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 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?

The One Where I Bought A Treadmill Desk

Yep, you read that right. Almost two weeks ago, I bought a treadmill desk. It was my Christmas / New Year’s gift to myself because this year I’m finally going to get serious about my health and weight. I am not so lazy that I can only exercise while being on the pc, but I am smart enough to realize that I don’t go to the gym every day or stay longer than an hour when I do go because I am more interested in being online with my friends. So with my new purchase I can add to what I do at the gym by also walking while I’m doing dailies and talking in vent. It takes away the whole “I really need to spend 2 hours at the gym, but _____ will be online in 30 minutes and I haven’t talked to them all day” dilemma. I know, it’s a dilemma that I shouldn’t have ever had, but seriously, I didn’t get to be such a huge fatass by making the correct choices in life. So the treadmill desk is a fantastic option.

I first heard about these types of desks a few years ago when a saw a news special about treadmill desks being an option (a very expensive option) in some workplaces. I was immediately interested but the professional type were just too costly and too big to be something I could actually consider buying. But as things tend to do, now that it’s a few years later prices have dropped and options have increased. I bought mine from Target.com and 2 weeks ago it was priced at $713 with free shipping and because I used my Target RedCard, I got an instant 5% discount so that I only ended up paying $706 after taxes to have it shipped to me. Currently, the same one I bought is listed at $663 but it doesn’t say Free Shipping so I can’t say for sure what the final price would be. Here’s the link. It’s just my luck it would go on sale after I bought it, but I am so happy to finally have one I really don’t even care.

As far as a review of this particular model – I am very satisfied with it. It’s much bigger than the picture online made it appear. In fact, the desk portion is so huge the cup holders that are on the front edge of the desk aren’t even usable because there’s no way you can reach them while you’re on the treadmill. It’s very thick and sturdy feeling, it doesn’t feel like a cheap version at all. In fact, it came with a sticker on the control panel stating it’s rated for people up to 400 pounds. I am nowhere near that weight, but it does make me feel like it’s probably going to remain sturdy for quite a while since it’s built to hold a weight much higher than mine. As far as how comfortable it is to use the pc while walking, I find it to be just fine. If you were using it to do a great deal of constant typing, you may want to add some sort of keyboard wrist support, but since I’m only typing to chat and mostly using my mouse with my right hand and my game-related keystrokes with my left hand, I’m perfectly comfortable resting my hands on the foam molded areas on the sides of the treadmill’s control panel. It’s when you are doing serious typing and have to move both arms off of the molded areas and basically hover over the control panel that it would likely get uncomfortable. However, like I mentioned, I imagine it would be pretty easy to just scoot the keyboard back a bit and use your own wrist support.

My only complaint (cup holder issue is not a legitimate complaint, I just set my cup elsewhere) is that the treadmill handles both have controls on them. The right one has buttons to increase / decrease speed and the left one to increase / decrease incline. You can adjust the speed and the incline both from the main control panel, so I have no idea why they are also included in the handles. I suppose they thought it was a convenience, but they are easy to accidentally bump. Obviously I don’t hang on to the handles because I’m mousing and typing. And when your using the desk, that part of the handles is behind you anyway. But if you’re using the treadmill simply as a treadmill, which I do for at least 30 minutes so that I am actually walking at an increased speed, then anytime you reach down to the handle for balance or whatever, the controls are easy to bump. Of course, I assembled the damn thing myself so I suppose I could have simply not connected the wiring to the handles.

Alright, this is getting boring. Let me wrap this up. Treadmill desks are awesome. The one I bought is awesome. If you have any interest in owning one and are able to spend the money, I highly recommend you do so. I am so fat and out of shape I’m not yet spending all my gaming time on the treadmill, but I’ve tried to average 2 hours a day so far. I walk at 1 mile an hour while gaming and I look forward to increasing both my time walking and the speed at which I’m walking. I have been really surprised at how easy it is to actually do questing while walking. I initially thought I would just do simple tasks like fishing. Nope, I’m leveling alts while burning calories. It’s awesome. I’m hoping as I build up stamina and my balance gets more used to the whole event, I can actually run dungeons this way. However, I would never try raiding because raiding is way too serious to risk making mistakes.

