The One Where I Finally Have My First Complete Transmog

In my continued tradition of remaining far behind the trend with things in-game, I have finally completed my first full transmog set. My beloved Elfi is, of course, the recipient as I would feel very guilty tricking out one of my alts before showing Elfi some tender loving care. Now, it’s not perfect; the professional transmoggers out there should probably not look too closely. The belt could probably be better and the red shirt I am wearing underneath is a bit too bright causing a slight color mismatch. Luckily, you can only see a slight glimpse of it right above the gloves so it doesn’t bother me at all. I did try just removing the shirt, but seeing a flash of skin there did bother me, so I put my shirt back on and have decided to leave it like it is. Honestly, I’m very happy with it. I’ve been wearing it for about 3 days now and every time I shift out of moonkin form and see my fancy red clothes, I always stop to proudly admire how awesome I look. Like I said, it’s not the most professional set but it was easy to obtain and didn’t cost a lot. I am completely thrilled with it.

Here are pictures of front, back and with tabard. Below the pictures you will find WoWhead links to the items.

List of items:
Head slot = Imposing Bandana
Shoulder slot = Wyrmhide Spaulders – DRUID ONLY
Back slot = Ancient Bloodmoon Cloak
Chest slot = Wyrmhide Robe – DRUID ONLY
Hand slot = Wyrmhide Gloves – DRUID ONLY
Waist slot = Prospector’s Sash
Leg slot = Wyrmhide Legguards
Feet slot = Bard’s Boots
Weapon slot = Key to the Planes
* I just realized while typing this up I didn’t do anything with my bracers, but I’m guessing they’re not visible because I’m not noticing an issue

The One Where I Act Like Brett Favre

For those of you who may not know, Brett Favre is one of the recent great quarterbacks in the NFL (Green Bay Packers for most of his career) who, starting back around 2007, began retiring at the end of the season and then coming out of retirement just in time to play the next season. This went on for 4 years or so. By the time he finally really did retire, the whole thing had become quite absurd and no one really even cared any more. Hopefully, that won’t happen to me.

Yep, I am announcing my retirement from this blog BUT WAIT… I have talked about Brett Favre for a reason here (other than the fact that I am a huge NFL fan (Go Chiefs!)(everyone shut up, I know they suck but they are my team)). See, much like the first time Brett retired from the game, I would love nothing more than to continue on here. But sometimes the desire to play football write blog posts just isn’t worth the time and effort required to do it. However, I am smart enough to know that my love for Elfi and this little world I’ve created here may draw me back. I might decide after being retired for a few months that I’ve got one more season in me.

I love being Elfi. Elfi has been a huge part of my identity since I began playing WoW in January 2008. But I am only Elfi online, in WoW. My coworkers don’t know me as Elfi, my family doesn’t know me as Elfi. And now that I’ve made SWTOR my main game and I am not named Elfi there, I’m only Elfi a few hours a week. Mostly here when I blog. And there’s where the problem begins because of a combination of the following things:

• I don’t have as much time to write posts as I used to – I began blogging in general (personal blogs, photo blogs) around 2006 when I worked 3rd shift all alone in the basement of a hospital where my only job was to answer the phone if it rang and solve whatever pc problem was on the other end. In an 8 hour shift, I’d get 3 or 4 calls and they were 90% password resets. When the phone wasn’t ringing, I was allowed to do anything else I wanted so the job was great for reading, putting together jigsaw puzzles, watching DVDs, surfing the net, blogging, etc. But in case you’re wondering, it wasn’t worth the solitude. Especially considering I worked every Friday & Saturday night and my 10 hour shifts began at 9pm. Talk about not being able to have a social life. Ugh. Actually, forget the social life, when you live alone and work that kind of schedule you rarely get any human contact with anyone. Ugh. But I digress. I began blogging because I had nothing but time and since I worked there for 5 years blogging very much became “something I do at work”. I am now working 3rd shift at a different job where I only get 1 phone call a night. Unfortunately for me (relevant to what we’re discussing here), answering the phone is like 1% of my job. I work my ass off here. There’s no more time for blogging.
• Back in December, I switched my main game to SWTOR. I love it there because it’s a great game and my dearest friends are there. This means sometimes I login to WoW for 2 – 4 hours a week, sometimes I don’t login to WoW for a week or more. Despite the fact there seems to always be some new achievement I’ve … achieved…(how redundant) or some new pet I’ve acquired, or some fail PUG to make fun of, the quality of posts here has been slipping. Spending so much time away from the game means I’m forcing myself to invent things to write about. Even though I still enjoy the writing part of it, it’s just not as inspired by my love of the game as it used to be. I still love the game, but we’re long-distance lovers these days and the flirty, breathless excitement between us has been replaced with “let’s schedule a quickie twice month if it works out”.
• I seriously need to figure out how to get off my ass more. Did I say seriously? Because I seriously do. Seriously, I’m killing myself here. I’m drowning in obesity and diabetes with some almost-old-age mixed in. When it comes to figuring out where I’m going to get the extra time to hit the gym I’d rather take it away from blogging than from getting to play the game. Don’t give me that look… I’m taking it away from other things too. The Nook makes it easy to read while I’m on the treadmill so now I’m not sitting on my ass reading as much.
• Twitter. It’s… what’s the word… it’s constant. I enjoy it, but I can’t keep up. Especially since I keep following more and more people. I love the way it’s such an intimate little community where I really do get the feeling all of you guys are actually friends. Twitter helps me stay on top of the WoW news and happenings while I’m playing SWTOR and of course let’s me know when my favorite people publish new blog posts. It is also a platform I use to let people know I have published a new post. It’s very much connected to blogging for me. Especially because I follow most of my favorite WoW bloggers. And so, it must go. No more spending 6 minutes out of every 20, all day long, bent over my Droid 3 reading Tweetdeck. It’s done. A week ago I tweeted that I was breaking up with Twitter and I haven’t tweeted a single thing in 7 days. No one commented. No one has noticed. So I guess quitting Twitter will be the easy part. I will keep my SWTOR twitter account active to keep up with my guildies tweeting action. But @_elfindale is retiring.

