpath, tab out to catch up on Twitter. Jump into a Twitter conversation and get ignored (off-subject, but it happens to me a lot). Tab back into game & forget why I flew to this spot. Hearth to Shrine. Immediately remember I was going to farm. /facepalm. Take flight path back. Decide I should gather some herbs while I’m in the area. Spend the next 30 minutes alternating between gathering herbs and tabbing back out to see if I’m actually going to get a reply on Twitter. Spoiler alert: I usually don’t.

Tab back into game, decide I’m tired of gathering herbs. Hearth back to Shrine. DAMMIT I WAS GOING TO FARM. Maybe I should actually run a heroic or do something useful. Queue for heroic, fly to farm. Decide I would be better off working on my DK alt because I really want her to be at 90 before patch 5.2 drops. Switch to DK alt without ever taking care of my farm. Quest on DK alt for a few minutes then decide to head to Stormwind to see if I can make money playing the AH. Stare at AH for 20 minutes and realize I don’t have enough starting capital to do much playing on the AH. Head back out to quest. Decide I should have looked for cool transmog stuff for my DK because everyone needs to be transmogged at level 70, right? Hearth back to Stormwind and look at AH some more. Reprimand myself for not leveling faster, head back out for questing.

By this time, I haven’t eaten dinner, haven’t done any exercising, need to get ready for work and once again, accomplished nothing. I mean, obviously I’m exaggerating this a bit (no, not really) and not every day is quite this ridiculous (but close). I’m seriously considering actually writing out a daily action plan. Something along the lines of:
1. login to Elfindale, immediately queue for heroic
2. while waiting on queue, immediately fly to farm and ACTUALLY TEND FARM
3. if still waiting on heroic queue, do Klaxxi dailies (I’m close to exalted with them, amazingly)
4. While flying to Dread Wastes, pick herbs
5. After heroic, login to Krisstalys (lvl 90 Horde) and tend farm
6. Login to Morrissa (DK alt I want to get to 90) and queue for random dungeon
7. while waiting for dungeon, complete quests

It seems silly that I would need to write down such simple things and I often wonder if I would even actually follow the plan if I did ever write it up. It’s not like I’m incapable of intelligent thought, I should be able to just do these things because I know they need to be done. Which is why I swear WoW triggers some sort of attention deficit for me. I just don’t seem to be able to resist getting distracted by all the shiny things.

I am curious if any others out there find they have a similar issue OR if any of you have some advice on how you manage to do more in 2 hours a night than I do in 4 hours a night. I’m not even kidding, I want to know. Because I’m really disappointed that I probably won’t have my DK to 90 before the patch and that a new raid will once again come out before I ever see the current raid. I need to figure out how to play more efficiently. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because both of my level 90 toons are Balance druids and as such, they are not exactly lean, mean killing machines. I’ve always sworn I hate melee and have no interest in bear or cat but since I’ve been working on my death knight so much recently, I’m starting to change my opinion about melee a bit. Maybe I should consider a bear off-spec for Elfi so that dailies and other general things would go quicker. I often wonder if the fact that everything – including killing vermin on my farm – takes so damn long and is so painful sort of subconsciously keeps me from running out there and doing what I need to do. Of course, I’m not in the best gear thanks to my lack of gathering Valor and my absence from heroics and LFR. And there’s a terrible cycle to be stuck in… without gear I suck, because I suck I don’t do the things that could get me gear. Awesome.

What do you guys do to maximize your efficiency in game? How many people think druids suck? What advice can you guys give me on overcoming this problem?