Posts tagged ‘Elfi has issues’

The One Where My Toes Are Cold

Like everyone else I know, I’m loving this expansion. Also like everyone else I know, I’m addicted to my garrison. I want to do crystal dailies and heroics every day, but with all the garrison chores and missions and alts that need garrisons, I haven’t done them as regularly as I should have. But I haven’t ignored them completely either and I do have my ilvl up to a decent 623. Partially due to the fact that on Sunday my buddy More invited me and Grace to help him with a garrison invasion and not only did we get “Silver Defender” (yes, the screenshot shows Bronze but we got both) but I somehow got an epic 645 staff in my loot. Amazing. I’ve still got quite a few pieces around the 605 – 610 ish range, such as bracers and belt and chest which need to be upgraded. And that’s a bummer because what I’d really like to upgrade are my boots. They’re ilvl 630 which is okay for now but damn my toes are cold and I’m afraid they may not be too protected. Also, my new pet Nightshade Sproutling is freaking adorable.

garrison
barefoot

The One With The Slot Machine Fucking Yaks

There will be no pictures of slot machines doing naughty things to yaks in this post or vice versa, so if that’s why you clicked this link please know I’ve wasted your time.

My last post here is dated 5/26/14 and it was all about Wildstar. Until tonight, the last time I logged into WoW was just a few days after that post. So it has been roughly 6 weeks since I last spent 2 or 3 hours riding around in a circle on the Timeless Isle and watching for the Ironfur Steelhorn yak to appear. Because that’s all I had been doing in WoW for quite some time. That fucking yak is the last rare I need to complete the Timeless Champion achievement and HAS been the last rare I’ve needed for a long time. I had slowly gotten obsessed.

It started innocently enough. I’d login to Elfi, harvest & replant my garden, fly out to the Isle and spend 30ish minutes killing shit and gathering coins. Then I’d either do some LFR with Elfi or I’d switch over to one of my alts and do some stuff. A few months back I realized I was close to finishing the legendary cloak quest line & I stopped spending time on alts and spent most of my time logged into Elfi on the Timeless Isle waiting for the LFR queue. I had always been on the lookout for the Ironfur Steelhorn, but at this point I started hunting him more seriously. I’d use the windfeather buff and run circles around the Celestial Court killing all the yaks, even the babies. By the time I finally did get my cloak & didn’t have to do any of that anymore, I had become addicted to the hunt.

I’m a gambler. Not in general; I don’t flip coins with friends to see who pays for dinner or take a chance on getting through stop lights that have been yellow for a few seconds. I mean I love me a fucking slot machine. Or anything fairly close to a slot machine – like those games at the fair where you drop a quarter in and hope it pushes more quarters off the edge for you. My eyes glaze over and I become irrational. It’s not that I go insane and start betting large amounts of money; I totally prefer penny slots because if you go to the casino with $100 you can play longer on penny slots. It’s amount of time played that’s my issue. I can’t quit playing. I don’t want to quit playing. I have gone on a spontaneous trip to the casino at like 11pm on a Friday night after working all day and will sit there blankly staring at a slot machine until 6am. There’s no way I could have stayed up that long doing anything else.

Lucky for me, I don’t live in Las Vegas or Atlantic City. The closest casinos to me are about an hour away, located on Indian land in Oklahoma. Not something I can just pop by on my way home from work. Also lucky for me, I love spending money. Which means I probably put more money into slot machines every couple of months than most people would, but also means when I set myself a limit of how much I’m going to spend I usually only hit the ATM once for an extra $80. 😛 [edited to clarify: I love spending money on all sorts of silly toys and games and trips and food, so I know better than to waste all of my extra income on the slots]

Restraint. I almost haz it.

Okay, do you see the connection here between the yak and the slot machine story? After I finished the legendary questline and didn’t need to queue LFR to get specific drops I started spending 4 or 5 hours a night doing nothing more than riding that same circle and killing those same yaks, even the babies. I quit gardening, I quit doing dailies, I quit logging into my alts. Never saw the bitch once – not even it’s corpse.

