I’m not going to get all long-winded. I’m not going to get all sappy. I’m not going to turn this into a eulogy because I don’t think there’s a reason for it to be one.

I’m not going to say BRK was the first hunter blog I found, because it wasn’t. That credit goes to Lassirra at The Hunter’s Mark and I will give credit where credit is due. I’m not going to sit here and talk about how I found BRK at level 24ish and grew up on BRK Brand Baby Food, cause I’m sure I’ve mentioned that before.

I am going to tell you a quick story.

Today I got into an already half cleared Naxx25 PuG. Normally I bring Wash to my raids, but today I brought Locke, my kitty. Because it seemed appropriate.

Four Horsemen was the first boss we did, which made me happy cause it’s basically my favorite fight in the entire raid, and then we headed over to Noth. The raid leader said he would give away a free flask to the top DPS on the fight.

I looked around. I was one of four hunters. Every one of the others was cookie cutter Survival. Every one of the others outgeared me.

I looked down at my kitty. Us against the world. As it should be.

The raid leader asked to see the overall damage done thus far in the entire raid, as well. Someone posted it.

I got a free Flask of Endless Rage.

I’m not trying to say that I did the best DPS in the world. But I am trying to say that this wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t stumbled across BRK and the rest of the blogosphere as a young level 20something throwing random talent points around and dying all the time. It goes beyond just DPS and performance, too– it’s about “Look at this amazingly fun class! *skips around with glee*” That‘s what hunter is.

Of course, as I think many of us sort of feel, you eventually “graduate” from the Alma Mater that is BRK-U, (though you never truly leave, of course), and that’s where the person comes in. I remember him IM’ing me when he added me to his blogroll, complimenting me on my writing. I remember shyly whispering him in game on his server and being chucked a guild invite. I remember meeting up with him in WotLK Beta and him dropping everything he was doing so he could come see if we could two-man Molten Core in the name of a Core Hound. He wasn’t shy about whispering me the second I logged into Beta every time after that, informing me that it was about time I showed up!, and the two of would begin us cracking jokes like old friends.

“Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most… human.” – Captain James Tiberius Kirk

In closing, I ask that you read my favorite BRK post of all time, ever, and then head over to the newest post and wish a friend good luck, if you would. We may not be able to read of his adventures and misadventures anymore… at least not for a while… but he is happy.

—

“Hey, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?”

“The same thing we do every night, BRK. Try to take over the world.”

I had an interesting revelation the other day when I realized that we were now about four months into Wrath of the Lich King. See, I began playing four months into Burning Crusade, myself. Back then everything was brand new for me despite the number of 70s running around. It got me thinking about how maybe a lot of the lowbies I see running around these days… aren’t alts after all, as I tend to assume they are by default.

It occurred to me that there was, in Burning Crusade, some nebulous point where the guard changed. A point where I went into Molten Core with 39 other people about about 30 of us had never done it before. (To be fair, some of the people there had, in fact, been playing in Vanilla WoW, they just weren’t raiding.) It makes me wonder if we’re going to see a similar trend in WotLK. How much longer until I tell people “this boss is just like Romulo and Julianne” or “This boss is just like Gruul’s” or “This boss is just like [some level 70 heroic boss]” and people have no idea what I’m talking about? Or perhaps we won’t get to that point this time because the raids in BC were, in general, more easily accessible than they were in Vanilla WoW?

I’m not trying to say to say any of this is a bad thing, by the way… I’m just pondering. And wondering how many people out there are experiencing this world for the first time.

I’ve been feeling kind of rushed lately in the game– a rush to clear all the available content, a rush to finish turning my blues into purples– and whenever that happens, as it inevitably will every so often, I have to sit back, take a deep breath, and play alts for a while to recharge my batteries.

Lunapike is grinding Timbermaw rep on her quest for the “Diplomat” title. The Winterspring music always gets me all nostalgic for some reason.

Tamaryn is doing the Karazhan key quest. Oh come on, did you really expect me not to? =P

Tawyn is relaxing in Stormwind. The content will still be there later. Just like the Burning Crusade stuff was all still there when I finally set foot into it a year and a half after everybody else did. I didn’t care back then that I was so late to the party, why should I care now? Remember when you were just a wee baby WoWer? I’m sure the game wasn’t always about achievements and loot and progression for you.

