Normally, when I post a screenshot here I actually upload a full size picture so it can be clicked on and seen in it’s full glory. But this post is gonna be picture intense, so I’ve opted to just link to them from my Flickr page. And for the record, if anyone is ever interested in one of my screenshots and doesn’t want the World Of Elfi watermark on it, I can totally get you a clean version as long as you promise you’re not gonna use it to make money somehow and then not share the money with me.
Not many words in this post, but I do want to tell you that while this first picture looks like a scene you’ve seen a thousand times before, be sure to look for the added bonus of a nekkid Night Elf in the background. Woot! As for the rest of them, if you click on through to the Flickr page they all have a description there. Mostly. Also, linking them this way cuts off part of the picture, so keep that in mind. And if you click through to the original picture, you can click on “Action” and choose “view all sizes” to see them bigger.
A bird’s eye view of the Horde Wickerman in the courtyard of Undercity. As usual, you can click to get the huge size. It sure does make a pretty wallpaper.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Halloween is my favorite holiday. One of the biggest reasons that is true is because I love Halloween decorations and making things look creepy. So I was very excited to learn a few weeks ago that there was a Halloween decorating contest going on at work this month. Each department was to decorate their area and then we will all be voting on which one is decorated the best. Below are a few random cell phone shots I took last night of some of the other departments near my area. They’ve all been doing some really cool things.
Now I have all sorts of decorations that would be perfect for bringing in to work, but since I work 3rd shift with only 2 other people here at that time, I don’t have much interaction with the rest of my team. So I emailed everyone 2 weeks back and asked them if they had a theme in mind and what type of stuff they would like me to bring in for them to use. I never got a response from anyone. And here’s a picture of how my department looks right now. They make me really sad.
As someone who is normally away from my pc and the internet for the majority of weekends, I was thrilled to have a rare and mega-nerdy weekend at home with Blizzcon Virtual Ticket live-streaming over my TV (via laptop) and World Of Warcraft running for HOURS at a time on my desktop. It was two glorious days of geeking out. The extra amount of time I got to spend in-game resulted in some good solid guild rep gains and getting Morena up from level 75 to level 77. But even though it was cool to get some extra game time, we all know that it was getting to watch Blizzcon that was the highlight of my weekend. Blizzard had a lot of things to talk about this year with Diablo III, Starcraft II: Heart of the Storm, and the official announcement of the next WoW expansion.
Of course, I’m really only interested in the World of Warcraft content so I watched all of the WoW panels and Q&A’s. Which means I heard and saw a lot about Mists of Pandaria and the upcoming changes to talents, dungeons, pets, etc. I know a lot of people in the community have a lot of things to say about all of these things. I can definitively tell you I have no interest in the whole pets combat thing and will likely not pay it any attention in the least; but the rest of the stuff, I just don’t have any strong feelings one way or another. I guess it’s because I have such a strong social tie to the game that my future with WoW will depend on if I’m getting what I need from it on a social level. If a huge chunk of this community that I love so much decides not to continue after the xpac then I would have to take a serious look into if I will still enjoy playing. But there’s certainly no point for me to worry about that until it does or does not happen.
This is my 2nd year in a row ordering the Blizzcon Virtual Ticket and while I do enjoy the announcements and previews and dev panels, etc. the live stream makes it seem like the entire convention is nothing more than sitting or standing in front of one of the stages listening or watching the current event. They never show any hint of what may be going on away from the stages. In my mind the outer fringes of the convention center is a party zone of activity with people running around in costume and thousands of photos being snapped. I can picture groups of people huddled up and chatting excitedly and loudly, resulting in an overwhelming amount of noise being generated overall. But I can never confirm if this truly happens. They never show any behind the scenes stuff. Someone out there please tell me Blizzcon is more than sitting in a darkened auditorium staring at a stage.
