I’m lovin’ this already.

I’ve been quite busy recently — so busy I’ve hardly had any time to play! Fortunately, I took care of that last weekend, seeing as it was an extended one thanks to Presidents’ Day.

I took this opportunity to mostly play my main, as he’s been quite neglected of late — BC’s been out for a year, and he’s naught but level 65! So, a little questing here and there in Nagrand…

…and of course it gets tedious and tiring, and I remember why I never bother questing much in the first place. So, I go exploring.

To Shadowmoon Valley Nina and I go, even though every step is wrought with terror, seeing as how most enemies in this place are huge, demonic, and about four or five levels above us.

Yes, I’m lighting up the horizon with my spells.

Not to worry — we quickly find out that we’re a bit stronger than we think we are, taking out giant snakes, nasty scorpions, and the usual smelly orcs that seemingly inhabit every square inch of eastern Outland.

After that, it was time to explore old Azeroth — well, it’s not really old, and I shouldn’t call it that, since I probably spend most of my time there, questing with my alts!

My alts got some much needed attention, though I have to admit that most of my time was spend updating UI’s and on-screen Addons, but I did manage to gain a few levels.

I challenge you to make a fierce-looking gnome. Go ahead, try it. It can’t be done.

After that, it was to Grim Batol, Emberstrife’s den, and a few other places I’ve always wanted to go. Hell, if I pay the money to play, I’m going to have fun, you know?

Grim Batol was… unexciting. Seriously, add a big giant skull, or quite a bit of blast damage around that huge permanently closed door, or… something. It was quite the damn struggle to get up here back in the day before BC, and you should be rewarded!

Until then — I’m actually going to go do something I probably haven’t done in ages: farm for cloth. God knows I need it — I’ve only been making the same Netherweave Tunic at a rate of about one a week for I don’t know how long. It’s getting sad.

The worst thing about rolling a new Hunter is that you’re suddenly without any money — none at all actually. By the time you get to level ten and you need to buy, say, five more Tough Jerkies to feed your first pet, you wish you hadn’t spent your last 10c on repairing your crappy beginning-level gear.

Without further adieu, let me introduce a pair of very broke Hunters: Moolah and Mereyn.
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Yes, I’m doing a live redesign as we speak. No, it’s not done. I’m not the world’s best designer by any means, so this may take awhile!

WoW Insider has a section called Build Shop, where they explore various builds for the various classes. I’ve been browsing through the various Build Shop archives and found some good builds for Hunters. Though I play a BM Hunter most of the time (with points in MM, too), I have been curious as to try out the Survival tree as well. How will I fair? Will I be able to solo or will I fair better in a group?

Lo and behold, this leads me to our next project.
I promised my Husband that we would try to level our Druid/Priest duo (our original characters) to level 70. When we got that high (or when Cappy decides we are high enough), we are going to start a new pair of characters on an RP-PvP realm, the Emerald Dream. Both of us were curious to find out what a PvP realm was all about and though we’re scared shitless, we are rolling Horde. We like the idea of still being able to RP if need be.

We’re starting Orcs — I am rolling a Hunter, as usual, and Cappy’s rolling a Warlock. We want a 4-person team. We’ll be questing together and attempting to keep our wits about us. I wanted to start an Orc as it was, but wanted to put that on hold for awhile. Playing as a Troll and having done all the Barrens quests so recently, I don’t want things to get too deja vu-y. But I am looking forward to playing the only race I haven’t played yet.

I’m taking this opportunity to spec in Survival. I really like this build because it still allows for those precious, important points in Improved Aspect of the Hawk. I think it will be a bit difficult since DoTs break the Freezing Traps (as it says in the comments) and Warlocks are nothing but DoTs. I’m sure Cappy and I can work out a good system, however; we’ve made it work before with our Druid/Priest combo, so why not Hunter/Warlock?

Isys hit the level 60 mark over the weekend! I topped that off by getting her to 61 yesterday!

