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

9. Feign Death

8. Feign Death

7. Feign Death

6. Feign Death

5. Feign Death

4. Pretending to be dead

3. Feign Death

2. Feign Death

1. Feign Death

Low level dungeons, though, are awesome. Sure, half the time the groups have no idea what they’re doing and there’s no tank or healer, but frankly I’d take that over “AMG RUSH RUSH GEAR SCORE OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAND” any day. Maybe that’s just me, though. Gimme my Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep and Wailing Caverns, please. …okay, maybe not Wailing Caverns.

** My warlock. So did this class suddenly decide to get awesome and fun when I wasn’t looking? I tried about three thousand times to make warlocks and suddenly it clicked, I guess. I just DoT things up, watch my screen fill up with numbers, and cackle when I Life Tap + Drain Life.

I'm in ur dungeon, toppin' ur recount

** Enchanters in groups. I get all excited when the little “Disenchant” button pops up. Even better, my ‘lock is an enchanter, so everybody gets all excited about her being in their group.

** Tower Defense games. This has nothing to do with WoW, but it does have something to do with “Things I Like Right Now”, which is the title of the post. So, nyar!

I have loved Tower Defense games since Starcraft’s battle.net back in 1999/2000 when you could find delightful gems like “Tower Matrix D” inbetween all the “$$$$$FASTEST MAP EVER$$$$$” games. Since then I’ve played dozens of Tower Defense games and I <3 them all. Desktop Tower Defense is my longstanding favorite, but recently I discovered that Neopets has one called Biscuit Brigade and I immediately had to throw everything aside and master it.

** Bang Shishigami + Falcon Punch:

** Walking aimlessly around my apartment while wearing a trenchcoat, fedora, and pocketwatch, and pretending I’m cool because of it

** Iron Man

** Did I mention my warlock? Yeah. I like my warlock.

So without further ado…

Pike’s Five Most Epic WoW Moments (That Do Not Involve Boss Fights):

5. Like a Virgin… In Darnassus For the Very First Time
I know I’ve written about this before. I was level six on my very first character ever (who you may now know as “Tawyn”), in my very first MMORPG ever, and as far as I was concerned, my world was Teldrassil. This mysterious land of flowers and purple trees and boars and scary spider caves. And bunny critters that I kept accidentally shooting.

And then, somehow, I wandered into Darnassus, and I was floored. It felt like one of the biggest things I’d ever seen in a video game. The music helped to establish this impression. And suddenly there was a thing called “Trade Chat” which was filled with impossible-to-understand jargon like “WTS” and “LFG” and “DPS” and “My mats, your nether”. (haha, wow, who else remembers that one?)

This made a big impression on Wee Baby Pike, and to this day I am rather fond of Darnassus and I go there sometimes just to chill.

(…is that a summoning stone in the middle of Darnassus? WTB explanation.)

4. Blackrock Mountain: Wish I Knew How to Quit You
Blackrock Mountain, as a whole, is just the greatest thing ever. I mean… it’s a friggin’ volcano. With lava and giant crazy statues and stuff. I remember the first time I saw the Molten Core instance portal. It was one of those things where you just looked at it and you knew it was epic.

…Google Images is failing me here, but trust me, it was epic. Epic and huge. And you had to go through the longest (and one of the most awesomest) instances ever, BRD, to even get there and get “attuned”.

Also it just looks awesome from far away when you’re in Searing Gorge or Burning Steppes. So yeah.

3. Sparking Imaginations Since… Wait, it’s Frogger but with bombs?
When I went to fight Mimiron for the very first time I wasn’t expecting what I saw. I really wasn’t expecting it. So can you blame my jaw hitting the floor when an air-trolley-thing whisked me away to this?

Honestly I wish the picture did it justice. It really doesn’t. The place is huge. Huge and breathtaking and there are Frogger bombs at the bottom and a freaking Tesla coil in the center.

Okay, so, Tesla coils? Guys. Two reasons why Tesla coils are awesome.

First, this is the way Ghostbusters was meant to be played. (Don’t cross the streams!)

Secondly, there are three historical sciencey guys that I have a major crush on.* Those three guys are: Issac Newton, Charles Babbage, and Nikola freakin’ Tesla.

Therefore, anything involving a Tesla coil and/or PewPew Lasers is instant win.