And now, PICTURES! Since I live alone, my pc and desk are in my living room. I have no desire to spend all my time sitting in a bedroom facing a wall. I sit in the living room and talk to the cat while watching Netflix. I decided to place my treadmill desk next to my regular desk so I could simply move my keyboard, mouse and monitor back and forth instead of using my inferior quality laptop or moving my entire system daily.

Here’s what you see as you enter my living room:

Here’s the view from the other side:

My view of the TV for regular walking at 3mph:

And what it looks like while logged in:

The One Where I Cave To Peer Pressure

I have been anxiously awaiting the beginning of Winter Veil for over a week now; agonizing over which toons would get the most attention so I didn’t have to spend 6 hours a day trying to do all the things. So why is it I’ve spent less than 3 hours logged into WoW since last Friday morning? Because I allowed myself to cave to peer pressure. Not just from one person about one thing, but from two people about two different things. My weekend… it was overwhelming. It was also very fun and I enjoyed it greatly. Except for the part where I didn’t get my fill of WoW time.

Wait? What am I rambling about? I’m talking about how I somehow ended up buying 2 new mmo’s on Friday and played both of them all weekend. My dear friend, Lauren, has been talking up Guild Wars 2 to me since about 6 months before the game launched. Actually, talking it up isn’t quite accurate. She’s been bombarding me with information about it. Lol. Linking articles and youtube videos 4 or 5 times a week during our IM’s at work. There was no pretending to read or watch these things either, she would quiz me afterwards about my opinion on specific things that were mentioned. I can’t even count how many times I’ve told her I don’t have time for another game and I’m not buying it. But last Friday morning she was all excited about the Winter event starting in GW2 and then on top of that she sent me a link where buying the Digital Edition would give me a free upgrade to the Deluxe Digital Edition. Since I know how it is to be excited about world events and since I love getting a good deal on collector’s and deluxe editions, I broke down and bought it right then. I had already downloaded the game client to participate in a trial weekend Lauren talked me into a month or so ago, but I didn’t spend much time in the game that weekend and never really gave it much of a chance. However, it meant my download time on Friday was minimal as I only needed to patch up from trial to full account. I settled in to character creation and then began my adventures. I had seen so many videos, thanks to my friend harassing me for so long, that it was pretty easy to figure out how everything worked. I spent several hours logged in leveling and was really enjoying it.

But then…

While tabbed out catching up with my Twitter feed, I spotted a tweet about Amazon selling The Secret World for only $15 as a special, limited time offer. I have a certain Canadian friend who has been wanting me and a few others to join him in The Secret World. Like Guild Wars 2, it does not require a subscription (it did initially, but that has recently changed) and how can you let a deal like $15 pass you by? So I jumped onto Gtalk and showed him the sale link, which he shared with another of our friends, and she and I both immediately purchased the game. I didn’t start the download for The Secret World until I went to bed Friday night, so I didn’t jump into game play until Saturday. I’m really enjoying it, but I’m finding it hard to think of it as an mmo like WoW or SWTOR or even GW2. It’s more like playing Alan Wake or Silent Hill on Xbox 360 with the addition of General chat and other people running by you. But the 3 of us partied up and hopped into vent and went around killing zombies together. We weren’t always on the same quests, as you are free to wonder around anywhere at any time and pick up random missions (there are no real levels as far as I can tell at this point), but we were all in the same area and crossed paths and helped each other out when we weren’t lined up quest-wise. I actually ended up playing more TSW this weekend than any of the other games combined. Killing zombies is fun ya’ll. It’s a very creepy, very cool game. Plus there are lore objects hidden all over that need to be discovered and that’s right up my alley.

So that was my weekend. I enjoyed my time in both of the new games, which really sucks because I was already having trouble deciding what I wanted to do just in WoW on a daily basis. Now I have even more fun options to choose from. And just for the record, this blog is titled Elfi’s World and my world has now expanded, at least for the time being, but this will remain a WoW blog. I’m not saying I won’t ever briefly mention my adventures elsewhere, but I assure you I will not clog up your WoW feed with posts about other games.

Can’t We Do IntPiPoMo Every Month?

