Note: I wrote this yesterday, then wasn’t entirely happy about it so I saved it in drafts and went to bed. Now it seems to be jumping around the blogosphere without me, which makes me late to the bandwagon simply because I waited a few hours x_x, so I did some quick editing, and here ya go:

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Anyone who has been lurking around the blogosphere lately has likely seen a “Healing Questionnaire” floating around. This was eventually turned into a Tanking Questionnaire. However, I didn’t see hair nor hide of a DPS version. Never fear, Google to the rescue! A DPS version appears to have been spawned over at a DPS Death Knight blog, Death Goddess.

So, because I felt awkward posting my healing responses here (I should really get over that one o’ these days) and because Pike has no tank, and because the NaNoWriMo site is down which means the word count updatey-thingy (my biggest writing motivator) is down… here ya go!

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary DPS?

Tawyn, dual-spec’d PvE Raid Beast Mastery / PvE Raid Marksmanship Hunter would be my main, although she’s certainly not my only level 80 hunter!

What is your primary DPSing environment? (i.e. raids, PvP, 5 mans)

At the moment I am in raids the most, both 10 and 25man though probably skewing more towards 25man. I do at least one 25man a week (ToC), and occasionally Ulduar or Ony and a coupla 10mans as well.

What is your favorite DPS spell/ability for your class and why?

Feign Death doesn’t count, does it? >_> Umm, hmm. Bestial Wrath is always fun. I really like Silencing Shot when I’m spec’d Marksmanship. Nommy silence.

What DPS spell do you use least for your class and why?

Tranq Shot but you use it a surprising amount of times in ToC. Let’s see. Jaraxxus? Check. Faction Champions? Check. Anub’arak? Check. Now that I think about it, though, I’m not sure if that counts as a “DPS ability”. Hmm. This is a tougher survey to fill out for DPS than it was for heals! D= Does Rapid Fire count? Only cause of the long cooldown.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your DPS class and why?

Well solo’ing and questing and the like is obviously pretty easy but in a PvE raid-ish situation, I’d say the very fact that we are ranged but not magic-based is a strength. On my (very rare) ventures into the Moonkin Suit, I’m always surprised by these weird boss mechanics where you’ll be silenced or locked out of a class of spell. I remember mentioning to my boyfriend the warlock how irritating I thought this all was, and he was like “SEE?? FINALLY YOU UNDERSTAND!” So getting to bypass all of that is nice.

As a Beast Master in particular, I like the fact that I can be doing a ridiculous amount of DPS but I rarely have aggro problems because my aggro is split– about half of it is my pet’s threat, and half of it is “mine”. Having to Feign Death is delightfully rare as a Beast Master, so you pretty much never have to stop DPS!

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your DPS class and why?

The fact that we become screwed at melee range. This can be avoided in most PvE situations, but it sucks in PvP when you’re up against someone who knows what they’re doing. Fortunately I avoid most PvP beyond level 60 or so.

I also think that Blizzard did a somewhat haphazard job of incorporating pets into things. Those fights where you get a gigantic buff? Your pet probably doesn’t. Although this is annoying in raids or instances, the most glaringly painful example of this, to me, actually isn’t in a raid or instance, but in Battle for the Undercity. Guess who gets a giant, massive-stamina-and-constantly-getting-health-restored buff? You. Guess who doesn’t? Your pet. Guess who can’t survive more than two seconds in the AoE heavy Battle for the Undercity? Yeah. That entire quest, instead of being amazing and awe-inspiring, was nothing but me Volley spamming and not having my beloved pet beside me, and being frustrated overall. It was much better when I did it later as a Moonkin.

I also wish there was a way for you to “give” a zonewide buff to your pet instead of you. If I’m out grinding or questing, the last thing I want is some super massive damage buff on me making me pull aggro from my pet. Put it on my pet instead of me, please. Pleeeeeeeeeease.