Queue recent 6 week(ish) absence from WoW. Tonight I had some extra time and was excited to be able to login to Elfi and spend some time in this game I love so much. Hey guess what? I’ve done nothing other than hunt the yak. Right back into the same pattern EXCEPT TONIGHT SOMETHING DIFFERENT HAPPENED as you can see by the below image.

twiter feed

Obviously that’s from my Twitter feed so you read bottom to top. You know the drill. Yep, that totally happened. In minutes. But did it make me want to rage quit? Nope. At this point, the Ironfur Steelhorn is like a slot machine to me. I might as well start calling it my Brokeback Mountain because I can’t fucking quit it. Just like when I’m playing the slots I can’t help but think the next push of the button may be the big one. The next yak I see may be the one I need. The next $0.40 bet I make may win me $500. The next loop I make around the Celestial Court may put me face to face with him.

That’s what WoW has been reduced to for me. I can’t imagine doing anything else in game until this achievement is complete.

/cry

The One With Random Facts About Me

Liebster Award
In the comments of my last blog post, the kind-hearted Anou from Diary of a Gnome Spy nominated me for a Liebster Award. I have not been blogging much lately at all but I have been reading Liebster Award posts all over my favorite blogs, so I was completely familiar with it but never expected to see myself nominated. Also very happy that I was introduced to a new blog in the process, as I had not read Diary of a Gnome Spy before but have now added it to my feed. Thanks, Anou.

So the rules are (in addition to my paragraph above) I’m supposed to answer the 11 questions Anou provided me with, provide 11 random facts about myself and then nominate 5 bloggers and write questions for them. Well, I hate to be that person, but I am choosing not to nominate 5 other blogs. I apologize. It’s just that I feel it’s been spread through the community really well by now and one of the reasons my blog posts have diminished is due to time constraints so I am selfishly choosing not to take the time to write 11 new questions and find 5 blogs that haven’t been nominated yet. It’s nothing personal.

My answer to Anou’s questions:

1. Which is your favorite in-game quest line? Like, one you don’t want to miss on any alts as you level up?
Hands down, it’s Gnomebliteration

2. Have you ever just spontaneously started to role play; for example, stood around some tables in an inn and offered to take peoples’ order?
I haven’t ever actually role played in a traditional sense, but I certainly try to avoid running into people or standing on top of people at all. Additionally, all of my different characters do have their own personalities and each dress a certain way and ride specific mounts, etc. That’s probably not typical of people who don’t rp at all, so it makes me think it’s a tiny bit of rp I do.

3. What music do you chose to listen to, to accompany you in your epic battles? Do you play with the game music on? Or do you mute music and play your own in the background?
Weirdly enough, I’m a huge music lover but I don’t play any music while gaming. When I’m at the computer I am usually gaming on one monitor and trying to keep up with Twitter on the other monitor as well as catch up on blogs and news.

4.Were you a gaming virgin before your adventures in WoW, like me? Or had you already played other games, or MMO’s previously?
I was not a gaming virgin as I had played years of console games and I had played a few pc games such as Myst and The Dagger of Amon Ra. WoW was my first ever mmo (because I’m not counting 2 weeks of Runescape).

5. In your opinion, should Worgens have been added to the Horde’s races, or are they suited to be Alliance?
Of course they’re suited for the Alliance… they’re werewolves which means they are humans who become / shape-shift into wolves. The legend of the werewolf is clearly what Blizzard based Worgens off of, further evident in the fact that you can choose to shift to your human form when not in combat. I never have understood why people think they should be Horde. They have to be the same faction as humans

6. If you were brave enough to display your colors publicly, what symbol or quote could someone see stuck to your car’s bumper?
I actually already have an Alliance symbol, a bumper sticker that says “My other car is an EPIC mount” and a bumper sticker that says “My ❤ belongs to Stormwind"

7. Say you were an über rogue and could stealth past anything, what would you do/where would you go first?
I’m not certain if this means in game or outside of game, but I’m going to answer it outside of game. I would say I’d use my stealth ability to sneak into Blizzcon because going last year was totally amazing and I’d love to be able to get back there again.

8. Do you have a favorite companion pet out at all times? If so, is it always the same one? How do you choose?
I switch my pets out quite often and each toon will use different pets because of different personalities. Some of my favorites are a sapphire cub given to me by a friend, the cynder kitty given to me by a friend, my sewer rat from Dalaran named Chewie, my Netherwhelp Hatchling because they’re rare, my vampiric batling named Vinnie from Prince Tenris MirkBlood in Karazan

9. What is your #1 in-game pass-time? Auction farming? Transmogs? Being trendy in Trade chat? Exploring old zones? (etc.)
Either herbing or mining while just enjoying chatting with my guildies and friends

10. Is there a piece of art somewhere in game, a sculpture, a painting, that caught your interest and opened your eyes to the tiny details of WoW?
I suppose it would have to be the Darnassus bank since Elfi was my first ever character and that’s the first major city she came to. Once the tree that contains the bank came into view and I noticed it was shaped as a bear and bird, I was totally awed.

