In the last 24 hours I have emptied completely the personal bank, guild bank tab, knapsacks, duffels, backpack and wallet of one Mr. Moneybaggins, Gnome Banker, Khadgar-Alliance. I depleted in one moton his carefully laid aside stores, built up since just about 10 days before Hallow’s End.
There’s some irony in the fact that he is, by way of class, a rogue. The fingers plundering his bank vault were mine alone. My Great Grandpa stood on the street in Coffeyville, Kansas while Jesse and Frank James rolled into town on their way to lighten the coffers at the Coffeyville bank. This isn’t quite that kind of story, though. We’re in cahoots, Moneybaggins and I, having conspired together for months in regard to our own bank caper.
Indulge me here by defining “caper” as a light-hearted frolic which, in the instance at hand, was motivated exclusively by good will and overflowing holiday spirit.
In truth, he’s probably relieved to see nothing but packing peanuts and scraps of ribbon on the floor of the banking organization he maintains. I’m sure after his morning coffee and a look through the financial section, he’ll start to tidy the place up a bit. Dust. Lots of dust. For months the little banker toon has been stacking, storing, and categorizing whimsicalities and wonders from the far ends of the globe (and others, besides!). He has been most busy in his capacity as my Winter’s Veil warehouse manager while preparations for holiday gift giving in Azeroth have gone forward. Moneybaggins, you should know, is an affable sort of fellow who, in faith, has been tickled from his cufflinks to his toes to be minding the store.
While I’ve sent him large quantities of items I have gathered on my own, he has proven to be a great help in keeping a lensed and astute eye on the daily offerings in The Auction House. Further, I have been blessed tremendously to have the help of guildmates who have engineered and farmed many of the wonders I have gathered. Faelwen made Steam Tonk Controllers until they spilled out of her bags. Composite took my mats for 18 fireworks and sent back to me about 80 fireworks, all told. Yamie tried valiantly with me to farm Voodoo Heads and, when none dropped for Project Winter Veil, donated her own Voodoo Head toy to the cause. Good friends are good. I am thankful for mine.
Now at last the holiday has arrived! Gifts have been wrapped (wrapping paper, for use on non-stackable inventory items, is available daily from many general goods vendors, and comes in different varieties from Greatfather Winter’s attendant buskers). Countless parcels and packages filled with holiday gifts have been posted from us with love and affection to some of the finest players and people in the World of Warcraft. The bulk of our work is done, the joy of the holiday is here.
For me, the moment when Winter Veil truly began came last night while Apatheia discussed the strategy that led to our one shot of Deathbringer Saurfang. Gathered together, riding a wave of tremendous progression (3 TOGC hard modes and 4 ICC bosses have fallen to us in the past 14 days), listening to our captains lay out the battle plan, my guildies and friends filled my screen with eruptions of celebretory silliness as they played with the toys and gadgets I had sent them for the holiday. I laid out casks of wine, pastries, and fruit, while spontaneous firework displays erupted, remote control vehicles whizzed and popped along the floor, paper zeppelins and happy fun rocks tossed up among us all across the platform where we would soon bring this minion of Arthas to his knees. It was a wonderful, soul brightening thing to behold.
It occurs to me that, just as in the real world, there must be some denizens of Azeroth who adore gift giving as I do. Certainly there must be others who have not yet completed their own holiday shopping and are looking for bargains, suggestions, or ideas for holiday gifts in Azeroth. Moneybaggins and I have put our heads together and decided that our gift this season for the blogosphere and Warcraft community generally is our own holiday shopping list of the toys, gadgets, whizzbangs and so forth we distributed as holiday gifts to our Khadgar kith and kin*. I extend to you now, reader, this guide to the goodies which spread some joy around my little corner of the world, along with my best wishes for happiness to you and yours this Winter’s Veil, and in the new year to come.
Sylly and Moneybaggins. 15 December, 2009
* We have striven to ensure that items presented here will be Bind on Equip and purchasable from either the auction house (when available) or from a vendor in game. Categorization of items at discretion of Sylly and Moneybaggins, L.L.C.
MoneyBaggins and Sylly’s Holiday Gift List 2009
Fireworks, Crackers, and other Explosive Devices
We gathered fireworks by the hundreds for gifting this season, and found them to come from three major sources:
1)Fireworks made by Engineers
These fireworks are easy to get in large quantities if you hunt down the mats and bring them to your favorite engineer to transform into magical, mustache crisping explosive good fun! There are a number of fireworks that engineers can make for you this season, so throw them some cash (when else is their profession profitable, amirite?) and have some custom made for you. From this category of fireworks, this year I sent out dozens of Snake Burst Fireworks that were hand made by a friend.