Similarly, all those quests where you get to pick a reward item of either “gain back health on physical attack!” or “gain back mana on spellcast!” … can there be one for “gain back mana on physical attack”? Please? /puppy dog eyes

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best DPS assignment for you?

Single target, stand-still, pet-friendly, pewpewfest. Patchwerk, in other words. (I’m sure most DPS would say that…)

For Beast Master in particular, we excel at fights where there is a lot of loss of character control or where you’re running around a lot, and your pet doesn’t have to. That’s 45% of your DPS right there merrily DPSing away while you run around like a freak.

What DPS class do you enjoy DPSing with most and why?

There are multiple ways to interpret this question, I’m going to interpret the “with” as “alongside”. In which case, probably something like a feral druid for Leader of the Pack or a bunch of paladins for the buffs.

Or clothies, cause they won’t roll on my stuff. I’M GREEDY OKAY. >_>

What DPS class do you enjoy DPSing with least and why?

Other hunters, which makes me feel kinda horrible, but… I get crazily, madly competitive around other hunters and I just end up constantly checking my position on Recount as compared to theirs. I’d much rather be in a group of all other classes where there is no real comparison between my DPS and theirs, because I know nothing about their classes. Then I’ll usually just forget about Recount entirely and focus on having fun and doing my job.

Really, I love people who play hunters, I just… have a hard time playing with them. =(

In the end though, I’m not hugely picky about who I group with =P

What is your worst habit as a DPS?

Now that I’ve started playing my druid a lot I find myself inadvertently watching healthbars. =X

I also do this thing where I get trigger-happy and overwrite my Serpent Sting before I need to. Gotta work on that.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while DPSing?

BUFF. MY. PET.

Can I make it blinky and in a scrolling marquee? Cause I totally will. Just watch me. Juuuuust watch me.

(In all fairness, I get super irritated when I’m on my druid and hunters don’t rez their pet in a timely fashion. By which I mean, buffs are going out and the hunter knows his pet is dead cause it’s laying in the middle of the floor, and isn’t doing anything about it. In that case, you’ve missed out, bucko. Huh… I’m turning into one o’ them fabled Snarky Healers, aren’t I?)

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other DPS?

The Beast Mastery spec lags behind the others but not nearly as much in practice as I think people tend to assume it does. Both of the facts in said sentence (that it does lag, and that people overestimate the lag), irritate me to some degree.

As for hunters as a whole, I dunno, all the Recount screenshots I’ve seen of superendgame guilds show hunters as really lagging behind, but that must just be a superendgame thing because hunters destroy the meters in my guild. Like, you’ll have that one crazygood mage, that one crazygood rogue, and that one crazygood feral druid, but everyone else toppin’ the meters? Hunters, hunters, and more hunters. So, I dunno.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a DPS?

Recount is the obvious one though I have a love/hate relationship with it. Hunters are just so dependent on buffs, group makeup, fight mechanics, and everything else that it’s silly to use Recount as a be-all and end-all for it. One day I’ll have 6k DPS on a fight and then the next day I’ll struggle to hit 4.5k on the same thing.

Honestly I think it’s mostly an “impression” thing. If I’m getting invites to the Hard Mode Stuff, which I know the raid leaders are selective about in terms of invites, then I know I’m doing good. [Ed. note: apparently I got an invite to a Hard Mode Thing via Twitter in the middle of writing this, so my point is proven! Huzzah!]

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?

That hunter is about /send pet and /afk auto shot. See, I have a theory about where this misconception came from. A hunter’s “special attack” doesn’t really look like anything. Okay, so the arrow or bullet might be a little shinier. That’s it. Melee classes spin around and do fancy footwork, casters make all sorts of different things come out of their hands, but hunters are all the same. Pew. Pew. Pew. It literally doesn’t look like you’re doing anything but Auto Shot, and that wiggles into other peoples’ subconscious.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new DPSers of your class to learn?