11. What real life thing do you tend to set aside for WoW?
Housework

Now it’s time for 11 random facts about me:

1. I am left handed but I wear my watch on my left wrist (and I wear it with the watch face turned to the bottom of my wrist). For some reason people think this is weird. Apparently you’re supposed to wear your watch on the opposite hand because it gets in the way while writing. Even weirder that I wear my watch basically upside down. But here’s something you should know … when you’re left handed the fact that you live in a right handed world and you have to sit in school desks built to support your right hand and use a spiral notebook that’s spiraled on the left side already make it fucking difficult to write. My watch isn’t making it any harder.

I’m glad we could have this talk. Moving on.

2. I’ve been dragged from my house in my pajamas, handcuffed, read my rights, shoved into a cop car and hauled to jail. When I got there I was fingerprinted, mugshotted and actually handcuffed to a concrete bench. If you’re interested in finding out why, you can read the whole story HERE

3. I spent several years in my 20’s writing dark, twisted poetry. It’s probably stuff that everyone else would think is stupid, but I’ve kept them all and I still enjoy reading them.

4. While pregnant with me my mom craved watermelon and ate it constantly. While I do like watermelon flavoring in candy, I do not ever have any desire to eat watermelon

5. Had I been born a boy, my first and middle name were going to be John Denver because those were the first names of both grandfathers. Thankfully I am a girl.

6. In high school I was voted “Most Intelligent”. Hahahahaha. Not nearly as impressive when you learn my graduating class consisted of a whopping 33 people.

7. I cry more for pride than I do for sadness. I can see a dead rabbit on the road and forget about it in seconds but I cry like a baby every time the National Anthem is played or when I watch 1st graders sing a Christmas program, etc. And anything military related? Forget about it, I’m sobbing.

8. I tend to be overly wordy in written forms of communication (not that you guys could tell, right?) but in person I’m pretty quiet and don’t say much. Unless I’m zinging someone with some quick sarcasm.

9. My eyes have changed colors and still do sort of change colors. I was born with blue eyes and had bright blue eyes until my early 20’s when they changed to grey eyes with dark blue around the outside edges. In my 30’s they shifted from grey lined in blue to a sort of hazel. Except mine are flecked with green, gray and blue instead of green, gray and brown like typical hazel eyes. The dominant color seems to depend on what shirt I’m wearing.

10. I’ve never once solved a Rubik’s cube without taking it apart and rebuilding it solved

11. My favorite food is ice cream. Oh, and donuts. Also hamburgers.

Aside

The One With The Crappy Screenshot

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it also makes a screenshot addict very rusty when it comes to capturing achievements. Yesterday I finally dinged 90 on my Night Elf Monk, making her my 4th level 90 (3rd as a Night Elf). I also got “Terrific Trio” because one of my 90’s is a dirty Horde toon. 😛

Normally I would have taken the time to zoom in the camera and angle it just right so that the minute the achievement popped, I’d have a nice clear screenshot of the moment to share. But I have gotten so out of the habit of blogging that even though I knew the quest turn in would cause me to ding, I didn’t give a single thought about the screenshot. This crappy screenshot you see here is apparently what happens when I stop considering myself a blogger (multi-shot addon automatically captures achievements for me).

Image

Thing is, immediately afterwards I wanted to tweet about the ding and when I dug through the folder to grab the achievement picture it made me sad to realize I hadn’t put any effort into it and didn’t have a great photo to share. I knew I needed to sit down, write a post and remember how much I used to enjoy rambling about every silly little thing that happened in Elfi’s world.

I have not yet used my free boost to 90. My plan is to use it on my Dwarf Shaman once she hits 60 to take advantage of maxxed out professions on her. Currently she’s at 55 & now that the Monk’s journey has been completed, I should have a few hours this week to spend running her through LFD to get her to 60 and boost her. I’ve made a promise to myself to be able to share good screenshots of this when it happens. We’ll see if I can be bothered to follow through.

Throwback Thursday – Welcome To The Firelands (Guns-N-Roses Style)

Work stuff is happening fast right now which means blogging is taking the hit. Since I used to be funnier than I currently am and I have some new followers who may not have read the old stuff, I’m going to start tossing out a few throwback Thursdays.

This was originally posted on 07-15-2011. Enjoy!