Perhaps sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes, to look around at the young’uns and take a page from their book.

…or at least to crack jokes with your significant other about how someday you’ll be able to tell your kids things like “Back in my day they didn’t hand you your mount outside of Northshire Abbey! /waves cane” >.>

I’ve been sort of thinking a lot this morning about an interesting trend I’ve noticed; namely, the tendency of hunters to roll healer alts. I see it quite a bit on blogs; Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick has recently realized she is more of a Heals Lovin’ Draenei Chick and has decided to move fulltime to the Twisted Nether Blogcast, and just recently the Kitty Collector has become Addicted to Heals. These are just a few of the recent examples. Then I thought about how my little treedruid, made on a whim several months ago, seemingly running through the forests of Teldrassil only yesterday, is suddenly in Northrend, busily healing Utgarde Keep runs. Then, in typical Pike fashion, I started wondering why. Why are we hunters– often die-hard hunters, to greater or lesser degrees– drawn to healing?

First, I think it sort of stems from a desire to be useful. Us hunters are used to sitting in LFG for hours while people sit there spamming “need heals and tank and g2g”. To be fair, things seemed to have gotten a little better for us in WotLK, at least on my server (I’ve seen more than a few pleas for ranged DPS or even hunters in specific), but there’s still that deep-seated longing among many of us to play a class role that is in more demand.

That brings us to the next question though; why healing and not tanking?

These are my theories:

1.) It’s not melee. We’re hunters. We pride ourselves on staying as far away from the enemy as possible. My two-handed axe skill sat at 349/350 for months after I’d gotten Legacy out of Karazhan… and I was proud of it. Tanking involves going up to something and letting it hit you in the face. For many of us, especially those of us who started out in this game as a hunter, it’s uncomfortable and counter-intuitive. Healing is a lot more attractive in that regard.

2.) Buffs. I dunno about you guys but I was always really, really sad that I couldn’t really buff anyone as a hunter. Well, I could through things like Ferocious Inspiration, but I couldn’t run around Stormwind and buff people. So it’s no surprise that I’m super-buff happy on my druid. Sometimes before I log out I run around and buff as many people as I can with Mark of the Wild until my mana is nearly empty. I am always careful to buff hunter pets, and I always make sure that the pet has Thorns, and not the hunter (because come on, the pet is going to be the one getting hit!) I think all the times my pet has failed to received bufflove has really ingrained that one into me. So long as I am nearby, your pet is gettin’ buffed.

Now paladin and druid tanks can buff too, of course, but toss priests and Fortitude into the fray and heals have got an advantage here.

3.) …no, really, Mend Pet isn’t enough sometimes. Improved Mend Pet is a talent I couldn’t live without 2/2 in. In fact, remember how I leveled Marksman and switched to Beast Mastery around level 58 or so? IMP was one of the major reasons I stayed. I’m serious. I am super OCD about cleansing debuffs from my pet. Super OCD. Mend Pet was the first skill I actually started using a keybinding for, and while I now have keybinds for a good chunk of my abilities, alt+2 will always remain dear to my heart. And seriously, how many of you are as anal-retentive about Mend Pet as I am? I’m sure a good chunk of you are. How many of you draenei have a Mend Pet/Gift of the Naaru emergency macro? How many of you have been in a raid or instance, noticed that your target’s target’s health was dropping low, and instinctively spammed Mend Pet before remembering that, um, the tank is tanking, and not your pet? I know I’m guilty of that one rather frequently.

I’m sure several of us have been in those situations where we think “Ugh if only I’d had a little more heals.” I wonder if that perhaps influenced our healy-alt-tendencies at all.

4. Survival. Hunters are about survival. And not just the ones spec’d into it. All hunters, from a lore standpoint, are beast masters, marksmen, and survivalists. That’s why you have tabs for all three when you open up your spellbook. Your spec just determines which one your hunter sort of specializes in– hence the word “spec”. Hunters of all specs are about pulling all the stops to stay alive when the outlook is grim. Makes sense that some of us would want to expand a little and try our hand at being responsible for more than just our own survival.