Pet management and keeping an eye on your pet. For me, it’s so ingrained from playing so many hunters, that a.) Wash is often the last pet standing in a tricky fight, b.) I spaz out when my treants die when I’m playing a moonkin, and c.) I’ve been known to instinctively pound my Mend Pet keybind when I see the main tank low on damage. All of the above are Trufax.

Beyond that, I think that there are little nuances that people don’t expect to have to look into that make a large difference in hunter gameplay– glyph choices, intuitive cooldown uses, etc.

What DPS class do you feel you understand least?

Pretty much anything that isn’t a hunter, although I have a rudimentary understanding of boomkin (seeing as it’s my druid’s “solo’ing spec”) and to a lesser extent warlock, since my boyfriend played one for so long. Lemme put it this way: I could probably play a boomkin for something and not entirely fail, and I’d probably fail slightly more as a warlock but still have a decent idea of what I’m doing. Everything else, I’d be completely and utterly lost.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in DPS?

Omen though I don’t need it very often these days; threat is pretty much a non-issue for Beast Mastery and when I’m Marksman a Feign or two will fix it right up. Scrolling Combat Text and Scrolling Combat Text Damage to see procs and see a sort of visual representation of what I hit for and how often I crit. OmniCC for cooldowns. Quartz for the cast bars and the DoT/HoT timers, though honestly I find that one to be waaaaaaaay more handy for my druid than for my hunter. (Cast bars for the moonkin, and HoT timers for the tree.)

[Your class's preferred basic stat] over other stats or balanced stat allocation, and why?

Depends on whether or not you’re hit-capped. =P

Beyond that, this one really seems to go into an area of being a moot point once you enter endgame stuff. Install RatingBuster (which is much better than the Blizz default stat thingy.) Compare your gear. ???? Profit! If you’re really hardcore you can even use a spreadsheet or something.

Well, that’s the end of the survey. I tag any of you fine DPS folks who want to fill it out! =D

NANO SITE IS UP *poof*

- So between now and the last time I messed around with femaledwarf.com, something interesting has happened in regard to Beast Mastery and pets; namely, Devilsaurs appear to be beating wolves again. Only if you both have about a bajillion buffs though. (i.e., wolves are probably still superior in five- and ten- mans). Why this is different from how it was when I tested it multiple times a couple months ago, I dunno. Gear maybe? It may be worth a look, though, if you a Beast Master and are into that sort of thing!

- I did ToC25 on the weekend, like I always do if I happen to have the time slot off from work. Actually we did it twice. The first time we were going to have six hunters so I volunteered to go on my druid instead, and I healed the thing. Then I was feeling all good about how the next day I’d go and pretty much be the only hunter cause all the hunters had gone on the first day. But no, we still had like… four or five hunters in the group. The number of hunters that have joined the guild in the past month or so is through the roof. Maybe my guild is right, maybe hunters DO just follow me around, like I’m the Pied Piper or something.

ANYWAYS.

I got a whisper from one of the hunters, who was spec’d Beast Mastery at the time, if he should use his wolf, cat, or Spirit Beast. I told him that, numbers-wise, the wolf would perform the best of all three, but stressed that he should use the pet that he loved the most! So he ended up actually cycling through all three pets throughout the course of the run, giving each one a chance to do one or two bosses. Which I thought was neat.

The point is that I still support using the pet you love. That, to me, is one of the points of “Being a Hunter”. I mean, I can see not running with a tenacity- or cunning- pet, cause that makes sense, but I don’t like feeling pidgeonholed into one or maybe two pets of all the ferocity ones we can choose from.

I’ve been running as Marksmanship lately and recently discovered that, according to all the mathy stuff, I’d be doing 200 more DPS if I was using a wolf. My raptor, though, is not going anywhere, so the math can shove it. (Not saying wolves are bad though, I know a lot of people that really like them… but they are simply not my style. Well, except for the fiery Zul’Drak wolf, but Lunapike has that one already and I like when my hunters all have unique pets).