So the struggle is I want to continue being Elfi but all the other crap is true too.

There’s more. I’ve been really emo for a couple of weeks now and I could really begin rambling about some shit right here. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. What matters is I feel like I’m doing this space and my readers a disservice by forcing content once or twice a week just for the sake of keeping an audience because I like having one. So I’m going to stop. At least for now. Hopefully I will get rid of the emo, get myself into a better routine of fitting things in that should be priorities (seriously someone figure out how to make me exercise), and get a better handle on my time management so that I can Brett Favre it up and announce that I’m back. See, I want to believe I will one day be back. So I want you guys to realize you don’t have to keep coming here to read whatever crap I’ve thrown together in a rush (lately) because I’m stopping. But if you have ever enjoyed Elfi’s World you should not throw away the link and forget it exists.

And in closing, I’d just like to say to Psynister … uh, sorry dude but I guess I will NOT be updating my “About” page for now. 🙂

The One Where I Want To Update My Blogroll

See my blogroll over there on the right side? It’s been pretty ignored for quite some time and I’d like to update it. Just this morning I edited the entry for Resto Is Epic to the new link and added The Sisterhood of Kia to the list; but I know there is much more to do. So I am begging you guys to please let me know of any links over yonder that need to be updated, deleted or new ones that I’m totally missing. I already know of a few in my feed reader that are not yet on the blogroll, so I will be updating those later tonight at work.

And that’s that. Another lazy post. Gawd, I’m horrible.

(p.s. – plz send me links so i can read all the things i am missing)

Friday Link List: Special “News” Edition

There are, as we all know by now, so many excellent WoW bloggers writing so many excellent WoW posts this week, last week and for many, many weeks before now. But this post isn’t about them. This post highlights some of the things that can be found when you type “World of Warcraft” into Google search and then choose the News option to see what’s new. Most of the time, it doesn’t really turn up anything interesting at all. But sometimes, it will blow your mind.

Let’s just start right off with an online commercial featuring Lou Ferrigno (of The Incredible Hulk fame) and what I guess you could call a PSA wherein he says you should play WoW to get all the sex. Well, he sorta says that. Actually I can’t really understand anything he’s fucking saying. But… here, just check it out for yourself. And after you watch the video, be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page. It doesn’t look like there is any more page there, but there is: http://www.onlineschools.org/ferrigknow/sex-and-the-world-of-warcraft/

There’s a new short documentary that has just been released that features some really fabulous video and images from the game. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending) it’s a documentary about how the filmmaker’s addiction to WoW was ruining his life. At a little over 7 minutes long it’s worth a watch. He just tells his story and there’s not any WoW bashing or anything so it shouldn’t cause anyone to go in any rages to defend the game. Find the article and video here: http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/short-film-watch-irl-in-real-life-world-of-warcraft-addiction-anthony-rosner-doc.php

Always a big topic, a University of Minnesota student journalist looks into girls who are hard-core gamers in a world where most people believe gaming is for guys. Article is here: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/148279895.html?page=1&c=y

For those of you who live for the funny, you may want to consider playing the Family Guy Online MMO. According to this article, it’s like World of Warcraft except way funnier (uh.. I think I’ll pass). Read their reasons for the statement here: http://blog.games.com/2012/04/17/family-guy-online-preview/

And finally, in what may actually be sorta old news for some of you, I just discovered there will soon be a line of World of Warcraft MegaBloks. You can totally learn more about that here: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/04/04/new-world-of-warcraft-mega-bloks-images/

Okay Blizzard, Here’s My List Of Demands

I’m a simple elf. I don’t ask for much. I am completely happy wandering around Azeroth and questing all the things. I don’t have a long list of complaints about the game like a lot of others do. But in my 4 years of playing I have discovered there are a few minor things that I would love to see changed. And I think they could be easily accomplished. So here’s my list of demands.

