My Mage Had Botox! (Looking Back at the New Character Models)

I was, and still am, very excited and largely in love with the new character models. The first thing I did upon logging in after the patch was to flick down through my character list and check them all out. I had already seen what my main would look like thanks to Wowhead but hadn't bothered loading my other characters - so it was a real surprise...

My hunter looked as she had over at Wowhead - and all my Draenei followed suit and looked amazing. In fact I like the updated models so much that a random alt I made (Jojochi) to sit in a bank guild at level 1 will probably get leveled now.

And it wasn't until I put all my Draenei side-by-side that I realised just how different they all are in their facial features.

I had a bit of an issue with my Gnomes though. Specifically my mage looked quite frankly terrible - she'd had botox and well I didn't especially like her new miserable look. I decided to swap it about a bit first changing her hair colour to white, then going back to brown hair and changing the face.

She still has the face on the right.

I guess her new face did make her more menacing!

My mage still looks grumpy though and even getting her Legendary cloak this week didn't cheer her up.

On the other hand my DK looked amazing - so not all Gnomes seem to have had botox as part of the overhaul!

Next up - Night Elfs! I really wasn't sure what to expect from the new NElf models but fortunately my two ended up looking pretty damn good. I especially like the fangs, which you can't see in the picture below. But I do know from talking to some people that not everyone loves their new look as much as I do.

My Dwarf was another new model that I initially wasn't 100% convinced by. She just didn't look right - she seemed incredible bald (before you could definitely see her hair) and more masculine than I'd like... even for a lady Dwarf!! 

I decided to try hiding her hat first off and it turns out that was just the ticket! She looks lovely agian with her Princess Leia buns back on show!

Both of my banking alts are Humans, a race that I don't really play nor was I overly interested by. Being one of the original races I was very interested to see how the new models would revamp these horrible outdated models. Turns out the new ones look pretty splendid! So much so that I would actually consider maybe one day leveling a human now... although I do play one everyday at work.

Part of the reason I left it so long to publish this post was because I wanted to be able to look back a month or so post-patch and to think - how do I feel now about the new models? Do I still dislike my mages botox face?

I'm still in love with the new models. Largely I think they're just perfect! Although I have to say they've been in-game long enough now that I find myself forgetting that not that long ago they looked very different.

Honestly, I'm still not in love with my mages pout but I don't find myself reverting back to her old model. I think she's fine as she is... 

Goodnight Garry!!

I've been waiting a looooong time to say this - but we have finally killed Garry on a Sunday 'flex' raid! Woooohooooooo!

In case you're unaware I have been leading (and I use the term loosely) a Sunday 'flex' raid for ooh about 9 months now. I've had a look back through the blog and the first time I mention it was way back in February! So yeah we've been going a while and it's not always been plain sailing.

These Sunday flex runs (or normal as it is now, post patch 6.0) are designed to be casual and for some it's the only raiding of current content that they do. It's been a learning curve for all involved - most of all myself. I wouldn't say raid leading comes to me naturally and my tactical knowledge is often lacking. But I've been trying and for once keeping up to date with the content, gearing, gems, enchants the lot.

Like I say we've been at it a while and we've seen many people come and go. I'd like to really thank everyone that's been - even if it's only been for a single night of what I sincerely hope was fun! And we've amassed some regulars in recent months.

The following list is not exhaustive (I've no doubt forgotten people that started flex right at the beginning) but here are some of the crew:

Zxorm, Nemi-saur, Rick, Matt, Joey, Rinike, Nizkiz, Chromeeh, Swe, Webbet, Ziyall, Sean, Rel, Sivation, Shadrea, TQA – Brakefine, Shadowhowl, Mapicho, Firebolt, Iemans and my guildies - Queks, Rob, Mark, Hege, Jason, Josh, Jaedia, Olli, Erlend, Thijs, Adam etc. etc. etc.

If I've missed you off please don't be offended as everyone has played their own part in getting us to last night's Garry kill - no matter how big or small - and I'm very grateful!!

Anyway we'll be back in Warlords - here's to more dead bosses! /cheers

#IntPiPoMo is back!

We're now into November which can mean only one thing- it's time for IntPiPoMo 2014!

I've included a couple of my favourite pictures that I took last year :)

International Picture Posting Month (IntPiPoMo) is the picture equivalent of National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo). In reality it doesn't have to be screenshots from WoW but images form any game or even an array of photographs you take of the real life world - it's up to you.