Granted, if Wind Serpents because a Ferocity pet, I wouldn’t raid with ANYTHING ELSE EVER, EVER AGAIN, but that is just a pipe dream. /dreams

- My “NaNoWriMo” book is going well, I’m at 13,500 words! I must say, the writing thing is fun. I’ve let the WoW and the blog fall a bit to the side while I work on this big book project but it’s suuuuper fun. Right now I’m just trying to dump words onto the page, but once I finish up, I plan on going back and doing a hardcore edit job. This is my profile-ma-jig by the way, and you should add me if you are doing it too. Not really for any reason, but just cause it’s fun.

…so that last one was totally not pet related. “Pet project”, maybe…? Hmm. /muses

The winner of the “400,000 Site Views” contest was Bloedhoorn, a tauren resto/kitty druid. This sort of presented a unique challenge to me because it meant I could write a story where druids were the focus, which I hadn’t done before. Anyways, as the character was being described to me, I was informed that Bloedhoorn spent a lot of time in tree form jumping around, dancing, and waving, which “comes naturally to being a Tree.” I really liked that last comment so much that I tried to see if I could base a whole story off of it. I also tried to incorporate Bloedhoorn’s love of companion pets. Hopefully I pulled it all off:

Bloedhoorn was in the form of a chocoloate-colored dire raven, flying high, high above Hellfire Peninsula. He rarely went to the Outland these days, so it was an unusual excursion, but he had recently been informed that a young druid from his home village who was following in his hoofsteps was in the area, and as he knew her family he wanted to drop by and see if she needed any assistance.

He circled Thrallmar a few times and then saw what he was looking for: A tree. A treant, to be more specific. Practicing her spells; wooden hands glowing with energy. Bloedhoorn smiled to himself and flew down and alighted next to her. He nodded his avian head and squawked out “Songlark, I presume?”

The treant looked at him curiously. It was notoriously difficult for a druid to speak much while in the form of a tree, especially if said druid was newer to the art and unused to having, quite literally, a wooden mouth. So instead, Songlark made a sort of grunting noise and nodded.

Bloedhoorn chuckled and effortlessly shifted into his tauren form. “I am Bloedhoorn,” he said, and bowed. “You may not know me, but I know your family well. I heard you were here and came to see if you needed any advice from a more experienced druid.”

Songlark digested this information and and forced her stiff mouth to work, although she was sure the words came out sounding a little funny: “It is nice to meet you.” She bowed back, leaves atop her head quivering.

“I see you were practicing before I arrived,” said Bloedhoorn. “How is that going for you?”

Songlark shifted back into her tauren form, where she would have more freedom to speak naturally. “I’m not sure,” she then admitted. “I don’t feel like I am doing all I could be. I know my basic spells– the ones all druids know. But very few tricks beyond that. I worry I may be… a hindrance…”

Bloedhoorn nodded. “I remember feeling that way, when I was where you are at in your studies,” he said. “We have some things to practice, then. But first, we must get out of this wasteland and go somewhere more fitting. Come!” he shifted into his stormcrow form, but Songlark remained stationary, looking a bit sheepish. “I… have not learned to fly, yet.”

Without a word Bloedhoorn then turned into a sleek cheetah. “No worries,” he said, as the younger druid followed his lead. “Now, come!”

The two dashed out of Thrallmar, and not much later they were among the somewhat ethereal woods of Terokkar Forest, both in tree form. “It is easier for a druid healer to practice when among real trees, where we can pull on the inspiration of nature,” Bloedhoorn explained. “Now, Songlark, I will show you a trick. We specialize in healing someone’s wounds slowly, over time, however, in an emergency, we can draw these energies together to heal all at once.” He was about to demonstrate when suddenly he paused. He thought he’d seen something move, out of the corner of his eye…

But then it was gone again. Chalking it up to a bird flitting about, Bloedhoorn prepared to cast a spell. But then, wait! There it was again! Something was moving in the forest.

“What is it?” Songlark asked, but Bloedhoorn held up a branch to silence her. Slowly he scanned the area with his eyes. Nothing but trees.