One last word on Fireworks of all description and degree of wonder. Think twice when gifting them to dwarves along with huge steins of ale and such. Think the consequences through, mate. Caution is yer man. Or perhaps your only man is the pint of Plain. Perhaps that is the way of it, after all.
Toys, Whizzbangs, Zippity Goodnesses of Various Description
Again, some organization into sub categories seems warranted, as Azeroth offers an amazing array of fantabulous contraptions to the holiday shopper this season.
I asked a friend to help me make dozens of Steam Tonk Controllers, which have many more uses and the added fun of being remote controled by their operator for small level combat operations unfolding across the toes of bear tanks everywhere.
Charms
I was tickled to find a couple of Lucky Charms on the Auction House to people who are a lucky charm to me in one way or another. I also farmed a handful of Rabbit’s Feet one afternoon in Loch Modan. May the road rise to meet you.
For the need to nom nom nom
Although last year I gave out many Delicious Chocolate Cakes from my own oven, this year I focused on a handful of other culinary treats. Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream was my confection of choice to give out this year. I picked up a couple of stacks in Thousand Needles and handed them out liberally. I also picked up a nice Dalaran White Wine.
Seasonal Samplings Stored for Four Seasons
I had a couple of stacks of holiday items in my bank that I’ve held onto for 12 months and gave out to friends. There are always numerous seasonal items that you can store away in this manner. I brought out some Preserved Holly and Snowballs from last Christmas. If you didn’t hold onto any from last year, these items are now available in game and quite easy to gather up for gifting.
Sylly’s Special Winter Treasures List 2009
I watched the auction house for months for a handful of items that I picked up whenever they appeared. These were the special treasures I gathered, my signature gifts this season, and which are now in the satchels of my friends in Azeroth.
There is the matter of a collection of other prizes that I gathered and gave along the way that ought to be categorized, but the staff has taken the rest of the day off to begin the Winter Revels in their own personal ways. Therefore, I beg you grant me a big of license in gathering them together here in this corner. I know we also were able to gift an assortment of Tree Frogs, and Steamy Romance Novels that found their way into the stockings of my compatriots. Perhaps a recent jaunt to the theatre with my daughter played some subconscious role in this selection. I gave a bouquet of white roses to each lady on my list.
There may have been a couple more items that have slipped my mind, it is hard to say. However, the shopping list above is as close to comprehesive as I care tomake it at the moment, and was sufficient to lavish joy and good times on 40 friends of mine. I hope that, in one way or another, the list brings joy to you and yours, too.
The future of the blog here is, admittedly, quite uncertain at the moment. I’m deep in the interview process of two different jobs. Either of them would be great for my family, but would probably mean death to the blog, as either of them would require of me a one way commute of at least two hours from my home. I don’t know if I’ll get either of the jobs, but much as I love blogging and staying in touch with all of you out there, I surely do hope that at least one of these places makes me an offer! In the meantime, I’m finding it very difficult to find time to blog about World of Warcraft. My days are filled with activity. Research, writing out practice interview answers, shopping for clothes for interviews, and actually interviewing, as well as preparing for things like child care, animal care, etc. in case I do get one of the jobs, have filled up my days. So, I am afraid that the blog is currently in limbo. I know that many of you enjoy coming here and reading me yammering on about WOW, and I’m so glad that you do. But I hope that you will find it in your hearts for me to cross your fingers that I get one of these jobs. Even if it means the blog will end. I surely do appreciate it! Peace love and RAWR unending, Sylly.
My server has been down for hours, so I thought I’d roll a little toon on another server to show you all the new Lil’ K.T. vanity pet that was made available by Blizzard today. He’s a mean little thing!!! He’ll randomly kill critters when he gets extra hornery. I love his laugh! mwahahahaha!!!!
p.s. why do all my fraps videos seem to end up with my toons in tears?
Since the news came out about the changes to Gift of the Earthmother in patch 3.3, which will put a much higher premium on haste for us and blow our current haste soft cap right out of the water, I’ve been on the hop trying to pick up haste where ever I could find it. I always rode the soft cap as closely as possible before, so I was starting out with just 342 haste when I learned I was going to need to more than double that amount to have the same 1 second cast times for spells like Rejuv. My haste is now at 593, a big improvement, but I’ve got a ways to go. A lot of the changes I made were in gemming, favoring Reckless Ametrine over pure spell power gems in many cases. However, I’ve also been on the hunt for many specific loot drops that offer haste. Since I doubt I’m alone in working over time to improve my haste stats, I decided to make a sort of best in slot list for druids looking to maximize haste for 3.3. This is not a complete list of resto gear with haste. I have tried to focus on the highest level gear available that will improve your haste rating. Enjoy!