1. I want to know if you’re any closer to solving the tabard storage issue that was talked about at the first of the year. I haven’t heard anything on that in quite a while. Couldn’t there just be another tab added after mounts and pets to store all my tabards the same way those are stored and let me look through them and change them whenever I wanted? I wear the Loremaster title proudly, but I don’t think I ever even tried on my Loremaster tabard. It’s in my bank, likely crumpled and dusty. And it’s not in there alone.

2. I want to be able to change the color of my eyes. On my main Night Elf character I am wearing mostly blue gear, sporting blue hair that matches my gear, and I have bright white, glowing eyes. Um, I would like blue eyes please. In fact, I would like blue eyes on all of my characters. Why can’t I change my eye color? My blood elf is so pretty and dainty and delicate … and has bright green eyes. I don’t want green eyes. Guess what color I want my blood elf to have? Okay, I was gonna say blue but actually I think it might be neat to have red eyes on her. Because the horde are evil.

3. I want red hair. Not the mostly natural type of red that is available now, but red red. Like, fire engine red. Yes! That would be so freaking awesome, I don’t think you even understand. I know I just told you my main was wearing mostly blue gear, but she has wanted fire engine red hair since the day I created her. I was so excited when the barber shop was implemented, I ran straight there and plopped myself down in the barber chair … and then wept softly as I realized I still couldn’t have red hair. And if my blood elf had red hair, it would match the red eyes I would give her. Because the horde are evil.

4. I want some sort of reminder that mail is about to expire on an alt I have forgotten to log into for a while. I don’t know how that would be implemented, but I trust any ideas you might have on how to accomplish this. See, I’m a casual player and sometimes I forget to check all the mail all the time. To quote one of my idols, Marvin the Martian, this makes me very angry. Sure, I’m angry at myself because I do realize forgetting to check mail is totally my fault. But still, I insist you figure out how to prevent me from forgetting.

5. I want my character’s birthday (date of creation) to be recognized. Maybe on that day each year I could get some fireworks and a chocolate cake in the mail which I could use to throw myself a little celebration. Yes, I realize there are eleventy tree fiddy millions of characters … but I don’t give a rat’s ass about them. I just want this for my character. Screw those other people.

6. I want an invisible cape like Harry Potter had. Yes, as a night elf I have shadowmeld, but if I had an invisible cape I could hide one of my favorite friends or guildies under it. Or possible two if they are gnomes. And then we could sneak around Stormwind and wreak havoc on all the morons.. I mean, multitudes of people and laugh big belly laughs at them when they accuse the innocent person at the mailbox of poking them.

7. I want a stocking full of fruit, chocolate and coal in my mailbox on the first day of the Feast of Winter Veil. I have nothing further to say on this matter.

And there you have it. I have poured my heart out to you about some little things you could do to make me so much happier than I already am. These are my demands and if they are not taken seriously, well that’s cool. I still have much love for ya, Blizzard.

The One Where I Ramble On About Flowers

In 2 months I will celebrate my 4th year in World of Warcraft and I’m totally excited about that. I wish I had been around since Vanilla, but I’m grateful that I started during BC.  However, anyone who knows me in game will know that I really haven’t accomplished as much in 4 years as most players do. I have 1 level 85. My next highest character is a level 77 Worgen, so as you can see that’s only been during the last year. There are still raids and dungeons pre-Cata that I’ve never completed. Some I’ve never even stepped foot in. I only have 7040 achievement points, so you can see I don’t spend my time achieving all the things. I still don’t even have the achievement for completing 2500 daily quests. I have not ran enough pugs to earn the puppy. I only have 22 exalted reputations. And the list goes on and on.

So I bet you’re wondering just what the hell I do with all my time. Trust me, sometimes I wonder myself. I don’t really know how to explain it, it’s kind of like a instant onset of ADD when I log in. I’m VERY attached to a few people I play with and enjoy all of my guildies in general, so I spend a lot of time just standing around and chatting. I spend a lot of time flying to the wrong place and having to backtrack because I am too concerned about guild chat to pay attention to what I’m doing. I spend a lot of time farming herbs because I’m addicted to the AH. Of course, I’m also addicted to mount and pet collecting, so I spend a lot of the money I make on those types of silly things. And of course, I take a whole hell of a lot of screenshots.