Trees…

One of them was moving.

A treant! Or more accurately…

“Another druid?” said Bloedhoorn quietly to himself.

It was! Another druid in tree form, watching them quietly. Songlark saw it as well, and the two tauren stared at it. It was downright unusual to see a druid in tree form out in the field, especially alone. And Bloedhoorn, being fairly well-traveled, immediately recognized it as not just any druid, but a Night Elf druid. He relayed this information to Songlark, who gasped. “Does she want to fight?”

“I would have a hard time believing that,” said Bloedhoorn. “One does not do much damage in the form of a treant, as I am sure you have learned already. No, let us take this slowly.”

He took a few steps toward the other tree, and waved. She waved back.

Bloedhoorn pointed to himself and Songlark, and then bowed. He was trying to get across the message that they were friendly, since he knew they would not be able to speak the same language. The other tree watched them intently, and seemed to understand what was being said because she nodded.

Bloedhoorn then pointed to the other tree and shrugged. It was his way of asking what she was doing there.

The other tree pointed to herself and said, “Tamaryn.” It must have been her name. Then, she began a series of wild gesticulations that absolutely baffled the two tauren. She scratched at her face with her leafy hands, then made a paddling motion, then pointed at the surrounding forest, and finally slumped over in a look of despair. When these gestures were met with a confused look on the faces of the other trees, she repeated them.

“What’s she trying to say?” asked Songlark.

“I don’t know, but I think maybe it has to do with it raining orange frogs?” Bloedhoorn guessed. “These night elf types are very unusual.”

“I can see that,” said Songlark.

Tamaryn appeared exasperated at this point, but then suddenly her face lit up, as though she had an idea. Suddenly she shifted into a sleek, dark bluegreen panther.

The two tauren jumped. Such an action was potentially threatening, afterall, since the form of a cat was frequently used to fight. But before they could react, the other druid turned back into a tree and pressed her hands very close together, as though trying to point out that something was being squeezed together… or perhaps…

“I KNOW!” Songlark said. “She is trying to say something is very small.”

“Hrmm…” said Bloedhoorn thoughtfully, his tree-face scrunched up in thought.

Tamaryn repeated this series of actions a few times: turning into a panther, then making the “small” gesture, and then pointing at the forest. And all of a sudden, it dawned on him.

“Small cat. She’s lost a small cat!” said Bloedhoorn. “And it is hiding in the forest somewhere. Perhaps she wants us to help look.”

Bloedhoorn held up a finger to the other druid, signaling her to wait. Then he turned to Songlark. “You use the swiftness of the cheetah to scout around this area. I’ll look from the sky.”

Songlark nodded and shifted into cheetah form. As she did so, Bloedhoorn became a stormcrow and flew high into the sky. As he hovered there and scanned the area with sharp eyes, he found several questions entering his head, the main one being why the other druid did not look through flight herself. He could sense that she was just as powerful and trained as he was. There must have been some reason why she was staying in treant form.

He flew a bit east; he saw Songlark searching every nook and cranny below him and Tamaryn also looking– still as a tree. Realizing this might take a while, Bloedhoorn took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to imagine that he was a pet cat that belonged to a treant. Where might he hide…

…in the branches of another tree, perhaps?

Swooping lower a bit, he flew between the trees of the Terokkar woods. He kept his eyes wide and his ears open, and it wasn’t long before he heard it. A quiet, barely perceptible “Mew…”

Immediately he stopped, wheeled around, and spotted a small white kitten perched atop a very tall tree. Its eyes were wide and it was staring rather nervously at the ground that was far below as it mewed helplessly. Smiling to himself, Bloedhoorn alighted on a branch next to it, gently took it by the scruff of its neck in his beak, and then fluttered down to the ground, where the night elf druid was waiting.

Tamaryn’s face lit up and she cheered as Bloedhoorn set the kitten down, which immediately ran up and hid in the branches atop Tamaryn’s head. A series of words tumbled out of her mouth, which Bloedhoorn didn’t understand, but which he assumed by her expression were words of gratitude, so he bowed at her.

