As it turned out I picked the worst time ever to return to WoW/Blogging. I am going to be moving at the end of the month (nowhere exciting; just the dawning realization that “moving back home” makes the best financial sense when you are trying to find a new job) and the next few weeks will be spent packing/cleaning/etc., not to mention working on the book that I am still working on. As such, don’t expect any blogging miracles for a little while. C’est la vie.

Alright guys, here’s the deal.

My World of Warcraft account expires in a week. And unless I’m hit with a non-paladin Divine Intervention between now and then, I’m… not resubscribing, probably for a while. I hate to use the term “quitting” so I’m using the term “on hiatus” instead. (Plus, it sounds better if you sing it to the tune of “Rock Me Amadeus”.)

So, lemme clear up some confusion that people may have. This isn’t because I’m dissatisfied with the game. This isn’t because I had some sort of epiphany. This isn’t because I stopped loving WoW. Au contraire, I freakin’ love this game. I’d love to play it and blog about it forever.

But.

There are only twenty-four hours in a day and between my full-time job, looking for a second job (I’d like to pay off my student loans sometime in this lifetime), art commissions, my rediscovered love of drawing/writing/creativity in general, and working on publishing this NaNoWriMo novel of mine (yes, I’m serious about it), my time spent WoWing has dwindled and dwindled and dwindled and this blog has been sorely neglected and after doing a lot of thinking about it, I think that this is the best thing to do.

I like to think I’ll come back later when I have more time. Cataclysm, maybe. Or maybe before that. Or maybe after that. Who knows, really? Now is just a rather busy time in my life and I’ve gotta re-focus for a bit.

Before you ask, yes, I’ll keep blogging. Just not about WoW. I’ll write about Linux, and fish, and… uh… more about fish… *watches subscriber numbers plummet* … ANYWAYS, I’ll talk more about that when the time actually comes.

That’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is that I almost decided to just go about my business and blog as usual and then sometime next week make my super-dramatic “Bye guys!” post. But that would feel too– not really dishonest, I guess, but I dunno. It would feel like I was keeping up a facade and pretending things were all honky-dory until D-Day. That doesn’t seem very Pike-ish.

Instead, in the vein of people who think funerals are too depressing and do “life celebration” things instead, I want to share my last days of WoW with you guys, and keep blogging about it as long as I can.

So, I’m making a WoW Bucket List. A list of things I want to do before my WoW sub kicks the bucket. In no particular order…

• Get my warlock to 40 and nab my epic mount. This shouldn’t be difficult; she’s level 38 and pretty much completely rested.
• Run said warlock through Orgrimmar and do RFC.  See, she’s well on her way to having the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement, but the new LFG wasn’t introduced until she was past RFC level, so it’s conspicuously missing and it bugs me.  This must be remedied.
• Make an attempt to solo Attumen again.  Last time I tried, I didn’t have a turtle (for Shell Shield) and I didn’t have the three extra pet talent points that I previously had to stick into Avoidance.  Also I didn’t have the new and improved Misdirect.  I still don’t know how well I’ll do since I lack 2-piece T5, but it’s worth one more shot.
• See the world.  In the event that I don’t come back before Cataclysm, I want to re-visit the Azeroth I fell in love with almost three years ago.  I’ll bring my camera– er, Print Screen button.  Maybe I’ll go for the Explorer Achievement or something.
• Do something about my poor druid’s gear.  She still  has the mace from Heroic Nexus.  And a level 77 blue offhand.  You know, next to her ToC25 epics.  I dunno if I can give her a complete makeover in seven days but who knows?
• Do some good ol’ Burning Crusade dungeons via LFG on my level 61 hunter Althalor.  I would’ve liked to get him to level 70 before the Final Log-Off but I don’t think I have enough time, so I’ll do a couple of old favorite instances and call it good.
• Make some pocket change on various characters and dump it in their respective guild banks. Also, make sure I don’t have anything laying around in the AH.
• Run Molten Core, get the Leaf, and do the Rhok quest.  …okay, so that probably won’t happen.  I can dream, though.
• Kill Arthas?  …nah, this probably won’t happen either, but I won’t lose sleep over it.  I’m content with my WotLK experience.
• Comb through all the billions of drafts I have laying around in the WordPress dashboard and publish the good ones.  (I probably have enough of these to continue “blogging about WoW” for a good few weeks after the subscription expires >.>) …okay, so that one wasn’t exactly game-related.

Hmm, that looks like a good start. Toss me some others that you think I should add!

Dang.

So now I’m sitting here feeling like this cartoon, wondering if I should post this or not. I can already feel myself starting to get all sappy and this isn’t even the sappy post yet.

Ah screw it *hits publish, then runs away before she starts to second guess herself again*

I have been invited to participate in a special chatroom session at the Hunter’s Mark Chatroom. Lassirra of that site will of course be there as well, as will Mania of Mania’s Arcania, editor of Petopia!

If you want to chat it up with the three of us you are welcome to attend; it is tonight at 9:00pm Eastern Standard Time (or 7:00pm Pike Standard Time). The chatroom is located here. Now let’s just hope this isn’t one of those things that my browser randomly decides to mess up…