But even aside from the specific things I mentioned above, I’m just like a kid in a candy store in-game. I just look around wide-eyed at everything, even though I’ve seen it all before. I actually stop to smell the flowers before I pick them. Which finally brings me to the point of this post. I love being an herbalist. Sure it’s an easy way to make easy money, and now it even gains you experience, but that’s not why I enjoy it so much. I just like the fact that there are pretty, sparkly things all around me no matter where I’m at. Yep, I’m pretty silly.  Always have been.

My 3 Favorite In-Game Herbs/Flowers Based Solely On How Pretty They Are To Me:

1. Gromsblood – Found in Felwood, Blasted Lands, Desolace and Ashenvale.

2. Frost Lotus – usually obtained as an extra herb while gathering other Northrend herbs, but actual Frost Lotus nodes can be found in Wintergrasp and The Conservatory of Life.

3. Mana Thistle – found in Terokkar Forest, Shadowmoon Valley, and Isle of Quel’Danas.

So yeah, there you go. Those pretty flowers are just one of many things that keeps me distracted. What about you guys? Do any of you have any special attachments to herbs or anything similar? Are there other people out there who’ve been playing for years and thoroughly enjoy it, yet don’t have a huge list of accomplishments to show for it?

The Middle, Who’s With Me?

**edited to clarify – Both the ” I Do Not” and the “I Do” lists below feature characteristics of  hardcore and casual according to my interpretation of those words. The first list isn’t all hardcore and the second list isn’t all casual. Both lists contain aspects of both hardcore and casual according to me.

 

I Do Not

I do not raid weekly.
I do not have the best gear in every slot.
I do not have an abundance of Valor Points.
I do not have the fights in BoT memorized.
I do not have all of the new Cataclysm factions raised to exalted reputations.
I do not prefer leveling to all other activities.
I do not have multiple high level characters.
I do not have 1 of each profession maxed out.
I do not have a significant other or family member who I quest with side by side.
I do not roleplay.
I do not regularly participate in PVP.
I do not have required enchants and gems memorized
I do not remember the locations of every inn
I do not remember what vendor specific items come from.
I do not use recount or understand World Of Logs.
I do not theorycraft. In fact, it gives me a headache like all math does.

I Do

I do wear the proper tabards to gain the rep I need for gear or enchants which will benefit me most.
I do keep myself constantly repaired so I am at my best in 5mans.
I do follow blogs and forums as a way of keeping my talent trees and rotations at their best.
I do spend time outside of the game thinking of ways to improve myself.
I do immediately enchant and gem new gear I receive.
I do spend money on the AH to better myself if that’s the quickest way to do it.
I do care enough to ask for help.
I do try my best and don’t expect to be carried through dungeons or raids.
I do enjoy achievements and try to complete them whenever possible.
I do utilize tools such as Mr. Robot to ensure I am wearing everything correctly.
I do read patch notes before the patch hits.
I do love the game.
I do participate in pvp when my friends want me to or I want a change of pace.
I do participate in raiding when it fits into my schedule
I do love the game enough to blog about it

I am not hardcore, but I also don’t believe I’m casual. Neither of those words can define me. I am in the middle. And I believe there are a hell of a lot of us here. Should we be called hardcore casuals? No, I don’t think so.

I wish I were in a position to be influential. I wish I had the ear of the WoW community. Because if I did I would suggest that we replace the terms hardcore and casual with something like dedicated and occasional. Or maybe deliberate and informal. Serious and laid back?

Or maybe it’s such a wide spectrum there shouldn’t be two distinct roles. Why can’t we all be in the middle and simply vary in range from the high end to the low end. I am not defined by my number of raid nights per month or the number of hours I log each week. Are any of us?

I am in the middle. Who’s with me?

The One With The 5 Things

When I’m lucky enough to get logged in these days, I typically spend my time in Tol Borad. I know I don’t usually get much time before the lag gets too severe, so this is a place where I can quickly get some dailies done to make some gold and gather some herbs along the way. Plus, I really want the spectral steed mount. So here’s my thoughts about Tol Borad.

5 Things I Love About Tol Borad

5. making gold doing dailies
4. Cinderbloom
3. Whiptail
2. Azshara’s Veil
1. mounts for sale

5 Things I Hate About Tol Borad

5. seeing the Darkwood Forest
4. running through the Darkwood Forest
3. questing in the Darkwood Forest
2. Darkwood Lurkers
1. Darkwood Broodmothers