So, those are my theories on why we see so many hunters-gone-heals– whether they’re a new main, or just a minor diversion like mine– running around.

…though I’d love to hear from the devil’s advocate hunters out there who hate healing and rolled tanks, or more DPS… or no alts at all…

…or one.

This was first said by a wise man (er, Vulcan), and it’s something I’ve found myself thinking a lot about lately. See, my guild and in-game group of friends has begun raiding ten-mans on a semi-regular basis, and more often than not, I’ve found myself left out on the sidelines. Why? Simple. The best times for everyone to raid do not mesh well with my annoyingly unpredictable work schedule. Is this anyone’s fault? No, it’s not. It’s just how things have worked out.

Now I’m not gonna deny that it’s hard to think about it for too long. It’s hard to press that Decline button on the calendar when a raid invite full of people you love hanging out with pops up in your face. It’s hard to know that your friends and guild are doing progression and having fun without you. It’s hard to know that your one guaranteed day off from work is a bad day for most of your guildies to raid, and it’s even harder to know that work has recently swooped down and taken even that day away from you (that last one is one of the many reasons why I’ve been looking for a new job, but job-hunting is a lot harder these days than it has been in the past.) It all makes you feel sad and helpless.

However, my goal throughout all of this is to suck it up and show as little disappointment as possible, because I don’t want to spoil it for the people that I care about who are able to raid. I keep telling myself that maybe the job hunt will be better this month and maybe it won’t be too much longer before I have a better schedule and will be able to join in the fun.

Most importantly, I remind myself that making this kind of sacrifice is just a part of friendship (irony involving our guild name not intended).

I have a lot of minipets (65 or so by now?), but there are two that are particularly special to me:

I got this Brown Prairie Dog after spending a solid couple hours screwing around with my friends, we ran all over Azeroth goofing off and in the end someone popped over to Hordeside and bought us all Prairie Dog Whistles to remember the event by.

And this is the Black Tabby Cat, which is only obtainable by Horde (although it can then be sold to Alliance via the Neutral Auction House)… it has a very low drop rate and some of my guildies sat a Horde alt by the spawns that drop it and camped for it for weeks and when they got it, gave it to me, instead of selling it for the 2000g it goes for on my server.

So I remind myself that I don’t necessarily need to raid to have that friendship, that bond with the people I play with who I care about. And because I care about them I’m not gonna drop them for a better-fitting guild, nor am I going to make too much of a fuss when they raid without me because that’s when it works best for everyone else.

So, tonight, when I get home from work and everyone is already in Naxx, I think I’m just going to geek around with my Linux. But I’ll be ready on the bench– just in case.

As I’m sure 99% of the blogosphere knows by now, Phaelia is closing the doors of Resto4Life. I don’t know if she is quitting the game entirely or just the blog, I couldn’t make it out from the entry, however, it’s definitely put a lot of thoughts into my head.

I remember a time when I figured I’d never quit Neopets. (shaddup, do you guys know how long it took me to get my Draik? =P) Of course here I am now having not touched it in months. I miss the friends I made there on the Neoboards sometimes, but other than that, there is very little that I do miss, and although I have tried a time or two, I haven’t been able to get back into it on the same scale that I was before. I have no regrets about the time I spent playing, and I made some accomplishments I’m quite proud of. But eventually I lost interest, and moved on.

World of Warcraft is like that. I think it’s something that we as a blogging community perhaps don’t like to think of sometimes. But it’s true. How many of us will still be playing this game ten or twenty years from now? Will it even be around? Even if it is in some incarnation, I imagine many of us will have moved on by that point. What that means for us as a community, is that these blogs we read and enjoy so very much will not be around forever, at least not in their current form. And it’s hard to deal with sometimes.