Also, air-trolley ride? A+++++ would ride again.

2. Wrathgate: Bolvar is Not a Crook (But Arthas Is)
Obviously this one was going to be in here. I love Dragonblight. And I love this questline. And seriously… the chills down my back still happen:

Oh Bolvar. Come back to Stormwind and ditch the Wrynn guy. He doesn’t love you like I do!

1. The Dark Portal: Because The Outlands Is Not a Lie
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a big Hellfire Peninsula fan. I dunno, I know there’s some great quests and stuff there, but… but… ZANGARMARSH IS RIGHT THERE AND IT HAS GIANT MUSHROOMS. AND UNDERBOG.

However.

There is one thing in Hellfire Peninsula that kicks the pants off of pretty much anything else in this game.

And it’s not the Fel Reaver (anymore) and it’s not aggro’ing that one boss over and over and making him yell stuff.

…no, I want you to think back and remember when you first went through the Dark Portal. There, in front of you, was this war going on in front of your face and this giant level ?? demon thing who is waving his arms around and looking ready to turn you into his bedtime snack.

Every time… EVERY TIME I do it, it is just as epic.

Kudos, Blizz.

So, there ya have it.

I realize that I left out a lot of super epic stuff (for example, zombie invasion world event), but I was sort of trying to keep it down to… individual moments as best as I could, and the zombie invasion was more like an extended amount of awesome.

But what are some of your guys’ favorite epic moments?

—

* Don’t get me started on historical author/writery guys.

• 30 minute hearthstone. Yeah, yeah, we can all get together and talk about how “back in the day we had an hour long hearthstone and mounts at 40 and we had to walk through the Wetlands at level 6 to get to Stormwind from Darnassus”, but really, would YOU go back to having an hour long hearthstone? I didn’t think so ;D
• Mechanostriders
• Memories of the greatest raid in the world
• All the friends, guildmates past and present, Twitterati, and fun people I have met through playing this game and blogging about it
• Lil’ KT iceblocking something and cackling
• Applebough, and dancing with him when I am on my Tree Druid.
• Tree /cower
• The Skybreaker, because guys, I seriously love the Horde, but the Alliance just owned the Horde in the airship department. Balloons are so last week.
• The Safety Dance. I swear it’s WoW-related. See?
• Addons that I couldn’t live without
• The 30-39 and 40-49 battleground brackets. Post-twinks (for the most part), pre-Death Knights. Sooo delicious.
• The fact that Argent Tournament dailies, while they make me want to bang my head into a wall, still somehow succeed in being over nine thousand times more tolerable than the Shattered Sun dailies
• Coming up with the perfect name for new pets
• Putting something expensive in the Auction House and waiting for the little mail icon next to your map to light up
• Heroic Mech and running it a million times for a tank friend
• Druid Epic Flight Form quest… quite possibly the best questline in the game.
• The Mag’har, because they actually made Nagrand awesome, oh and while we’re at it,
• Defending/attacking Halaa
• Onyxia Whelpling
• Baby Murlocs
• Female Tauren, because we look awesome and there aren’t enough of us!
• Snowman Costume, Picnic Basket, Orb of the Blackwhelp, Steam Tonks, Pygmy Oil, Haunted Memento, and all the other toys I carry around in my backpack

I could keep going, but alas, I should keep this list a decently manageable length before it turns into my blogroll or something. Above all though, thank you Blizzard for making an awesomely fun game, and thank you to all of you for reading and sticking around this long ^_^

Regardless, after much debate and consideration… here are my five favorites:

5.) Forever A Nub Ft Wick and PoshJark

One of the most recent WoW movies I’ve seen, it jumped immediately to “one of my faves” status, which is bragable*. The great thing about it is that I think it’s sort of supposed to be funny, but it just ends up being really touching and super, super nostalgic. Somehow manages to perfectly capture the journey from level 1 to 80 while also throwing in equal parts RP, raiding, and Warcrafty puns (“Darkmoon Card, and I’m destined for greatness!”). Definitely wins Pike’s approval.

