Is that supposed to hurt?

At first I thought the Anatomical Dummy from Archaeology wasn't as good as the Turnip Punching Bag from questing; after all, what's so good about a normal-looking dummy mob that's level 93 when you can have a skull-level mob for raid testing that looks like a vegetable?

With bag space at a premium right now (why Blizzard decided to make every other quest reward a fun item, I have no idea... it's great, but also awful because I haven't enough space for them all), I almost deleted it.

I'm glad I didn't, though, because the Anatomical Dummy is worth keeping just for this:

Don't worry, I'll take over

No wonder the Zandalari are taking over the village... all the guards are leaving their posts and no-one is replacing them!

Pet Battle Musings

The best thing I like about pet battles is probably not what you'd expect; I don't particularly care for turn-based combat, collecting pets isn't as fun as it used to be (it's a little tiring trying to keep track of which pets you have every time you see one on your minimap) and even though starting a quest on my hunter and handing it in on my warlock is a novelty, none of those things beat the simple fact that the background music rocks.

If you've played Warcraft 2 and haven't pet battled yet, check it out. I've always thought that Warcraft 2 music is some of Blizzard's best, even when it wasn't a full orchestral setup... pitting squirrels against rabbits whilst listening to the classics will never get old :)

Ding: 89!

No, I didn't make this post 1 level early.

I have, in fact, been rushing to level this weekend - not to 90, as you'd expect - but to 89, the lowest level that you can do Coren Direbrew at.

I'm generally not a race-to-level-cap kind of person, being a fan of RL/gaming balance (a few hours ago I felt like I'd just come out of a late night LAN session), but I did pretty well considering I've only missed 2 chances at the kodo.

It was also rather amusing when I finally did queue how long the fight took - we were all level 89 and pretty undergeared where most years the group would be overgeared... it was almost like a raid boss!

Thankfully, I got through it well enough... and I'm now going to take it easy with levelling.

After all, I have all these pet battles to catch up with!

Levelling Difficulties

I've run into some levelling difficulties for MoP.

"What's that?" I hear you ask. "Impossible!"

Yes, I'm a hunter. Probably the best (or second-best besides DKs?) levelling class in the game.

Well, I suppose you could call my problems hunter-related... and my current broadcast message to my friends list says it all:

It's like a whole new stables with 200 pets! :D

The Traditional Bag Cleanout

And so commences what I call the pre-expansion bag cleanout: making as much space in my bags as possible so that I don't need to make extra trips to the vendor between questing/dungeoning, all while cursing the fact that void storage is so far from the bank.

Not really an easy task for someone who is a bit of a hoarding magpie.

Or, you know, a lot of a hoarding magpie :P

In any case, I managed to free up 47 bag slots after 2hrs of sorting through items; more than enough for general questing and a few profession mats. I doubt I'll find too many rare/interesting items that I'd want to keep until level cap either... and by that time, I'll probably have got rid of a few more things (eg. holiday food I've been stashing away for times when I don't have access to mage food).

I haven't filled up my quest log ready to hand in yet either, but then I'm getting my copy of MoP through the mail, so I may not be able to start levelling tomorrow night anyway.

Plus, trying to play on the first day has always been a fairly dismal experience - competition for quests, lag, queue times.... I'm not in a hurry. Besides, I'm a hunter - you can't beat us for fast levelling! :D

Theramore's Fall Faction Tip

I'm probably a little late to put up a post like this since most people would have done the event already, but just in case:

If you're planning on viewing both sides of the Theramore's Fall scenario, I really recommend doing Horde first.

Unfortunately, I'd already done it on my hunter before doing it on my druid and realised too late that the cutscene right at the end of the Horde version is exactly the same as the one right at the start of the Alliance version.

In any case, I'm going to miss Theramore. I've always quite liked that Jaina had her own town to run, especially as she was a little more neutral towards the Horde than the rest of her Alliance counterparts.

I'm not sure I'll like her as Wrynn's sidekick in Stormwind, either, if that's what happens after her town goes kaboom - doesn't seem right when she's such a powerful mage herself. I'm hoping she gives Wrynn the flick and follows her own agenda elsewhere - maybe not a leader, but at least a strong female Alliance character to rival Sylvanas.

Who needs men? :)

Fishing Fail

I've been trying to win the STV fishing comp for awhile now.

However, for the past couple of weeks, there have been issues with cross-realm zones: some people are fishing up Tastyfish in realms in an earlier time zone and then going back to their own zone to hand the fish in as soon as the competition starts.

Since I have absolutely no chance of competing with these people, I don't think I'll bother trying to fish until Blizzard fixes it... not a happy situation, but what can you do? Props to the people that managed to figure out "creative use of game mechanics", but I hope it gets fixed soon!

Pet Shuffle

Since Blizzard has changed the pet system yet again, I've had to re-shuffle my stables. My new pet list looks like this:

1. Dragonhawk - Dynamite
2. Bird of Prey - Talon
3. Chimaera - Myth
4. Ravager - Quickblade
5. Fox - Tails
6. Serpent - Charmer
7. Windserpent - Hydrastorm
8. Crocolisk - Slimer
9. Core Hound - Cerberus
10. Spirit Beast - Ghost
11. Sporebat - Galaxy
12. Silithid - Malice
13. Moth - Celestia
14. Cat - Robotica
15. Raptor - Razor
16. Basilisk - Medusa
17. Spider - Venom
18. Scorpid - Scorpia
19. Shale Spider - Skitter
20. Carrion Bird - Roc
21. Turtle - Koopa
22. Wasp - Sting
23. Water Strider - Skimmer
24. (Crane)
25. (Quilen)

I've basically tried to make sure I have one of each type of pet for buffs/debuffs/abilities and then filled the rest of the slots with pets I like.

Even then, I had to cut down my list from ~36 or so... not the ideal situation (funnily enough, I think I had the same number of pets I wanted last expansion), but not too bad really.

Once MoP hits, all I really need is to tame a quilen (I really want the rare blue or green model, but highly unlikely I'll find it, so I'll have to settle for red...), crane (white) and exchange a new model of water strider (a blue water insect type), plus exchange turtle models for Terrorpene if I can find him, and I'm done with my ideal stables.

Haven't decided what to call my quilen and crane yet, either... I always try and name my pets carefully; they're almost as bad as alts for me to name, sometimes!

Thrown Away

Is anyone else a little sad about thrown weapons becoming grey items?

I realise that they're now fairly useless since hunters can't use them and melee no longer have a ranged slot, but I also think there were some cool-looking items out there that I would have kept if I came across them (and had actually had room in my bank, but that's another story...).

Personally, I would have kept the items in-game somehow - even as grey tradeable items, if nothing else - because someone obviously spent some time designing these items and I'm sure there would be more than a few people that actually liked those models.