It’s perhaps ironic that it’s been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve reached a point where I sort of feel like I need to scale back the time I spend in game. I love this game dearly. Yeah, I try to deny it sometimes, but it’s true. I still have fun with the game. I am not quitting anytime soon, I don’t think (so please don’t think this post is about that!) But man cannot live on WoW alone. And there are days where I feel like I come home from work, I get onto my computer, aaand… I play WoW, I read about WoW, I write about WoW, I tweet about it on Twitter. And sometimes I wonder where that line is. You know what line I’m talking about. Where it becomes too much. Where it goes from being a hobby into being your only hobby. I often find myself wondering if I need a break or something.

And then my mind wanders to how I’ve lost interest in other obsessive hobbies I’ve had like this so fast. Sometimes seemingly overnight. It’s just a matter of time for this one, too.

In a way, it scares me, because when I think of all that, I inevitably end up thinking of this blog and this little community that has gathered here. What will happen when it comes to that point for me where I have to say goodbye? What would I do with this blog? How could I even bring myself to end something I enjoy so much? And more than that, I wonder if it all matters anyway. Will it matter decades from now when I look back on my life? Will it matter that I taught someone how to improve the way they played a class in some long-forgotten video game? Does it matter?

In the end though, I think it does. If for any reason, because of all the raw talent that is out there. Through this community I have met artists and writers and CSS masters and people whose blogs are packed with personality and humor and wit, and that’s only to name a few– I can only hope that Blizzard is at least marginally aware of this massive gathering of talent they have unwittingly drawn together, out of the passion for a video game, of all things. Positive influences from my guildies and in-game friends aside, I am extremely humbled to be a part of this community perhaps best known collectively as “Blog Azeroth“.

So, thank you, Phaelia. Thank you for being the person (well, alongside Bell) to really inspire me to make my own treedruid, who to this day is still the only thing in game that has really caught my interest anywhere close to what hunters do. And thanks for sharing your talent and enthusiasm with the internet.

And to everyone else, the specifics of what we blog about may not be important twenty or thirty years down the road. But positive influences only have to be very small, to be positive and meaningful. Thank you for being both, to me. I do not know how long our time together will ultimately pan out to be. But thank you for making the most of it every day.

I remember back when I first started playing WoW and holidays were basically my favorite part of the game. Children’s Week was the first ever holiday I participated in and I ran that kid all over the place, to places I’d never been before, so I could get the Speedy minipet (much to the horror of the significant other who couldn’t believe that I was passing up the option of a whole five gold!)

And all the holidays were like that, I went nuts over ‘em. Got all the items, did all the little things you had to do. For the most part the only people who cared about the holidays were people like me who were dorks who were willing to fill up our bags with toys and candy and stuff, and that’s basically what I did. To this day my bags and bank are bursting from the seams– with holiday stuff. I could pull out that Valentines’ Picnic Basket while at the meeting stone for a raid or heroic and everybody would ooo and ahh over it cause nobody else had one. I could throw Jack O’ Lantern heads or snowballs at people in the middle of July. I was the crazy hunter with all the gadgets and minipets. And finally I was pretty content that I’d done all the holidays and could relax, and not have to worry about bagspace anymore.

So then this new thing comes out: Achievements.

Suddenly holidays are like THE BIGGEST THING EVER TO HIT WOW and suddenly I find myself in this odd position.

Do I follow the mass hype and fill my bags with even more holiday crap when it’s already rare enough as it is for me to have a precious *gasp* five empty bag slots? Do I do achievements for things that I already did, back before it really mattered?

The answer, for me, is no. I can’t bring myself to do it this time. I don’t exactly know why, I’m not trying to be elitist or a party pooper or anything of that sort. I guess you could say I’m like the stereotypical kid from the country who was used to quirky and personal Christmases and Thanksgivings on the farm who then goes to the big city to see that they’ve been all commercialized*. Doing it all for an achievement rather than for the heck of it feels hollow to me, especially because I already have most of the toys and stuff. Besides, it’s difficult for me to enjoy a holiday if I’m freaking out about meeting requirements for things. So, I’m not going to pressure myself into it. That’s all.