How did I manage to go from a post a day for a solid month to no post at all for almost 2 weeks? Well, part of the reason is because last week I had the plague and was too sick to get out of my recliner. The rest of the reason? I don’t really have one. Just haven’t gotten back in the swing of things after the week of sleeping. I have been logging in, but instead of diving right back into the serious business of grinding and gearing my main I have been hanging out on the Horde side with a couple of friends going through all the old content we can for pets and mounts. Derping around can be fun. Especially when you’re raking in pets and mounts while logged into Vent making fun of Canadians and the way they say all their words wrong.

Aside from that, I’ve been not doing much. Sadly, I recently told my SWTOR guild that I was leaving the game because I’ve lost interest in the Galaxy and wasn’t doing any extra work to keep my gear upgraded. I had also grown tired of both weekend nights being filled with raiding. I had been missing raids due to illness and obligations and with the holidays here now, I knew I’d be missing a lot more. I finally had to quit stringing them and myself along and just end it. It sucked. I have good friends there and I have an amazing time when I’m raiding with them. I had actually posted on the guild forums that I was unsubbing, but have since decided not to for now because when I am logged in I have a lot of fun. So we’ll see what happens there. I have a feeling that now that I’ve officially quit, I’ll want to play more than usual. Because that’s what kind of special crackhead I am.

I will resume regular posting here again soon, though. And since I’ve been running a lot of old content, it’s highly likely you’ll see more of the old school screenshots like I have recently posted. Until then, I’m just going to sit here and cuddle with Jasper (who COMPLETELY enjoyed me being in the recliner for a week).

Ding! Level 90

Yeah, I know… a lot of people have hit level 90 already. And those that haven’t have legitimate reasons for not doing so, such as lack of play time or purposely concentrating on other things in-game. But this is huge for me because I’m the world’s slowest leveler. I’m very impressed with myself for setting a reasonable goal and achieving it. Honestly, with my style of derp play derp it was quite a feat. Between getting distracted by shiny things, composing screenshots, tabbing out to Wowhead because I was lost, wandering away from the keyboard several times an hour because sitting there makes me restless, etc., etc., I didn’t know if I would get it done before the weekend was over. I set my goal time for 11:30pm on Sunday evening because that’s when I leave the house for my Monday morning (12:00am) shift at work. When the magic moment finally happened at 10:00pm, I was so relieved. Now I can finally worry about my professions and reputations and start doing dailies. I may even try out the whole pet battle thing I used to think I had no interest in.

In fact, when the expansion was first announced I was fairly certain I had no interest in any of it. Fortunately, I did decide to check out the beta back in the spring and that piqued my curiosity enough that I began to get a bit excited about things. Combine that with a good 7 or so months of practically total immersion into SWTOR and by the time August rolled around with 5.0 coming soon and the expansion itself right around the corner, I began working myself into a frenzy. The old saying ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ was certainly true in this instance because once I began logging into WoW more regularly again, I found myself really wanting to be there all the time. My experience with Mists has been fantastic. The zones are beautiful, the changes in professions are brilliant, there are new mounts, new pets, new dungeons. Some of the things I thought were silly a year ago when I was reading about them are actually not so damn silly at all. I do tend to agree with people who complain about the linear questing being redundant when leveling up alts, but enjoying those quests on my main was amazing. And she’s really the only one I have an emotional attachment to at this point. When I do finally take an alt to 90, it just means I don’t have to bother reading the quest text because I’ve already done so. And I won’t get turned around and lost as much as I did the first time through. Maybe.

I’ve been reading so many great blog posts about everyone’s impressions of Mists and I realize I’m days behind and have nothing new to add. I’m okay with that considering I retired from blogging back in May. Luckily, when I wrote my last post I was smart enough to leave myself a loophole. The Favre factor. And since it’s football season Mists of Pandaria has finally arrived, I’m feeling the lure of the WordPress dashboard more and more. Yep, there may be a return to activity around here. For one thing, I need to compile a bucket list within the next 2 weeks or so of things I want to accomplish and set myself some date ranges for getting them completed. I have not done that with any of the previous expansions and I always end up sad about what I missed out on or didn’t bother finishing. And there’s just so much new, cool stuff going on now. Not to mention so many new screenshot opportunities.

Okay, let’s make it official… just like Brett Favre, I have changed my mind about retirement. I’m back in the game as a blogger. Don’t expect me to start out at a full run, I’ve got to stretch my muscles and slowly get back into shape. But I do believe I have just made a return to the game.

In the meantime, here’s a small sampling of screenshots you’ve likely already seen.