The WoW blogging community equivalent was started back in 2011 by Angelya of Revive & Rejuventate and last year I took the baton on. I'd forgotten all about it this year until Chestnut tweeted me earlier - so thanks for that.

I think this years #IntPiPoMo should be really interesting with the release of Warlorsd of Draenor taking place half way through the month. I'm sure there will be a lot of pictures from Draenor appearing - and I imagine a lot of it will be new to various people who haven't yet had the chance to explore the new world in as much depth and detail.

In summary:

• Aim to take 50 screenshots during the month of November.
• there's no strict posting schedule or themes to adhere to.
• pictures can be posted in blog posts and/or on Twitter.
• Please use the #IntPiPoMo hashtag on Twitter.
• Above all have fun exploring Azeroth (or whatever other virtual world you want to).

If you're intending to take part let me know by commenting or tweeting me and I will keep an updated list of participants below.

Participants

Chestnut of Gamer Girl Confessions
Rinike of Rinike.com
Erinys of Harpys Nest
Elfi of Elfi's World

Aspect of the Ostrich?

I'm guilty of not having blogged for ages again! Sorry! Same story as before, work was busy and I spent the spare time I did have playing WoW. But, now Patch 6.0.2 is here I finally have something to write about...

Last Wednesday was patch day in Europe and I was out on a work meal which meant I didn't log in to the joys of 6.0.2 until Thursday. I'll admit I'd been pretty lazy and not read a great deal about the patch or about Warlords. In part this was a conscious decision to avoid spoilers but it was also due to sheer laziness. I am the proverbial Ostrich with their head stuck in the sand refusing to acknowledge that change was looming around the corner.

So you can imagine the state of shock I found myself in when I logged in on Thursday and found...

• My aspect bar had vanished
• My pet bar had moved and there were mysterious numbers on the abilities
• My traps had gone and upon later inspection I found I needed a button for each!
• Stampede was a talent and
• mend / revive pet had merged (I partly remembered reading about this)

I had gone from this...

 

I got to rank 8 of the Brawlers guild the night before the patch :)

... to this...

Despite the initial shock I like to embrace change and it's not taken me long to sort things out again - remove my second mend/revive pet, laying out my traps etc. Fortunately, I suppose, none of my main abilities have disappeared so my iffy rotation is the same - unlike the changes some classes have faced! 

I barely even notice anything has changed now. Although it has to be said I'm still a little confused about my aspects vanishing - guess I should go read those patch notes!

10 Years : 10 Questions - My Answers

The Godmother over at ALT:ernative is currently doing a survey - 10 Years : 10 Questions. If you haven't already taken part you can do so by completing this simple form (or blogging or emailing her) and I'd recommend that you go do it! At the end she will be putting together a series podcasts detailing the results and I think it will make for some really interesting reading, well listening.

Token pretty picture to make up for all the text

On with the questions...

1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?

I started messing about with WoW sometime in 2011 playing on my boyfriends account. At that time we were both at uni and lived separately and there were times when I was bored at his house with nothing to do - so I started exploring Azeroth. Whilst it was primarily a way to pass the time, having seen him play WoW and raid, it was also something that I wanted to know more about.
Eventually in February 2012 I got my own account (i.e. he got fed up of me stealing his game time and romantically got me it for Valentines!).

The Past Month in WoW

This is my follow up post to last weeks return to blogging post and will be about what I've been up to this past month in Azeroth.

Life! (my return to blogging)

It's been well over a month since my last post and a lot has happened since then! Most notably I have moved house :) So I was without the internet for a good week or two but we're now all settled in and I'm gradually clawing back in-game time.

The new house is lovely and I have to give the other half a massive amount of credit! He pretty much single-handedly packed our stuff up at the old place, moved us and the unpacked whilst I was stuck working stupid hours.

Our new living room is a much better layout and we now have our desks side by side, so you know we could hold hands whilst gaming and have lovely little discussions or more accurately get distracted by each others screens and telling each other what to do!

We've also gained a conservatory which is epic. It's actually a double conservatory comprising two rooms; one has sofas in and we're using the other shabbier half as our new greenhouse. The plants are loving it especially our collection of peppers (both chili- and sweet bell peppers) plus my mini lemon tree which has shot up. We also have a range of plants outside (as we did last summer) - runner beans, dwarf french beans etc and a hanging basket that I have just put up.

But I think the biggest bonus of the new place is we have a pond! And it has newts in! It's got a bit of a chickweed problem that we're working on - sieving the water etc - and we've got some new plants on order for it. My parents we kind enough to give us some snails from their pond and a bit of my mums yellow flag.