I will of course do the holiday achievements if they fall in my lap, or if they happen to coincide with something I wanted to do in that holiday anyway, or if they provide a nice bonus incentive (i.e.; rep for elder coins)… but I would’ve done that before the achievements. I guess I’m just not going to go out and “seek out” those achievements if I don’t want to. (Brewfest may prove to be an exception cause of a running joke that Tawyn is the guild drunk and thus needs the Brewmaster title, but we shall see.) In summary, I’m going to do the holidays for fun, and not have to worry about finding a particular somebody to /dance with in Dalaran or whatever.

So there you have it. That’s why I’m not going nuts over holiday achievements. Not because I dislike holidays or dislike other people doing the achievements. Not because I am Uncle Scrooge. But because for me, it’s all been doooooooone befoooooooore!

* I’m a country kid, I’m allowed to say this kind of thing >.> Oh, and I ride buffalo to work, and I don’t really have the internet, this is all just an illusion.

With all the changes to our class lately, I’ve found myself having to stand back and think about what this blog is and what it represents. There are a lot of really good and informative hunter blogs out there and most of them have very different focuses, and it’s really visible with this patch. There are people busily hammering out the next max-DPS spec and there are others sticking to their favorite playstyle. There are Survivalists perhaps a bit baffled that their spec is suddenly the one in the sun. There are people reporting anywhere from DPS losses to DPS gains, depending on their gear and spec and what they do. And there are others who don’t do much PvE stuff and aren’t affected very much. Everyone has a different opinion and it’s really brought out to me how unique all these dozens of hunter blogs are from each other.

What about Aspect of the Hare then? Is this a hunter kindergarten blog, or a Beast Mastery blog, or a “casual”-raiding blog, or what? That’s what I had to ask myself today, sitting here at my computer with a hunter shirt on and a Tauren Hunter figurine beside my desk and my first character standing guard over everything. What about Pike?

I decided that while this blog covers a variety of topics, it is mostly about two things. The first is that it is about teaching new hunters about their class, and also sort of reviewing these things for long-time hunters. This comes in the form of the guides that I post, for example.

Secondly, and more importantly, this blog is about three little words: “Hunters are fun.”

This blog is for anyone who has ever enjoyed the hunter class. It doesn’t matter if you PvP or PvE or fall anywhere along that spectrum. It doesn’t matter if you are decked out in epics and have screenshots of doing over 6000 DPS on a boss fight, or if you have never set foot inside a raid. It doesn’t matter if you’re a hardcore theorycrafter or if you avoid math like the plague. It doesn’t matter what spec you are, and it doesn’t even matter what level you are– if you have ever felt a little thrill at sending your pet in to attack something and proceeding to start some semblance of a shot rotation, this blog is for you.

I just figured I would get that out there; it’s never a bad thing to define a blog’s focus. Rest assured that while there may be some frustrations and nervousness as we– myself included– try to sort out our collective reactions to the latest patch, I, for one, can still log into one of my hunters and still feel that thrill.

And really, that’s what it’s about.

In my last post I touched a little on how I considered myself to be part of the “I-PuG-Raids-When-My-Schedule-Allows Crowd”. Lemme touch on that a little more…

I love raiding and heroics and the whole PvE game. I love it a lot. As much fun and addicting being on the winning side of an AV can be*, for me, in the end, it’s all about the dragon slaying. Why yes, I am a geek. There’s something very satisfying to me about being in a big group of people and having someone tossing out directions on Ventrilo and the whole tense atmosphere of hoping everyone can pull off their job as some lore character flings walls of fire around.

That said, I think I am a bit of a unique position myself. I am a raider and PvE gamer who doesn’t do the “traditional” PvE game that so many other people do. I’m not in a raiding guild. And I don’t have the luxury of having scheduled raid nights. Let me explain.

The Guild: I’ve been in a big raiding guild before. I was hunter class leader, in fact. I was also an officer and for a few months I was the one that did all the raid scheduling. That was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done. Everyone coming to you with their schedule and you trying your hardest to make everyone happy, even though you can’t. *shudders* Anyway, even though we certainly were not one of the top-level guilds on the server, we were still shuttling people into raid content every week. The main problem is that we were sort of trying to go too many places at once, and in the end maintaining a balance of “progression guild” and “family style guild” became too much for us to handle. It was all just kind of a dramafest waiting to happen, which it eventually did. Pop went the guild. A failed experiment, so to speak.

