In celebration of the new Moonkin Hatchling pet I have created these two avatars, free for all to use!

It is surprisingly difficult to take something that is already insanely cute and make it even cuter, but these will have to do!

You are free to use these on Twitter, Gravatar, forums, LiveJournal or wherever else. I would appreciate a comment linking to me if you LJ these, but otherwise just credit me if you are asked and it will all be good!

You can also modify these in any way you wish, so feel free to personalize.

Happy Tuesday/Merry (Early) Christmas! <3

Interested in having your very own customized World of WarCute avatar? (aka, a cute-ification of your character? Or pretty much anything else, for that matter?)

You know, somethin’ like this:

Well, here’s the deal. For those not in the know, I recently moved out of state due to a long and convoluted series of events that was mostly out of my hands. I had to (reluctantly) give up my job, and I have had no luck finding a new one thus far.

Aaaaand I’m super broke.

SO!

I am now offering World of WarCute avatars for $6 USD a piece, which is cheaper than their previous price of $10. You may ask why I’m lowering the price– well, I’m hoping that potentially being able to lure in more customers this way (or get orders for multiple avatars) will ultimately be more profitable. Who knows though, I’m not a finance major. (Actually I majored in filmmaking. Hence why I’m broke. Woo!)

If (and notice the italics) you are feeling kind then you are welcome to toss in a tip with your $6 order. But I’m not gonna be like those Trade Chat people who say “tips optional” and then demand a tip. I promise.

HOW TO ORDER!:

Short answer: you’ll e-mail PikestaffArt [at] gmail with screenshots and instructions on how your want your character to appear, background, any pets you want included, etc. Then when I finish your avatar, I inform you, you toss me the money via PayPal, and the avatar is yours!

Long answer: Detailed instructions are located on this page– definitely worth a read through!

To All: Thank you as always for being readers here. It never ceases to amaze me that for some reason people like to listen to me ramble about crap. It further amazes me that I still had readers after hiatus’ing rather abruptly a while back. Thank you all for your continued support! <3

Hello! I’m all settled into my new place, albeit jobless (though if worse comes to worse there’s always K-Mart… u_u ) so I’m back to pester you all! Exciting, no?

Let’s get down to business. 4.0 is coming out today. Don’t come to me for any guides or anything, at least for a bit. I’m no good at explaining things if I haven’t actually sat down and done said things (I’m a “learning by doing” person, 100%), and since I never got into the Beta and I’m not really a PTR kinda girl I have no idea how the new gameplay is going to be. Nor am I overly concerned. I’ll figure it out as it comes. *shrug*

So instead, have a list of awesome characters I started but then abandoned.

Tanfarr the Level 27 Draenei Paladin
I had a great RP for Tanfarr. The idea was that he was a very devout and just Paladin who was horrible at speaking Common. Thus, everything he attempted to say would come out very very wrong. (“The hand of the light touches you in a very special way!”) The joke is that poor Tanfarr would never dream of saying this stuff in his native tongue but has no idea how racy it all is.

So I was really excited about this character and paladin’ing was actually pretty fun for a while. Then I just, I dunno, got bored. I guess I got tired about only having like two attacks. It’s been about a year and a half since I logged into him, I think (not counting the time I stripped him of his BoAs to send them to other characters). Sorry ol’ buddy. I keep him around just in case.

Skybinder: aka Goggles Bear: Level 29 Feral Druid
Hey remember when I quit WoW? Yeah, I was actually gone for a good few months. Then I decided to come back, but for a while, I still didn’t want anything to do with my 80s or endgame and I didn’t want to be tempted by them, either. So I activated a second account and spent a really fun month and a half playing from scratch as a feral druid engineer. I had no BoA items and no help from any level 80s and it was honestly a really good time. I successfully tanked a couple instances (my first attempt at doing so) but then a bad SFK run turned me off of it for a while and I opted to kitty my way through dozens of Arathi Basins instead. Good times. Really good times.

So what happened? Well, long story short I finally decided to reactivate my original account. Then I wanted to save money by not having two accounts running at once, so Skybinder has been stuck on an inactive account since then.