Plus when my parents visited yesterday they brought us some furniture goodies from my late uncle Fred's. Meaning we now have a funky ottoman and I have a sewing box and my gran's hand powered sewing machine. That's right - hand powered. I currently sew everything by hand so this will certainly speed things up. Just need to decide what my first project with it will be.

Aside from moving I've had a pretty rough month at work - working in a different team to usual so lots of on the job learning and long hours which ultimately came to a pretty sour end but I'm now back in my ever faithful team - thankfully!

I think I'll do a catch up post on what's being going on in Azeroth later this week and then hopefully I'll be able to get back in to the swing of blogging! I've missed it & you all!

Ding!

Apologies for being absent again this week! Those of you that have me on battle tag might have noticed that I haven't logged in since last weekend, or possibly Monday. For once this hasn't been work related but is real-life. We are moving in a couple of weeks and decided to start early with the sorting and packing side of things. I'm bored already but I've managed to sort through and bin most of my old uni stuff.

In more exciting news it was my birthday yesterday. Ding ding, level 24! You may have seen on Twitter that I posted about some of the presents I got but if not here are the highlights:

One of my friends is currently in Australia on a working visa so she sent me some presents from Broome where she currently is. I think it's safe to say that the main present is the 'Genuine Kangaroo Scrotum' bag and that the salty croc toy and the stubby holder / can cooler thing were to soften the blow! As a group of friends we tend to give either jokey presents or hideous items found in a charity shop. I think that the scrotum has to be one of the oddest gifts ever and I'm not sure I'll treasure it forever... or at all.

The boyfriend got me Lurky the plush Murloc from the Blizzard store. He had to order it all the way from the US as the EU store still isn't selling physical items. I knew that I was getting something from Blizzard as he'd got himself a Diablo 3 lanyard. It's safe to say that I love my little Murloc and I will be treasuring him forever! He also got me some Star Wars lego and a third item that's still in the post somewhere.

Finally I thought I'd share my Hugo Hedgehog cake with you - available from all good Sainsburys! He tastes lush and is very cute... whilst he's still here.

Last year I had a proper little in-game party and held a transmog competition but this year it really seemed to creep up on me and I didn't really have much time to plan anything sadly. But I have some idea's for future shindigs and I'm determined to have a Dwarf pub-crawl at some point so keep your eyes open!

Sunday Flexing Takes on SoO Part 3

Sunday just gone we returned to our usual Sunday flex schedule after having a week of Easter weekend. I'd decided we'd try our luck with Part 3 again but that we'd try Malkorok maybe three times and if there was no hope go back to an earlier part.

We had a fairly well represented group and were missing a tank only. Luckily we managed to find one via trade who turned out to be someone that had joined us on a previous run do so was familiar with our laid-back, casual approach = massive plus!

The first attempt at killing Malkorok went really well despite the wiping. We soaked the purple pools, maybe missing one or two, avoided the nasty smashes and grouped up at the right time. The issue was that we didn't spread good enough after we stacked up. We went back in there and kicked some serious butt - again everyone spread, soaked and stacked as necessary followed by a perfect rinse & repeat spread, soak and stack.

I think we were all a little dumbfounded that we downed Malkorok! I'm not sure how many people had read the rest of Part 3's tactics but I'll admit that I hadn't exactly planned out the next two bosses myself.

I left Queks to split the group up into two for the Spoils of Pandaria as I wasn't 100% sure myself and as a raider figured he'd do it best. We were really close on our first attempt and were literally a hair's breadth from clearing both the first rooms before the enrage timer thingy. Second time was much smoother although one side was opening the crates a little too slow for comfort so we had to send a couple over. But all in all, for a boss we'd not encountered on a Sunday flex I think downing it second time's bloody good going.

Next up - Thok the Bloodthirsty. Thok proved to be quite tricky and it took a fair few attempt and a number of raid member changes before we got him. Initially we had a couple issues with people running through everyone when Thok fixated on them and generally people being unaware that they were stood in the fixated persons path and thus being insta-killed. But we got over that fairly quickly.

I'm not sure what I had expected to happen but it certainly wasn't that we'd clear Part 3! But it was a lovely surprise clear and I think everyone was happy with our progress. Unfortunately I failed to take any screenshots (you could say I was in shock) but we'll be heading back to Part 3 this Sunday so I'll be sure to get some :)

The Liebster Awards: Part 3

Part 3: Questions by Thibaste of Level This