Welcome To The Firelands (Guns-N-Roses Style)

This is meant to be read (or screamed) to the tune of Welcome to the Jungle by Guns n Roses.

Welcome to the Firelands,
They got ash and flames.
They got all the gear you want
You should go check out their raids
They are the people that supply
All the dailies you may need
They will help you earn some money, honey
And some Marks of the World Tree

In the Firelands
Welcome to the Firelands
Watch it bring you to your sha na na na na na knees, knees
They got what you need

Welcome to the Firelands
You’ll be stuck here every day
If you wanna pwn the noobs you meet
That’s the price you gotta pay
You may be a very special toon
You may think you’re pretty leet
You may think you’re going to steal phat loot
But you won’t get that shit for free

In the Firelands
Welcome to the Firelands
Feel my, my, my hunter’s serpent sting
I, I wanna hear you scream

Welcome to the Firelands
There are quests here every day
You learn to kill certain animals
In the Firelands where we play
If you get enough Marks of the Tree
You’ll be geared up eventually
You can buy anything you want
Could you please buy some for me?

In the Firelands
Welcome to the Firelands
The lag will bring you to your sha na na na na na knees, knees
But they have what you need

And when you’re done you’ll never
Want to come back around, around, around, around, YEAH!

You know where you are?
You’re in the Firelands baby
Somebody’s gonna die
In the Firelands
Welcome to the Firelands
Watch it bring you to your sha na na na na na knees, knees
In the Firelands
Welcome to the Firelands
Feel my, my, my hunter’s serpent sting
In the Firelands
Welcome to the Firelands
Watch it bring you to your sha na na na na na knees, knees
In the Firelands
Welcome to the Firelands
Watch it bring you to your
It’s gonna bring you down
HUAH!

Blah

I read dozens of WoW-centric blog posts a day ranging in content from news about recently gained pets to detailed “how to” guides. I enjoy them all. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t read them. Yet when it comes to my own blog I find myself not writing posts because I feel the silly, unimportant subject matter could not possibly be exciting to anyone. This frustrates me. I enjoy blogging. I KNOW blogging is supposed to be for me and no one else. I certainly don’t pop in here simply because I need attention or desire to grow a massive audience. But as a child, I didn’t dream of becoming an astronaut or a princess or a superhero – I dreamed of being a photojournalist for National Geographic. From as early as I can remember I collected those magazines from every garage sale or old person that had them. My room had hundreds and hundreds of bright yellow-bound magazines stacked in it. In my teen years, I added novelist to the list. I read my first Stephen King book at age 11 and after reading 5 or 6 more (along with what I swear must have been every book my tiny school library had to offer) I was convinced writing was in my future.

Hey, guess what? Nope. Turns out I was too shy to complete the journalism classes I tried to take in college. Too lazy to do much writing of any other kind, apparently. I also don’t have much of an imagination anymore. I don’t know where I lost it. In my 20’s I wrote some poetry. Not epic poetry, or romantic poetry. Mostly what I’d consider dark poetry, I suppose, for lack of better categorization options. Maybe no one else would agree. /shrug. All I know is poems would randomly just start forming in my mind and lay themselves down line by line, piling up until my head felt like it was going to burst open if I didn’t stop and write it down. Most of my poetry was first written on random scraps of paper and napkins that happened to be near me when this happened. They always seemed to spew forth without needing to be edited or cleaned up. I miss that feeling. Even if no one else ever thought they were good poems, I liked them. Why can’t that feeling come back to me?

In case you haven’t noticed, this is just a mind dump. I sat here with the new blog post window open and couldn’t decide which insignificant detail of my gaming life to share so this started pouring out instead. My apologies. I used to have no trouble writing blog posts. Hey, while we’re on that subject, December 7 marked my 3rd yr anniversary at World of Elfi. It all began with an open letter to Blizzard. Ah, I used to be so entertaining. To myself, if no one else. I was fine with entertaining myself for so long. How did that stop? I didn’t mean to intentionally ignore my anniversary. Just accidentally overlooked it.

I still enjoy the hell out of the game. Sometimes my interest drops a bit if other side projects have my attention, but currently I’m in a big WoW upswing. It started ramping up as Blizzcon approached and it’s still going. Obviously my writing issues aren’t related to that.

Yes, it does strike me as funny that I’ve just used all these words to form lines and paragraphs of useless rambling about how I don’t write as much as I used to because I’m afraid it’s all useless rambling. Heh. I think that’s a clear indication I should sign off for today.