There’s a really interesting conversation going on over on the official healing forum right now about how to make healing more interesting. The gist of Ghostcrawler’s position is that healing becomes boring when the content becomes outgeared or healing mechanics become too powerful. Whereas DPS can still have fun by trying to bring a boss down as quickly as possible, and tanks can have fun by trying to add damage or dropping gear or trying for the highest mitigation, healers are able to either do laughable DPS or just sit back on their heals and pick their nose in these situations. He suggests that he’d like to see the healing mechanics change for Cataclysm as follows:
…higher health pools but also lower heals (and tank avoidance) overall. Hopefully everyone won’t be on the verge of almost dying, yet the risk of overhealing will be more real such that you can’t just madly spam all of the time if you want to make it to the end of the encounter.
While this would certainly make healing more challenging in every situation, not just when the party outgears the interest, it isn’t exactly a radical shift. It’s very similar, in fact, to what we’ve already seen many times. We get too powerful, they nerf our spells, ,we get more gear and get too powerful again. It seems like if Blizzard really wanted to make healing more interesting they should get out of the box and get a new perspective on things. I know that’s not easy to do in any case, but I was thinking about it today and I had an idea. Don’t know if it would work… at all… but it seemed like it would be fun and add a whole new dynamic to the game…
Race changes have gone live! Druids!!! Do you have any idea what this means? This means…
yea.
Absolutely nothing to us. Sorry bout that.
=P
This is really just a quick post to check in with my readers to say I’m thinking about you out there. I’ve been preparing for a very significant job interview all week and have been intensely busy. But I miss you.
This morning I was picking up the fishing and cooking dailies in Dalaran when I saw someone looking for a healer for HVH. Although I generally only run the daily heroic unless a guildie or friend needs help with something else, HVH I’ll sometimes make an exception for since it’s easy, quick, nets me a ton of leather, and I don’t have to travel anywhere to do it. So I decided to throw my hat in.
A hunter and I were the first ones there, but when we entered the instance, I got the warning that I was entering a saved instance and that, should I not want to be saved to that empty instance myself, I should leave lickety split. The hunter, as it turned out, was saved and left the group. I said I could ask in guild if anyone wanted to come and was promoted to party leader. My guildies, however, were busy with other things, so I hopped on trade chat to look for DPS. A druid responded, and there’s never too many druids in a party (evah!), so I picked him up and we headed in.
As we were waiting for the final party member to arrive, the druid I had recruited for the run started to ask me about my guild and our raids. I provided him with information because, based upon his gear, it seemed safe to assume that he had some raiding xp at at least tier 8, which would be needed to raid with Apatheia right now. At some point in the middle of this conversation and before the other druid arrived on the scene, my sister called me from out of state. (love hearing from mah people!) Since it was heroic Violet Hold which I could pretty much heal in a party dress at this point, I just chatted away with her while we cleared the instance, and although the whispered conversation with the druid continued, it pretty much slipped into the back of my consciousness. I answered questions, but the conversation took a far back seat in my awareness to a) talking to my sister and b) healing the heroic.
When the run was over, I was still chatting away with my sister. The fact that I was no longer healing, however, opened up more of my awareness to the conversation the druid kept pushing forward with me and I got… uncomfortable. We weren’t 5 steps outside of HVH when he said, “it’s too late now, I’m stalking you. ha ha!” This statement had NO contextual place in the conversation we were having, and although my conversation with my sister was still getting the lion’s share of my attention, a little bell went off somewhere for me. I’m not a big fan of being told by a total stranger that they are stalking me. Nope. Not at all.
He wanted me to run a heroic with him, but I wasn’t interested. He wanted to run a raid together, but I told him that I was saved everywhere that might drop anything I needed. He joined a group for the Headless Horseman, then told me he was going to drop it so we could do something together. This bugged me a lot. You don’t ditch a group to hang out with me if you’re trying to impress me. I told him not to do it. He told me he was going to ditch the group and log onto his main to hang out with me, that I should put his main on my friends list and when he logged on to invite him. I told him again not to do it. In the midst of all of this he told me again that he was stalking me. He logged off his druid. I did not put his priest on my friends list, and I did not invite him to a group if and when he logged on. Instead, I put the druid on ignore and told my guildies how creeped out I was. At the advice of a guildie, I opened a ticket, which is still pending.