Tamaryn bowed back, and then with a last wave, she walked away into the misty woods– still as a treant.

Bloedhoorn returned to tauren form and watched her go, rather mystified. At that moment, Songlark dashed up as a cheetah. “You found the cat?”

“Yes, it has been returned to its owner. I know why she was in tree form now; the cat appears to live on her head.” He scratched his scalp.

“Huh…” Songlark shifted into tauren form herself. “Well, that was an, uh… unexpected little diversion.”

Bloedhoorn chuckled. “What did I tell you, the Night Elves are a bit odd. You can’t blame them really; they’re purple, afterall. Now, where were we…”

So it’s “Aliens” quote day, so sue me. (Best Movie Ever by the way.)

ANYWAYS! For those who missed it, this blog has been infected with a nasty little bug the past few days, so I nuked the site from orbit to try to kill it. Backed up my posts/comments/images, deleted everything, and spent the last six hours trying to bring this back online again after some issues.

Everything, for the most part, should be back– obviously some of the stuff on the sidebar and some theme stuff needs to be fixed, and images are in the middle of being uploaded and probably won’t finish for quite some time, since I have a truck-full of them… but all posts and comments (aside from those comments that were posted in the last few minutes before D-Day, after I’d backed everything up) should be good to go.

Since I’ve pretty much been working on this all day, though, I’m gonna go relax for the rest of the night and finish polishing up the blog tomorrow!

I would like to thank everybody for their patience and for doing things like leaving cheery or silly messages on various phases of the reconstruction process when I was frustrated as all heck. I would also like to thank everybody for your patience regarding the fact that the blog post content here has been pretty craptacular while I’ve been dealing with this problem. =P Hopefully, though, it’s behind us now (if not, it won’t be pretty). Onward and upward~

It’s the only way to be sure.

So, soldiers, here’s the scoop. I thought I got rid of the nasty bug causing site redirect issues and the like last time, but apparently I’ve yet to root out the Queen Alien, so the issues have returned. I spent some time searching around but to no avail, and since I don’t want to waste my time on this crap when I’ve got stories to write and pictures to draw and WoW to play, (to paraphrase a wise man, “I’ve had it with these motherfrackin’ snakes on this motherfrackin’ plane”) I’m gonna attempt something crazy.

Namely, I’m gonna back everything up, delete EVERYTHING, and reinstall WordPress from scratch.

Then I’ll make all my passwords like three times longer, which means they’ll probably take about ten minutes to type out, but ya know.

If THAT doesn’t fix the problem, then… well, I’ll probably lose it, but we’ll deal with it when we get there.

AS SUCH, you may, over the course of the next few hours/days/whatnot see reduced site functionality, missing themes, the site not loading entirely, random 404s, etc. while I try my best to completely reboot the blog. All comments and posts, as well as the entire site itself, will be backed up in multiple ways so I can always revert it if I mess something up entirely.

Until then, wish me luck– I’m takin’ this thing to the airlock.

Please tell me I’m not the only one having really awesome “Milo & Otis” flashbacks:

(Thanks for the pic, MMO-Champion!)

I say we pair it up with the Cornish Rex. Sooo cute x_x (And really, it’s about time we had a proper dog minipet, and not just a mini-worg.)

(Yes, this is a filler post. Yes, I apologize. I’ll try to have something slightly more interesting up shortly!)

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit this but it must be done, because this blog is about honesty: it appears as though my site has been compromised. Again. As such, I must extend my deepest apologies to anyone who has heard weird music on my site the past few days, been redirected to spam sites, been lambasted with popups, had their Antivirus tell them terrible things about me, etc.

Now not everyone appears to have had this problem with my site– I think Adblock Plus kept a lot of the gunk out– but I know many people did, and since I have, from Day One, maintained a strict “NO ADS” policy on this site, it was rather distressing to me that this all happened.