Everyone in the guild sort of went their separate ways although a few of us who had become particularly close friends chose to band together and we started a new guild. This guild has been strictly a hang-out guild where we would be able to go off and find our own outside groups to raid with, while having friends in guild chat and a reliable pool of people to do heroics with. In that manner, it’s been a success. But it’s not a raiding guild. I get the impression most of us wouldn’t mind if we tried making it a raiding guild someday, but I don’t think anyone’s in a major rush right now.

Leaving this guild isn’t an option for me because I love my friends in-game too dearly and I love being in a guild with them. It means I give up being in a big raiding guild with a raid schedule and having things like guild-progression-nights, which I do in fact miss, but I wouldn’t trade my current guild for it. If I want to raid, I have to look outside my guild. Which brings me to my second point…

My Schedule: I work in retail. On any given day I could be at work anytime between 6am and 10pm. Every day it’s different, my days off are different every week (though I managed to wrangle getting most Sundays off), and I never know what my schedule for the next week is until Thursday or Friday.

Normally, even in my current guild situation, it would be relatively simple for me to find another guild or group of people to fall in with and raid with, especially since I’m on Silver Hand, home of the infamous Leftovers Raiding, which is essentially a server-wide raid signup that has been very successful and garnered attention on WoWInsider and transfers from people on other servers who like the idea. The problem is that when many of my work shifts are evening shifts, it shuts me out of a lot of raiding, and by the time I even know what my schedule for the next week is, most of the raid slots have been filled up already. So for me, even that idea is largely out.

So what do I do?

I PuG.

I have PuG’d most of the raids in WotLK so far, on both 25man and 10man modes. Mostly LFG PuGs although I’ve made enough contacts that sometimes I get raid invites from people who need a slot filled.

Have some of these PuGs been atrociously bad? Yes they have. Have others been surprisingly good? Yes they have. Do I know what category one is going to be in advance? No, I don’t. It’s a risk I’ve gotta take if I want to see content. Oh, I can sorta make predictions based on who the raid leader is or other people I know in the group, but even then it’s not a guarantee. In any given raid I’m probably in there with both a bunch of people who have it “on farm” and a bunch of other people who have never been there before. They usually aren’t easy raids to be in.

But I do it because I love raiding. I do it because as frustrating as it can be sometimes to do it this way, it’s really all I’ve got. Because to me, it’s worth it.

I will probably never be in one of the best guilds on the server. And I may never even be part of a regular raiding group, at least not anytime soon. I’m not gonna be one of the first people on my server to be all decked out in the newest purples. I’m okay with that though. I’m seeing all the sights and I’m getting my raid on, and I’m slowly getting some gear, and most importantly, I feel like I’m working for it. And it’s hard to do, but it’s not impossible. And I guess that’s the point I’m trying to get at. If you love something enough, you can make it work.

Even in WoW.

* Read: Not Alliance on Bloodlust. *cough*

If I had to pick a favorite part of World of Warcraft it wouldn’t be hunters. Nor would it be the social aspects of the game (though admittedly, that one is largely because most of my guildies are now effectively out-of-game-friends as well– we all hang out in AIM chats and stuff).

No, my favorite aspect of the game is character creation. And by that I don’t mean the whole choose your race/class/silly hairstyle part, although that is fun too.

I mean coming up with a story and personality for your character and stepping into their shoes for a few fleeting hours. That’s what I mean. That’s my favorite part of the game. That’s one of the things that first enthralled me when I started playing WoW. “Wait, you mean I can create my own video game hero/heroine?” Now don’t get me wrong, I love Mario and Link and Solid Snake and Locke Cole and Jim Raynor and Master Chief. I love them to bits, heck, don’t tell anyone, but I have a crush on Link that is like… thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big.

*cough* Sorry, sidetracked.