So This Panda Thing…. (no real spoilers)

When Mists of Pandaria was first announced during last year’s Blizzcon, my heart sank. I just didn’t understand it. What are they doing to my beloved game? How am I supposed to take Pandas seriously? Months later, my thoughts towards this expansion haven’t necessarily been changed but they have resigned themselves into complete acceptance. It is what it is. It’s old news now. The shock has worn off and I’m over it. Luckily I acclimated just in time to be able to look forward to the beta with a bit of excitement. This weekend I finally got to dip my toes into MoP and I gotta tell you… my first impressions were very good. I really don’t know what I was so upset about to begin with. I’m not someone who’s necessarily afraid of change, so it was more than that. I guess it just sounded so ridiculous.

Hey, guess what? Blizzard pulled it off. The female panda’s are adorable. I knew the Asian themed areas would be stunning, that was never a concern, but they were even more stunning than I had hoped. I won’t go into much detail here for those who are trying to halfway avoid spoilers but I got instantly excited just seeing the changes to the character creation screens. Once I got my Pandaren looking all cute, I had to name her. I couldn’t use Elfi in my name since a Pandaren is not an Elf, but I did want it to be as recognizable as possible because I know there are a lot of people from my Google Reader and Twitter feeds on the Lost Isles server where I am. I finally came up with Jadeindale as a pretty good combination of an Asian themed name and something that’s a part of my normal naming convention. I know I won’t be spending a lot of time logged into the beta, but if you are there and ever run into Jadeindale feel free to give me a wave or a hug.

As I mentioned above, I have no desire to spoil anything for anyone who is trying to go into the expansion’s launch blindly, so I won’t go into any quest details here. But in my 9 levels the quests were a pretty good combination of fun and serious. The only really tedious part about the Pandaren starting area is the fact that it’s a hotspot of activity with dozens of players doing the exact same quest as you every time. But that’s to be expected. I’m a very patient person, so that didn’t bother me at all. Besides, it gave me time to climb up on nearby rocks and take screenshots. I know by now you guys have seen the scenery before, but here are a few of the shots I took on Sunday.

Yes, I do apologize for the crappy looking gray text on those screenshots. I have always watermarked my screenshots before with an online photo editing application called Picnik (picnik.com), but unfortunately Google+ has purchased it and is taking it offline to make it only available through a personal Google+ account. They already did that to PicasaWeb, so I’m not sure if this means they are completely shutting down PicasaWeb or they’re just trying to control all photo editing software. I am normally a Google fangirl, but I have never been a fan of Google+. Sometimes I want to edit photos and share them with people who are actually strangers across the country and will not be at my next family reunion and therefore they don’t need to see my real name and various other information just because they clicked on a photo I posted on my blog. /rant

Sorry about that. Point is, I haven’t been able to find a good replacement for Picnik, so things are a bit rudimentary right now. I realize that Photoshop and PaintShop Pro, etc. are excellent photo editing resources, but the thing about Picnik was you could upload 100 photos to it’s website and edit them online from anywhere. Which meant it was easy to do at work. I will never have Photoshop on my work pc so that’s the difference. Besides, we’re just talking screenshots here and not serious photography. If anyone has any suggestions for some sort of replacement, let me know.

Back to MoP… the verdict is – I liked it. I really enjoyed myself and had fun playing. There are so many cute new creatures too. I fell in love with the field yak for some reason. Took a lot of screenshots of those things. Yep, I guess WoW didn’t jump the shark after all.

The One Where I Got My MoP Beta Invite

I have got to learn to make my post titles a bit more vague sometimes. I mean, what else can I say here? The title says it all. Last night at 8:00pm CDT, I received my official invite to the Panda beta. Unfortunately, I was knee deep in SWTOR playing around with all the changes Bioware implemented in yesterday’s patch. So I downloaded the executable file, but didn’t let it begin downloading the beta because I didn’t want to suck up too much internet while I was trying to run around in space. So, I’m doing that now. I’m off work for the weekend and I’m planning on spending at least a few hours in MoP checking it all out.

Actually, my email brought me several gifts last night all right in a row. It was a much needed happy ending to a Thursday evening because my Wednesday evening sucked major ass. I wish I could tell you how, but it’s relevant to my secret SWTOR identity.