Furthermore, I find myself wondering what I’ve done wrong. See, I’ve always been of the school of thought that if something like this happens, much more often than not it was preventable. And so you can imagine how embarrassed I am when I feel all secure with my hugely long letters-n-numbers-n-symbols passwords, and my Firefox and NoScript, and crap somehow manages to get past it all anyway. It’s frustrating.

Anyways, you did not come here to hear me rant, I think! Mostly I just wanted to offer this apology and also ask for blog readers to be on the lookout: I think I got rid of the parasitic code that was causing the problem but if you’re still getting weird redirects or popups, let me know. Heck, I’ll back everything up and rebuild this blog from the ground up if I have to in order to maintain the integrity of this site. I want this to be a safe, ad-free place on the internet.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY (because I like those, and I like excuses to make them): If you are a blogger, you can’t be too secure. Change your passwords frequently, make backups, use Exploit Scanner (awesome plugin), and keep an eye out for anything suspicious. The internet is like the “wild west” of today. Wild and untamed and ready to be claimed, but bandits abound and you gotta know your self-defense. And not die of dysentery. /nod

WELL, back to writing~

This is a post that was inspired by two things. First, a video that was sent to me by my boyfriend. Secondly, a post over at HoTs & DoTs.

You may be wondering what those two things have in common, but the way I see it, they’re both about the road that you took to get somewhere. In the case of the LoadingReadyRun video, it’s a comedy about how it’s not just “one thing” that makes something what it is, and in the case of the HoTs & DoTs post, it’s about how something little, like logging on at juuust the right time, can change your WoW life.

I look back at my first WoW character ever and see a lot of weird little things that all conspired together that brought me to where I am now. Rolling on the server I rolled on, cause a friend had characters there and decided we’d prefer to start out on that carebear RP server than on his other server, a PvP one. Rolling hunter cause a friend told me to. Learning herbalism because I wanted to pick a Peacebloom. Learning alchemy because seriously, as if I would have any other profession. The fact that I then had both herbalism and alchemy? Beginner’s luck.

There are a lot of what-ifs, too. What if the WoW free trial hadn’t worked on my Linux install? I was using Linux fulltime when I installed it. If it hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t have even tried to make it work. My personal reasons for using Linux were– are– more important than a game.

What if the friend that got the boyfriend and I into WoW had us roll Horde on his PvP server instead? Would I still be inventing stories and backstories for my characters the way I do now that I’m spoiled with the RP server mindset?

What if the person who told me to roll a hunter, told me to roll something else?

What if I’d never stumbled across the WoWWiki “fansites” page that introduced me to the (at that time, much smaller) WoW blogosphere?

And then what if I’d never decided to bite the bullet and make my own little blog? I put off doing it for a long time, you know. “Why use up valuable internet space that I can’t even put to good use? I’m no BRK,” was my reasoning. And yet for some reason I finally did it anyway.

My latest little “what if” comes in the form of joining my new guild. All I did for that was go to the official forums (where I never go) for my realm, found the first “Recruiting!” thread that I could find, went to the website, liked what I saw, and applied. A few weeks later I was in Ulduar, and now not only is my main in ToC25 but my alt is, as well (though I admit she is probably not geared for it, but it’s fun anyway.) You gotta understand, prior to joining that guild I’d been puttering around in PuGs and Naxx10. I figured I’d seen all the WotLK content I’d ever see. But the WoW gods apparently disagreed with me.

Where am I going with this? Truthfully at this point I think I’m just rambling; I’m trying to write a book, see, one that’s been stewing in my brain for thirteen years and I’m just now trying to get serious about it, and because I’ve been writing that all day, my brain is fried. x_x

BUT! The moral of the story, maybe, is don’t be afraid to take risks, like I did when I joined my new guild. It might be really good, or it might be really bad, but you’ll never know if you don’t try.

The other moral of the story is that alchemy is clearly the superior profession because our flasks last twice as long. I miss four hour flasks though. /cry