Among my travels and travails in the Hellfire Peninsula, I found an annoying level 70 Druid who, after buffing me with the requisite Mark of the Wild and Thorns insisted that I buff him as well:

Him: can u buff me plz?
Me: Um…buff you with what? I’m a Hunter.
Him: u don’t have ne buffs
[Long pause on my behalf since I was being attacked by Bleeding Hollow Orcs while he tagged doggedly at my side, waiting for this buff I was supposed to give him.]
Me: No. I don’t.

I thought about adding, “now piss off” to that last sentence because it was just so dumb. Not only was he bothering me while I was trying to kill and not be killed, but he was asking me a stupid question. Luckily, he buggered off after about five minutes of tailing me.

I also hit the roof when a tiny Gnome Warlock asked to group up after I had wiped out a colony of demons. Of course he wanted to group up then — I had done all the work! On top of all that, Isys had exhausted her mana pool healing Sleet so my Gnome counterpart got me at a real bad time.

But not all is lost. There have been good things to happen whilst playing Horde (and it’s always the Horde side that reminds me that decent players DO exist). For instance, a Tauren Shammy helped Kahlah and Maia out while questing around Windbreak Canyon.
Hurr hurr hurr. Windbreak Canyon. It’s funnier if you read it:

Whoever that Shaman was — thank you for helping Kahlah knock off some of those wyvrens that swarmed her. As we should know, Kahlah is a proud Troll who doesn’t like to ask for help too often. On her behalf, thank you whoever you are!

In other matters, I did start up my Dwarf and Tauren over the weekend, but they are currently resting in their respective inns getting a superb Rested Bonus. I hope to start up their pages as soon as I get their first pets.

Omaa released Slick into the wild and tamed a leggy Tallstrider named Tweel. It’s a shame there aren’t more Tallstriders around — I think they make pretty good pets aside from their picky eating habits.

Finally, Iriannis is becoming a snotty preteen. I’m pretty sure that she’ll reach level 20 before Omaa, since I am just itching to go back to the Ghostlands! I love the teen-level Blood Elf quests — they’re really challenging. I’m a bit disappointed that I won’t be able to clear Zul’Aman on my map without getting my tiny BElf ass handed to me. When I played as a BElf Paladin, Zul’Aman had yet to open up. Cappy and I spent about twenty minutes jumping around from ledge to ledge before the novelty wore off. Now, there won’t be any of that with Iri!

I found a nice thread on the Blog Azeroth forums, asking about we came up with our character names. It’s such a good question that I am going to blog about it. =)

Naming a character is my favorite part of character creation. I don’t have a set theme for names. A third of the time I make them up, a third of the time I pick them from literature, art, music and et cetera, and a third of the time I hit randomize and see what’s prettiest. If I had to describe a theme, it would be “whatever looks good to me at the time.” That’s all! I don’t do heavy research or dig deep into symbolism and irony. I think that’s a bit much, even for an RP’er like myself.

I did not create Isys — my sister-in-law did. We had a very in-depth story line for Isys and her Huntress involving family, love, betrayal, and murder. Very, very deep stuff! But she was already into her 30’s when I started playing and thus we didn’t get to play too much together, save for a few RP events here and there.

Kahlah came from my head. I wanted a really striking two-syllable name beginning with a K for a Troll it had to sound Trollish too. With all those provisions, I thought long and hard and came up with Kahlah. I like how it rolls off the tongue. It almost sounds like a curse (and for Trolls, that’s good)!

Iriannis was a randomly created Blood Elf name. Iriannis sounds regal and cold in my head, which fits her personality so well. It’s much better than my previous BElf, who had a name with more vowels than I could count. I learned my lesson to be careful with that name randomizer!

Omaa is a wonderful name for a Draenei. I wanted a calm, grandmotherly name for a calm, grandmotherly character — so why not name her “grandmother?” Omaa has an extra A tacked on to look more Draenic.

But that’s how I choose my names. I don’t have a set method for this, as I said. I just rely on what looks good at the time. =D

Good: Isys has gone up two levels and is now bordering on level 60 (a milestone still). I got my pet Frostsaber Matriarch and named her Sleet.
Bad: I have to call it quits on the Bloodlust set, for I am too high for it to matter. *Sigh*
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