Goggles Bear lives on, though; recently rerolled as a tauren druid who I’m excited about. Engineer, of course.

I drew it :3

Any Death Knight I’ve Ever Rolled
I dunno about you guys but I really do think the DK starter quests are a tour de force. It’s always an experience when I go through them, and I always come out of them really excited about my Death Knight. The first time I did it I remember I’d see other DKs running around afterward and feel an odd kinship with them… they know what I’ve been through. Props to Blizzard for making an emotional connection like that.

Of course then you’re kicked out into Hellfire Peninsula (a zone that I hate) with no idea how to play your class.

No Death Knight I’ve ever played has gotten beyond level 58. I try. And I fail. I always get really close to 59, but it just never happens.

RIP, Pike’s Death Knights.

Any Mage I’ve Ever Rolled
I have this really bad habit of rolling mages, getting them up to the mid-10s or early-20s, and then getting distracted.

I don’t know what it is. I like mages. I just… I dunno.

The highest level mage I have is… huh, can’t check at the moment. I wanna say level 27. I turned her into one of my bank alts some time during Burning Crusade. Oh well.

McDuff, the Level 13/14(?) Undead Mage
He falls into the above “Any Mage I’ve Ever Rolled” category as well, but I wanna give him his own section. I had a really fun backstory for this guy. Geeky sciency farmkid who goes to Lordaeron to study geeky sciencey things and gets undead-ified by the Scourge. Bad timing and all that. Of course, that doesn’t faze our hero, who just wants to blow things up.

I had a lot of fun thinking about this backstory and playing this character but I guess he was never just very high on my priorities list. Too bad, because last year I spent days farming Brewfest tokens for him so he could have a purple hat. Hey, you gotta have a geeky hat for a geeky character. True facts.

—

I have tons of others I could ramble about but I’d rather not crit you with the text. What are some characters that you were excited about that you wound up abandoning?

1.) People (especially healers/tanks) who queue for something just long enough to a.) ding or b.) get one more badge, and then drop group, are not earning any Pike Respect Points

2.) Nor are people who go “Pack plz Pack plz Pack plz Pack plz” when I need to Viper. EVERYONE OVERGEARS HALLS OF REFLECTION NOW, YOU WILL SURVIVE WITHOUT ASPECT OF THE PACK, PLEASE RELAX.

3.) HOLY HONOR, BATMAN WINTERGRASP

4.) Feral druid PvP taught me how to mouse-turn. It only took, what, three years to beat the keyboard turning out of me?

5.) Nothing against Sparkle Ponies or those who have them, honestly, but every time I see one I remember that I’m broke IRL. >_<

6.) Since when were moonkins tearing up Recount? What sort of madhouse world have I returned to? ( <3 )

7.) Attumen still hates me

8.) I miss the Mechanar

9.) Warlock-kiting the slimes in Maraudon is surprisingly fun

10.) ...melee is surprisingly fun, also. Especially when you are a goggles-wearing bear! >:3

P.S. I’ve thought about it, and I’m back, suckas. Can’t guarantee I’ll be writing about hunter stuff. Oh well. I miss the community <3

“Ah, are these the villain’s tracks?”

“Indeed they are, Mr. Holmes.”

“Hoofprints? This rules out most races except draenei and tauren, but it’s most unlikely that a tauren would travel this far. Besides, here and here we see traces of moth dust found only in Azuremyst Isle. Now we can further deduce from his tracks that this villain moved around a lot, although it wasn’t to back up, rather, it was to get closer. This indicates that he is a melee class–”

“Or an uninformed hunter?”

“Unlikely, Watson. I see no animal prints or feathers.”

“A… fantastically uninformed hunter?”

“Very doubtful. As you can see, the surrounding ground is charred by holy fire…”

“A paladin?”

“Quite.”

“Brilliant, Murloc Holmes!”

“Elementary.”

(For best results, please play this song as you read this post.)

Stylish Water Elemental

Moonkin in a Lab Coat Doing Alchemy

Most of the comments I have received for the moonkin involve the fact that he is not fat. To which I say, he’s one o’ them super slim geeky types! /nod (Personally I think his left hand bugs me more than anything but hey, I sketched it out in five minutes, so I didn’t have time to go back and fix things! =P )

(Helpful hint: click on it to make it bigger!)

