I also feel like I’ve done it all. All of the starter areas have been done several times, and I’ve seen all of the areas on at least 2 characters. Raiding has even lost its appeal as we keep trying to progress in Ulduar (aka seeing the same 4 bosses over and over again to get to the one we really want, only to spend an hour on him before needing to head off to bed). I like Ulduar, I really do. But I wish it was split up into several wings, each with its own lockout. We just don’t have the time to kill the same 4 bosses every night and still attempt at progressing. And don’t even talk about ICC…we can only get down Marrowgar. It doesn’t help that we’ve lost 3 of our members to an upcoming move so our attendance is low to begin with. So yeah…I haven’t even felt compelled to log in for that.

Then there’s Cataclysm coming. I’m excited for a lot of the new features they’re going to implement, including the redesigned leveling zones. Alts have been my normal time-killing activity but what’s the point when the content is going to change soon? It also doesn’t help that my home server is completely full, including slots saved for Cata characters. I’m always reluctant to delete a character and I don’t think I could ever delete an 80.

I’ve also been putting a lot of work into web hosting and designing lately (there’s more about that on my non-WoW blog), as well as making the completely new Bloodriver site. My renewed interest in this has also left me feeling a little blah about WoW.

So all of this resulted in Kazi and I not really touching WoW at all for a couple days. We watching some Mystery Science Theater and played some other games. Warcraft 3 proved to be cool but I can only play the same RTS for so long. We could not for the life of us get Age of Mythology to connect using GameRanger so that was quickly abandoned. Dungeon Siege 2 was going great until two crashes left my character far behind Kazi’s (WTB autosaves) and combined with the frustration of high level mobs in the worst places, it’s been pushed to the side. We started playing Neverwinter Nights together, which Kazi has never played and I’ve always enjoyed playing. The pace is a little slower than what we’re used to but hey, at least it has a great story line and autosaves!

I think we’re slowly starting to get back into things now. With the upcoming announcement of Real ID being implemented with the next patch, we saw an opportunity…the chance to play more not just cross-faction but also cross-realm while still being able to stay in contact with our friends. This is just about as good as more character slots per server would be. So in a sort of impromptu preparation for that…we rolled a couple of Alliance on the Farstriders server. We chose Farstriders because a) it’s an RP realm and we like those and b) that’s where Fhionn is located and guess who had enough money to buy us bags?

Well, at least buy bags for Kazi’s dwarf paladin. I, on the other hand, rolled a death knight, a class I hadn’t touched since I had my troll DK Githinji commit suicide. And because I wanted to boost their numbers…I made her a female dwarf. I think this character will last longer than poor depressed Githinji. I was already joking about calling her undead mount Sparkles or Rainbow, and how my corehound minipet was feasting on the bones of my enemies. I’m still fleshing out her character concept but I think it’s safe to say that she will not be the depressed sort.

However, if you don’t see me post for a while, that’s probably because Kazi and I are kicking it in another game or watching some movies or something.

But if you already think that this blog has some sort of time schedule, you are sorely mistaken, dear readers.

…Yes, I have become a casual raider. Let’s not delve too much into that statement at this time, shall we?

As I’m sure you all know, the new patch is out today and I’m very excited about all the changes that it’s bringing. I’m not even going to go into detail about all the hunter and pet changes, which are full of a whole bunch of win. Non-hunter things that I am also pumped about are:

• Heirloom items can be sent across faction
• New heroics for us to play with
• New totem designs for orc and troll shammies (Zulrea be lovin’ dah new look, mon)
• Fire Nova introduced and shorter cooldowns on Elemental totems (although Kazi is much happier about that )
• Meeting stones have greatly reduced requirements (That was so ANNOYING)
• We can go directly to Sapph in Naxx
• Whole bunch of interface upgrades (that will probably break my mods )
• New fishing tourney and a new use for all that damn pygmy suckerfish!
• Weekly raid quests
• And last but not least…head and shoulder enchants are now BoA! Thank god Niqo is exalted with all those factions already

I have a feeling that as soon as I get on tonight, there’s going to be people eager to check out the new heroics so I’ll see just what they’re like.

I’ve never been so eager to be done work for the day…

I figured it would be best to not only include the Patch 3.0 pets but also the Wrath of the Lich King pets. After all, it’s less than a month away now. I’ve already added those families to the suggestion form on the Namerator’s page. This is where you come in, my fellow Petoholics. I need your name ideas for all these new and wonderful pets that Blizzard has given us. I need at least 10 for each family before I can add them to the Namerator. So please do flood my inbox with your suggestions!

While I’m at it, I want to link you to Big Red Rhino, a hunters blog that specifically covers tenacity pets both on the live realms and in the WotLK beta. Personally I love Grakoth, Niqora’s warp stalker, and I used Ihlos’s review of the tenacity talent tree to help decide where I should put his talent points.