Here’s the thing… this all could have been very innocent. He could have been someone who felt like they had made a new friend in the game and was just joking around about the whole stalking thing. I may have misinterpreted the joke, which led me to incorrectly color all subsequent actions on his part as offputting and vaguely threatening. He may have lacked social skills in some way, or it’s possible that he was completely normal and I was just reading the situation wrong. Hard to know in a typed medium and blah blah blah. But on the other hand, and as my guildie correctly pointed out, joking around about stalking a stranger falls into the category of the completely unacceptable. It’s not cute, it’s not endearing, and it’s not funny. He should know better. Hopefully a GM will help to teach him the lesson. If the GM doesn’t, perhaps the fact that he will have no chance in hell of getting into my guild, in which he showed great interest, will. I suppose that there is probably a much greater chance that he was just an idiot than there is that he was in some way sinister or obsessive. But I’m not interested in playing those odds.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you know, how much experience you have, how skilled or talented or team oriented or fan-freakin-tastic. There are times when you just do something so goofy that no one can save you from yourself. /sigh. So let me tell you about my day. Read more ›
I’ve got a bunch of things floating around in my head that aren’t meaty enough to qualify for a full post, but I wanted to throw out there, just the same. So, welcome to the jumbled up hodge podge of the junk drawer. Tidy up around here before you go, would you?
Hallows End Is All About the Droods
Hallows End is here, and hooray for it! I think this holiday has to rate near the top of the list for most WOW players I know, as far as world events go. Personally, I’m a huge fan. I love the light hearted silliness of this holiday. The events are fun, even the /gasp PVP. Yesterday I worked out my G.N.E.R.D. Rage in Arathi Basin and got so cocky I was blowing kisses to the rogue who couldn’t quite gank me because of my awesome chain CC skillz woot! The trappings of the holiday are loads of fun, too, in game and IRL. I did my trick or treating with my four year old daughter on my lap yesterday. She did the right clicking on the pumpkins and collecting of the fat candy loots and every time we landed in a new place she required that I get out the Sinister Squashling so that she could watch it’s crazy, silly movements and laugh with unabashed delight. It was golden. As fun as the holiday is for everyone regardless of spec, I definitely believe that, regardless of what the warriors might say on the subject (pfft!), Hallows End is, on some level, a celebration of Druids. That’s right, I said it! When all those warlocks are out there looking for a shape shift into bat form, they’re just using the permissiveness and traditional trappings of the holiday to live out some subconscious druid envy driven personal fantasy. /snicker!
Arctic Fur for Sale on PTR!!!
So one of the leatherworking dudes in Dalaran has Arctic Fur for Sale for 10 Heavy Borean Leathers. Jeez is that a nice change! I’ve spent literally hours farming these stupid things to no avail. Now at least I can turn 60 skins into one if needed. Therefore, I’d advise the following to any other leatherworkers/skinners out there… if you’re saving up some armor kit mats to sell some kits down the road, you might want to make them now, as the price may drop once arctic furs are more available. Also, start saving up your leather if you generally sell it off. Finally, if you see any Borean or Heavy Borean Leather on your AH for cheap in the next couple of weeks, snatch it up! I imagine it will be increasing in value, or you can trade it in for Arctic Fur. It’s about time for this change, and should be a big help Leatherworkers and classes that use our kits.
B Rez 20 to 10
Man, that cooldown reduction time of the battle rez to 10 minutes that’s on the PTR can’t get here soon enough! We’ve been working on progression hard mode 25 man TOC in my guild and it would be SOOOO helpful if our druids had Rebirth available twice as often. I think the change makes all kinds of sense. Instances are no longer the multiple hour slogs that they used to be, and Blizz is on record saying that they envision the right time frame to bring down a raid boss being in the five minute range, so having to wait four times as long to bring this ability to the table can be agonizing. Bring it, baby, bring it!!!!
Suck It, Innkeepers!
The Innkeepers of Azeroth are cruel, cynical sots with a penchant for torture and a sick enjoyment of the misery of others. I don’t know if it’s a club thing, or if they go to school for it, or if it just develops slowly over time as their inns fall into disrepair and ill repute around them while they dream of a vacation on the pristine shores of Stranglethorn Vale, but they are just rotten bastards, all. They have taken particular delight, of late, in the irony that, although Sylly is made of wood, she is unable to produce a toothpick on her own to complete the Hallows End achievements, and they refuse to give her one. To her plaintive requests they turn a cold shoulder and offer endless useless crap. They think it’s particularly funny to give her soulbound things that she already has such as the Hallowed Helm and the Sinister Squashling, only to deny THESE items to other players who desperately want them. I think they should not be surprised that I refuse from here on out for any reason whatsoever to help put out fires burning their inns to the ground until they, for the love of all things good and for the satisfaction of my own personal nerd rage, supply me with at least ONE STINKING TOOTHPICK!!!