I’ve actually been playing my healer a lot lately. Mostly because she’s been sitting around in this patchwork mixture of blues, Naxx10 my-first-epics, and super OP new-badge-stuff, and I’d like to even that out a little and that way potentially be a help to my guild in the future if an extra healer is needed. (I know you’re about to warn me “Don’t do it Pike, once they start taking your healer you’ll never get to DPS again!” but my guild is actually unusual and informs me that “TAWYN IS 4 FITE”, so I don’t have too many worries about having to scrap DPS forever.)

Not to mention, ever since Tawyn got that trinket, DPS’ing heroics has turned into “Hey check it out, I can pound on random buttons and get 4k DPS”, so I’d might as well play something that can use the badges a little more, eh?

I’ve also started to enjoy my Tree more ever since I started using Lifebloom again. I stopped using it at the advice of a Very Good Tree who told me you could do just fine with Regrowth/Rejuv/Nourish, and I tried that style for a while, and it was effective and you got less overheal, but I didn’t like the style. Druid Healing, to me, has always been like Disc Priest: it’s about damage prevention and anticipating when people are going to take damage, and pre-healing. But with a Regrowth/Nourish heavy style, I was back to Whack-a-Mole, and it just wasn’t as fun. So I’ve gone back to my tactic of triple-stacking Lifebloom on the tank, and letting it bloom (for your instant heal + mana back), and using my other heals as needed for AoE damage or an extra buffer or preventative stuff. It is just a lot more fun to me and I don’t have any mana problems with it.

Anyways, I’ll stick my Tree in LFG for heroics that I know are Super Easy to Heal. Heroics that are Super Easy to Heal = Nexus, UK, Drak’theron Keep, and VH. Maybe CoS if I’m feeling adventurous. Some of the others are pretty easy too but they’ll have some aspect to them that I don’t like or something– for example, the Chain Lightning crap in Halls of Stone, or the stupid fish in the water in Gundrak. I have actually now successfully healed HToC as well, and it was a very smooth run, but I’ve convinced myself that it was a fluke and am still scared to go in there, for the most part, so it is also off of the list.

For some reason I keep getting invited to Nexus, and for some reason I keep going, despite the fact that Heroic Nexus is shaping up to be where all the bad PuGs happen.

First Special Group:
Consisted of a Fury Warrior who was doing a spectacular and amazing 417 DPS, and a Paladin tank who was running out of mana about 10 seconds into every pull, and blaming it on me not healing him enough. And for those of you who are about to say that he was overgeared: he was in Blues and getting upgrades from this Heroic.

After defeating Anomalus the whole group (sans-me) bravely leapt off the edge into that hole– you know the one I’m talking about– the Hole of Death From Which There Is No Rez’ing.

One guy had to abruptly leave because apparently his wife was yelling at him or something, and our brave, mana-thirsty Paladin Tank decided we could four-man it! Of course, he wasn’t aware of the fact that I was outDPSing the Fury Warrior with Moonfires and Starfires between heals, but hey. We actually somehow finished the Heroic. I was shocked.

Second Special Group:
This group actually wasn’t as bad, and the tank was way overgeared. When you’ve got a way overgeared tank and a healer who has at least a small idea of what is going on, you can brute force your way through most heroics even if none of the DPS is doing over 1.2k (as was in this group). As such, this heroic went overall smoothly, it just took three times as long as it should’ve.

I’ll admit to making a mistake here, namely, all the DPS jumped down, sans-tank, after fighting the Ormorok the Tree Shaper Guy. Now for those who do not know, there are baddies roaming around down there. In a moment of hubris I figured I could keep the DPS up and save the day, since two of them were plate wearers, so I hopped down as well, but it turns out that Arms Warriors and Ret Paladins are about as squishy as a mage. Byebye Tree. Hey, I tried, right?

As I was flying away from that run, I got a whisper asking me to heal H. Nexus. I was very relieved to inform them that I’d just finished it and was saved.

I don’t think I’m going to put myself in LFG for Nexus again for a while…