Anyways, yeah, there had been times before where I could sort of create a character, but not in the same way. Neverwinter Nights and KotoR were solid games but didn’t grab me on a “character” level. Pokémon didn’t let you create female characters (which I really wanted to do) until I’d already sort of drifted away from the series. Et cetera. Other games let you sort of make a character but thrust you into an already formed backstory anyway.

But with WoW, I discovered the game alongside my character. I learned things like how to play my class alongside my character. And for some reason, this was the first game where I not only experienced the story as I would personally, but thought about how my character would react to all the events unfolding around her, too. By the time I was max level, I cared for my character in a very deep and hard to explain way– she was sort of me, but sort of not me, and she was a good friend who I experienced this crazy world with. She has a real personality, one that is different than that of any of my other characters. In a way, she is real. She is something I created and can be proud of not just by topping a DPS meter or getting her all decked out in purples, but by being able to feel like I created a character in a story.

Mirshalak recently queried, “What are you addicted to?” What keeps you coming back to the game? Sure, my guildies do and my hunters do and my general enjoyment of the game does. But more than all that, for me, it’s the way Blizzard really succeeded in creating a world that just sucks you right in. It’s the way every time I do one of the opening quests that I’ve done a million times, it’s fresh and original because I’m seeing it through a completely different set of eyes. It is pure distilled roleplaying without actually going out and walking slowly around the Cathedral District and having some deep discussion about the state of Azerothian affairs. It’s something that I’ve yet to be able to experience anywhere else, with the exception of maybe Dungeons & Dragons, but for me this might even be more than that because it is so visual and hands-on and I’m a very visual and hands-on type of person.

That‘s what keeps me coming back. My friends are here– and this time, by friends, I mean characters.

Okay, gonna end this now that there is a big neon “GEEK” sign hanging over my head. =P My WoW account is now safely reactivated though I don’t anticipate too much activity for the next couple of weeks; I am moving into a new place and that will require most of my attention for a little while! Still, I’ll be here, yapping away, I’m sure.

P.S. Since I’ve already linked to one blog in this post, go read this. Trust me.

I somehow managed to squeeze myself into a couple of 25mans today, which is perhaps ironic because I haven’t done any WotLK 10mans yet. But hey, I’m not complaining.

The first was Vault of Archavon, the Wintergrasp Raid, which was basically just as easy as everyone said it would be. The main issue was that for some strange reason, my pet refused to attack the boss. Flat out refused. I told him to attack, he sat there. I moved closer to the boss and told him to attack again, he still sat there. He does that on the last boss of Drak’theron Keep, too, but though it’s annoying, I can live with it. A raid boss though? Ugh. Needless to say, with 50% of my damage essentially out of commission, my DPS on that fight was absolutely abysmal and embarassing. Just ugh.

The second raid was Obsidian Sanctum. I only managed to be there for the first half, but with Locke fortunately opting to cooperate this time, my performance was much more respectable. I managed to snag fourth place on the meters overall in my dungeon blues, even coming out a small hair ahead of a much better geared BW/Readiness hunter. (Far and away the overall DPS winner was a Volley-spec’d hunter who basically did nothing but spam Volley. Not even kidding.)

Really though, while it was nice to see those numbers and it was nice to see I had done so well, I still came away feeling like it was a bit of a hollow victory. Pre-WotLK, when I topped the DPS, I knew I had done so through hard work and relying on the clock in my head to time my shots. Now all I do is spam Steady and pop all my cooldowns, really only worrying about Serpent Sting if needed. I don’t get the same sense of satisfaction. And it doesn’t help when the top six or seven DPSers are all either hunters or Death Knights. I guess it is nice for getting into groups because people know you can easily deliver, but for me… it was always the feeling that I did a lot of hard work that I enjoyed the most. And I’m not getting that feeling this time.

And so I scratch my head and weigh the pros and cons and decide to stand out there on a limb and say that I’m… sort of looking forward to the nerfs. I strongly feel that with the incoming Steady Shot nerf and reduced mana cost of Arcane Shot, there will be some actual shot weaving going on again. I will be able to work hard for my spot on the DPS charts again.

And honestly, I’m looking forward to the challenge. There, I said it. If I wind up with my foot in my mouth later, I fully accept the responsibility =P

And with that said, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!