Of course I enjoyed the costume contest and sort of enjoyed the dance contest (surely most of those people don’t truly think they can dance?) and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Jay Mohr was actually funny this year; because last year, not so much. And while there were a lot of Dark Lady Sylvanas Windrunner’s and Tyrande Whisperwind’s, they were all actually really cool. But I’m sure we can all agree that the Terran Adjutant from Starcraft II just blew it out of the water.
Here’s a gallery that features some of the great ones and below is a video of the 3 winners.
Because I’m not a huge altoholic, I am just now on my second time through Northrend. The outhouse quest in Grizzly Hills usually makes everyone giggle, so I decided to grab a screenie while completing it and just archive it for fun. But then I noticed my player icon in the upper left-hand corner. Yep, it’s a closeup of me gritting my teeth. I never noticed that when Elfi went through this area. Did you guys realize it did this?
I know I am not the first person to have figured this out, but since I died like 5 times at the hands of an Undead Mage before I realized what I should do differently, I thought I’d go ahead and post it just in case someone else is having trouble. I am of course referring to the Alliance version of the daily quest from the Hallow’s End holiday event currently ongoing. The quest A Time To Lose is picked up right outside the gates of Stormwind and requires you to travel to the Ruins of Lordaeron (courtyard in front of Undercity) to douse the Horde’s Wickerman. The quickest flight path is to go from Stormwind to Androhal, Western Plaugelands and then fly over to Undercity from there. Of course, if you’re all about the hax, you can actually cheat on getting to Undercity by accepting and completing the Stink Bombs Away quest which instantly places you inside Undercity on the back of a broom dropping stink bombs. Once you’ve dropped all 25, instead of telling the broom to return you to Stormwind, just log out of the game real quick. When you log back in you will find yourself at the graveyard near the Scarlet Monestary just a hop, skip and jump away from where the wickerman is.
But I don’t want you to hop, skip and jump your way there. I want you to fly. The easiest way I’ve found for dousing the Wickerman is to fly up on the backside of him, look around to make sure no Horde are camping there on the top of the wall, and then actually land on the wickerman’s shoulder and quickly cast the dousing agent. If you’re a druid you can really get away with one here because with flight form it’s easier to land on his shoulder and then once you’ve got him doused you can immediately shadowmeld and then instant flight form up and away. Once you’re outside of the city just land and hearth and you’ve just completed 2 dailies with minimal effort.
My favorite WoW holiday kicked off last night and I made sure to get all of my housework done quickly and get things prepared for work in advance so I could settle in at my desk and spend a few hours before work posing with pumpkins, puking up candy and putting out fires. That didn’t happen (I’ll explain why in a minute) exactly as I had planned, but I did get a chance to heal the Headless Horseman fight (no mount yet again, but I’m still hopeful) and I did do a couple of quests. I also made my way to Goldshire to help put out some fires and it was there I realized that thanks to old world flying, I now have the ability to chase that pesky headless horseman around in the air. Being able to fly over a bunch of places we weren’t able to last year is also really gonna get me some new screenshot angles of all the decorations. I am so glad this is a 2 week celebration because I am going to have me some major fun.
The reason I didn’t get much holiday stuff in last night is because I logged in just in time to luck out with an invite to help Alas complete part of the quest line for the legendary staff, Dragonwrath. I was so freaking excited and thrilled and honored that I got to be even a tiny part of it all. What we accomplished last night was completing the 8th part of the chain, the quest Nordrassil’s Bough. It was a lot of fun. We started the whole adventure off by meeting up with Shannox, Beth’tilac, Rhyolith, and Alysrazor so that Alas could get some sort of charged fragment loot that was required from each of these bosses. Once all of those had been collected, she was able to activate a special portal (the name escapes me) to get us access to the Anvil of Conflagration where we fought Volcanus so that she could gain the Branch of Nordrassil. Near the very end of the fight with Volcanus I decided to stop healing and do some floor tanking. And while I was doing that, I grabbed a screenshot of Alas in pedo tree form fighting for the branch. Just seconds after this shot was taken, it was all over and victory was ours.
Elfi's World 