4.) How To Play a Mage

I’M CONJURING MANA STRUDEL! AAARRRRRRGHHHH

3.) Hootie the Strigid Screecher

I first saw this movie back when I was level 50ish and it was Tux the Strigid Hunter and I versus the world. By the end, I was teary-eyed, and ya know what? I’m not afraid to admit it. The whole thing just rang true to my huntery heart on so many levels. That Christmas I got some WoW trading cards; one of them was Hootie the Strigid Screecher. Flavor Text: “He doesn’t mean it when he blocks your view.”

He can also apparently be seen in Dalaran sometimes now, too, though I’ve yet to find him myself. A true classic.

2.) The Craft of War: BLIND

I remember everybody being madly obsessed with this when it came out about a year ago, and when I finally got around to watching it a month or so after the hype had calmed down, I realized why. Not like your typical machinima, this is actual original animation using the game models. Combine that with a catchy song and some absolutely delightful cinematography (Lady Prestor letting out her inner Onyxia and then gently holding up a finger to her mouth in a “shhh, just our little secret” pose… just so freaking brilliant) and this is a no-brainer for the list.

Possibly my favorite part, though, is that the guy who made it says “Earlier this year I got pretty bored and decided to do something creative in my spare time. ” Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when amazing people get bored. They should get bored more often.

Aaaaand…

…

1.) Jimmy: The World of Warcraft Story

It might sound silly, but this little movie probably defines my first year of World of Warcraft for me. When I first saw it, the boy and I were still leveling (us being Burning Crusade babies), and although we had no concept yet of Aldors vs. Scryers, we both immediately latched onto this movie as the ultimate source of personal little WoW injokes and random funny lines to toss at each other. We still quote it. “Screw the blue staff Jimmy, we’re going for the epics. EPIIIIICS.”

I still can’t watch it without cracking up. I don’t think Rurikar plays WoW anymore, but man. The guy is endlessly witty, and the movie is chock-full of little hidden jokes as well, so it holds up to repeated viewings more than… just about any WoW movie, ever. Good game, Rurikar. Good game.

“BY THE LIGHT OF ELUUUUUUUUUNE! *poof*”

—

* Cookie for the first person to get the (possibly obscure) reference…

2.) A raid also isn’t a raid without pizza, and this has become so hardwired into you that a mere whiff of a Domino’s box makes you think of trash pulls.

3.) 3.0.8? ZOMGSQUEE SHOT ROTATIONS! Arcane Shot! <3 No more Steady spam! What's that you say, nerfs? Oh, right, yeah, that too. ...OMGSQUEE SHOT ROTATIONS!

4.) You have convinced everyone around you that you don't need the Spirit Beast and have almost convinced yourself of that same thing, when you suddenly feel this urge to fly in circles around Sholazar Basin for three hours, "looking for herbs".

And speaking of herbs...

5.) You are an alchemy freak.

6.) And you make really dorky Fullmetal Alchemist jokes in /guild or Ventrilo anytime you transmute something.

7.) And you think a screenshot of a gnome doing said transmutation while standing next to an Arcane Guardian would be the funniest thing of all time.

8.) You can’t decide whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that your third attempt at playing a paladin… might actually result in something this time.

9.) You find it mind-numbingly hilarious that said stoic paladin is currently wielding a Kobold Mining Shovel. “I AM THE DEFENDER OF THE LIGHT AND ALL THAT IS HOLY. AND DIRT.” /whack

10.) You regularly inform Trade Chat that there are no girls on the internets.

11.) Expansions may come and go, but guild in-jokes are forever.

12.) You forego things like “2000 DPS unbuffed” in your LFG note in favor of “I have freezing traps and cookies <3".

13.) And it works and gets you into groups.

14.) Your Serpent Sting brings all the rogues to the yard.

15.) One of your hunters has tamed three different skins of the same cat model.

16.) You enjoy pointing out to people that you think a lot of the music in game was inspired by Gustav Holst and subsequently sensing those people give off “tl;dr” vibes.

17.) You say things like “oh my heck”, “oh snap” and “goshdangit” on Ventrilo during wipes.

18.) You take roughly five minutes to give profound and heartfelt apologies to the group anytime one of your traps is resisted.

19.) Anytime somebody in guildchat/Trade Chat/et al asks some question about hunters and you launch into a dissertation about it, your boyfriend cries out “NOOOO DON’T GET HER STARTED!”

20.) You are supposed to be packing for your impending move, but are writing this list instead.