Out of Date
My blogroll is hopelessly out of date and I’m feeling pretty guilty about that. There are lots of blogs that are linked that are no longer active, and others that should be linked, but aren’t. Therefore, I would looooove if you all would take a second in the comments here to let me know what other blogs you are reading out there. If your blog isn’t linked and you’re a reader, for heaven’s sake, let me know so I can add you. I need to do some housekeeping around here. Thanks in advance!
I have this little hunter alt. Although it’s hard to admit this here, it’s true, I’m not a druid through and through. Sometimes I get my huntard on. I’ve actually twinked her out with heirlooms, which is something I’ve never done for any of my alts. I’m having a grreat time playing her because it’s new and the quests send her all over the place doing different things, plus she’s always learning new abilities that shakes up the rotation. This is a great contrast to playing Sylly, who I know like the back of my hand. She’s also fun because she’s all tricked out and such, but she does the same things all the time. It’s all dailies and raiding for her.
Anywho, the biggest drawback to playing the hunter vs. playing Sylly is that Sylly has a huge group of friends and guildies at her level to do things with, whereas the hunter is almost always a solo act (with the exception of Baloo, who’s been her bear companion since whatever level it was that she was able to tame a pet). There are only a handful of alts in my guild at level 40ish in any case, and the chances of people being on them to do things with me are generally slim. Add to this the fact that the lower zones are often eerily similar to ghost towns, and you basically have a one man show. This is generally quite alright with me. Often the reason I opt to play the hunter is because I actually want to get into that zone of solo questing, setting and meeting little personal goals, exploring new zones at whatever pace I feel like setting.
But there are times when I need a little help, you know? One orange quest is not the same level of difficulty as another, as I’m sure you all are aware. Sometimes a quest that would be a breeze for a warlock is desperately frustrating for a hunter. Etc. etc. etc.
So today I was in Tanaris and I had all those quests having to do with the pirates on the shore there. Kill 10 each of assorted piratical baddies, collect their fabulous hats, recover the booze they swiped, and take down their leader while you’re at it, kthxbai. These are not easily soloable quests. The respawn rate is high, especially with those dock workers, and there are groups that pull all at once rather than in manageable ones or twos. Also, I was 3 levels lower than the pirates, so I was at a bit of a disadvantage. I went on general to see if anyone was needing the quests, but got nothing. I decided to head out there anyway. Even if I just picked of pirates outside of the enclosed encampment, eventually I’d get enough hats for that quest, and I’d gain XP along the way. So that’s what I started doing, when something awesome happened.
As I hunted down these rapscallion pirates, I noticed there was an undead shadow priest out there doing the same thing. I watched his progress with the same interested detachment that I always have when something similar happens. I wait to gauge where they range on the dick meter, from totally benign to humongous, pull camping, dual challenging, aggro dumping king dick of the universe. But this guy, he seemed pretty cool. After about five minutes of harmonious tangential pirate slaughter, I saw him get ganged up on by 3 pirates at once, and decided to help him get them down. Because it was more fun at the moment than working solo, the next pirate he pulled, this one a single, I again stuck it full of arrows while Baloo ripped its face off. Then I pulled one of my own and the shadow priest nodded at me and helped me kill it. Synergy! =)
It ended up that with no communication at all other than emotes, we moved through all of the quests in the area together, trading off pulls so that the other would get the same amount of drops and XP. We had some crazy moments when my pet pulled about 6 pirates at once (see? huntard), but neither of us ever died and when these moments of crisis passed there was much celebration and cheering each other on. I have to tell you, I had SO much fun not quite questing with my cross faction friend. I had a huge smile on my face as we figured out how to communicate without communicating and helped one another through.
I have to say that it was with deep regret that I had to log off to make dinner, knowing that I wouldn’t have any way in game of contacting this new friend again. I made sure to /hug /love /wave aplenty before I left, and I hope that my exuberance communicated to this mystery player just how much I enjoyed the experience of playing with them. As much as I benefit from the help and companionship of my many friends in the game (and I do benefit, greatly from this), that old-comfy-shoe-ness of running in my pack is an altogether different kind of experience from this random meeting of two like minded people who had no access to most of the normal means of communication used in an MMO, but found a way to let good will and companionship ascend, regardless. And although I never got to express to him how enjoyable I found his company today, I send out my thanks to him for the affirmation of goodwill anyway. For him, for the first time, perhaps the last, I say it loud, say it proud… For the Horde!