And here’s a quick callout to Snake in the Grass, who listed me in her blogroll as a Pet Master, right under Mania. I don’t know if I’m so much a pet master as a pet fanatic. But I can quit whenever I want…really. >.>

*goes back to staring at the progress bar*

First up, some long overdue linkbacks to:

Laser Chicken – This poor guy has has Petoholics on his blogroll forever but I only found it out after he left the game. But now he’s back and it’s about time I pay him his dues!

Warcraft and Other Hooha – I’m not exactly sure what “Hooha” is but it seems to have lots of pretty screenshots and interesting topics so I like it

The Troll Hunter – Again, I’m not listed as a “Great Hunter Site”. What does a girl have to do to get recognition around here? On second thought, don’t answer that. I kid of course. Friendly /wave over to Wolfrider!

Next, Patch 2.4.2. It’s live now (or so I’ve been told; I’m at work right now) and the issue that’s been up on my mind is the Growl changes. Blizzard said “Growl now scales with Hunter RAP, not pet RAP” but Mania, Znodis, and others have responded with “Umm, nothing’s changed. Here’s the data from all the tests we’ve performed.” Blizzard then stares blankly at them for a moment then says loudly to no one in particular “Growl now scales with Hunter RAP, not pet RAP.” Hilarity ensues, or at least it would if this wasn’t just plain irritating. My Mr. Paladin has a saying: “If you say something loud enough and long enough, people begin to believe it.” Okay, maybe that works with some people but reality can’t be convinced no matter how loud you yell. I don’t know where things are going awry but something’s not right and I hope Blizzard can at least straighten things out.

Frustrations over that aside, I’m sure everyone has heard of all the new info released about Wrath of the Lich King. If you haven’t…man, I thought I lived under a rock. I don’t know anything going on in local news (because I don’t watch the news on TV or read the newspaper) but even I have heard about all of the new WotLK stuff!

Ahem…I didn’t go in depth into all of it, just read the summaries that have been plastered on every other blog. I did watch all the videos on GameSpy and I really recommend everyone else does as well. It gives you a very good look at how beautiful Northrend will be. That’s what I’m looking forward to the most…aside from taming one of those new wolf models! And mounts that can carry passengers! If they ever give us player housing, I’ll be in Nerdvana

My personal to-do list before WotLK comes out is to: get Niqora her PvP mount (working hard on that one) and also get her to level 70. That’s what absolutely has to be done. I’d really like her to get her flying mounts, both normal and epic, but that might be wishful thinking. Luckily, they haven’t announced the release date yet so I’m not in panic mode. I’m pretty sure that I have plenty of time to get those done

I updated as many of my addons as I could (which wasn’t many) and then fired WoW up, checking the little “Load Out-of-Date addons” box. Apparently that wasn’t the greatest idea as it froze WoW. Going with only my absolutely-necessary addons, I got into the game with only minor problems and started questing with Nicora.

Then my brilliant boss (I love him but he does have his blond moments) decided that now was a great time to download those free Halo maps into a couple of Xboxes. The T1 line slowed to a crawl, giving me 1.5-2 seconds of lag as I was trying to play and increasing the time it took to download the patch. Instead of taking 80 minutes, it took 2 and a half hours. I was getting frustrated trying to quest with the horrible lag when my brother showed up and we played a couple of songs on Rock Band. Not to toot my own horn but I sang ‘Dani California’ on Expert (the hardest setting) and got 89%. That song is also a blast to sing.

All in all, I only managed to complete 2 quests with Nicora but they were the last ones she needed to do in the Hinterlands so now it’s off to other areas for her. And I still have to get the patch for my laptop and my brother’s computer. >.< That’ll take all night.

Other than that, I’m pleased to say that Fhionn has finally reached level 20 and so now all of my characters have made it to that all important benchmark. (Aspect of the Cheetah FTW!)

Except that…not all of my hunters have really reached level 20. Because I created a new one. *grin* I’ll introduce her later.

I’m greatly enjoying the new patch, with the dead zone being gone, the awesome new tracking, and the streamlined leveling from level 20-60. A lot of other hunters are complaining about the double trapping gone and the no-FD on dungeon bosses. But none of that affects me because a) I barely use traps and if I do, it’s for one target and b) I avoid dungeons like the plague. Unless Tty and I run through an instance that’s all grey to Nicora (like Scarlet Monastery), in which case I can smash everything into the ground with ease.

If you haven’t already played your hunter on the new patch, do it now! I command you!

You know what I’m talking about. It’s when your cat reaches level 16 and can now learn Claw 3. So you run to Loch Modan with your Fluffy and as soon as you see a black bear patriarch, you dismiss Fluffy and tame the bear. Once you’ve learned Claw 3, you head back to a stable master, abandon the bear, shuffle your pets around a bit, and then Fluffy is once again by your side. So simple, so easy.

*sigh* Bug or not, this little trick is incredibly useful for any hunter. Oh, how I will miss thee.