Here’s hoping sometime soon I’ll post about my latest boring pet, achievement, gear, etc.

The One Where I PVP

Tuesday night I decided to take a small break from leveling the Monk and do a bit of SoO LFR. This resulted in me accidentally earning 3000 valor (cap valor weekly? wut? I can’t do it in months :P) and completing the “A Test of Valor” achievement for Prince Wrathion.

Huh. Look at that. I accidentally advanced in the legendary questline. Might as well keep going, eh? So I decided to keep going. This is riveting stuff, yes?

Anyway, as you know, the next steps were to do some PvP battlegrounds and kill that one dude at Domination Point. My adorable friend, Grace, was just a tiny bit ahead of me in this questline so she had already killed him and when she saw I was at that point she immediately volunteered to meet me over there and help me get the kill. Which I was completely grateful for even though it made me stupid. Which means that I knew where Domination Point was but my brain hadn’t processed exactly who I was looking for. I’m someone who needs a few seconds to process. But instead I immediately headed that way so I wouldn’t inconvenience Grace by making her wait on me. Big surprise – the fact I didn’t stop to get it in my brain what I needed to do actually ended up being more of an inconvenience to her because I flew straight in there trying to hurry and of course I got shot out of the sky. Then it took me forever to work my way around and find my body. The more stupid I was in-game, the more panicked I became about being stupid which, of course, resulted in me being more stupid. I am not someone who experiences much anxiety but for some reason, trying to not be stupid in front of my friends and guildies in-game is the leading cause of anxiety for me. And it always backfires.

Moving on, Grace killed the dude for me. Lol. Next stop – the battlegrounds. I did Silvershard Mines that night and the Alliance won the first one I joined. Well that was easy. Can’t wait to do the Temple in the morning after work.

When I did queue for the Temple of Kotmogu the next morning, things did not go as smooth as the Mines did. The Alliance was sucking it up, big time. My 3rd time in we lost by 2 points which was extremely frustrating, but not nearly as frustrating as losing by 1000 points or more every other time. Ugh. It’s like no one understood the whole point of the battleground. Carry an orb around as long as you can. As soon as an orb is returned, go grab the fucking orb. I didn’t think it was that hard but most people seemed to be more worried about killing Horde rather than watching orbs at all. /shrug. Maybe I’m the idiot here. Either way, paying attention to the orbs got me several achievements as I ran the place over and over. Finally, on like my 35th visit, I got a team that dominated. We had all 4 orbs within the first minute and stood in the center bunched up with healer’s healing us while we kicked the ass of any one who came near. It was a flawless victory where the horde had less than 100 points. So weird how smooth that run went. And, it meant I had my victory and could be done.

Interestingly enough, I actually enjoyed the Temple a lot and I might consider getting some PvP gear and do that one when I get bored.

With that stuff out of the way, I completed “Chapter II: Wrathion’s War” and my journey towards the cloak continues. Now I’ve got to LFR enough to gather 20 Secretes of the Empire and spend some time on Thunder Isle to gain rep with the Prince.

But I’m going to put that on hold for now and get back to the Monk. I have 20 levels to go to do my part for the guild achievement. I still expect I’ll be the last to hit 85, but hopefully I’ll have it done in just a few days.

silvershard cheevestemple cheeveswrathion cheeves

And The Winner Is ….

For worst designed path to flightmaster in all of WoW – (drumroll please) – Nethergarde Keep, Blasted Lands

Here’s a detailed look into how this was chosen as the winner!

Coming in HOT! Nope, forgot to jump
Wow-64 2013-11-26 12-11-51-95

Jumped! Oh, fuck me
Wow-64 2013-11-26 12-12-21-93

Coming back around! MOVE YOU FUCKING BIRD
Wow-64 2013-11-26 12-12-59-70

Woo, I got this now! OMG, it’s Deadman’s Curve
Wow-64 2013-11-26 12-12-48-34

I can see the top! Nope, forgot to jump
Wow-64 2013-11-26 12-13-56-30

Jumped! Oh, fuck me
Wow-64 2013-11-26 12-14-00-55

Coming in HOT! A little too hot…
Wow-64 2013-11-26 12-13-25-53

Screw you Deadman’s Curve! Oh fml, hang on
Wow-64 2013-11-26 12-13-33-16

VICTORY! And only 20 seconds faster than it would have taken me to run to Stormwind
Wow-64 2013-11-26 12-15-40-60