SotM officers met at Honor Hold tonight for a meeting.. long overdue, because I think we've been waiting for officer Iamleo to come back online (he's recently moved, and has been without internet for a while). Lots of stuff was discussed, including my idea for a sin bin rank to demote idiot nublets to (Indi's setting that up, and giving officers the power to promote/demote), a set of rules for people who want to be run through instances (they need to go read these rules if they want a run, otherwise they don't get one), creation of a gbank toon to deal with the issue of people using the gbank to empty their bags, and what we're gonna do come the xpac. Basically we're going to remain a relaxed levelling guild in the expansion, with plans to raid at 80 eventually. I let everyone know that I will be levelling Panadoll exclusively when the xpac hits, and that my plan is to raid with Twelve at 80. I want to learn the new strats so I can eventually come back to SotM and lead their raids at 80 on Panacea. Raiding with Twelve on Panadoll will remain my priority however. I don't see that being a problem as SotM is so relaxed with raiding - they're not trying to get through all the content as quickly as possible, we don't have many regular raiders at the moment, and I think they will take it slow at 80 to get a better feel for working in a raid team.

Death also came to the meeting with stuff to say about how my Kara raids have been run. When we did Kara on Sunday night, many people who had signed up never turned up for the run, meaning I had to invite backups and we spent a while looking for an OT. The run was scheduled for 7:30 but we didn't start until almost 9 because of this. I thought the run itself went quite well, but it did go quite late and Death was very tired by the end of it and in favour of continuing the next night. The majority of the rest of the raid (including myself) wanted to continue on and get it done. So we didn't finish up until almost 1am. In the meeting Death seemed very angry about this, saying it was ridiculous that it took so long and people shouldn't have kept going for breaks, chatting etc. Personally I can't remember us taking that many breaks - Yuge did have to go out and get his urn for Nightbane, people took a couple of bathroom breaks (as you do when raiding for a few hours), and Hannika was explaining the strat before each boss because we had a few people new to Kara, but other than that I think we got through relatively quickly. Although Kara's been nerfed, it's a huge place and does still take a while to get through, particularly with new people and people not completely epicced out. 4 hours wasn't that bad imo. But Death seemed really peeved.. I feel bad, because I really want to be a good raid leader, and it seemed like an attack against my RL style.. I might be taking it too personally, but I still feel a bit crappy. :(

I played too much WoW yesterday. >< Yuge was home from work, so I took the opportunity to spend almost all day on WoW. I did a couple of heroics on Panacea with Twelvians (UB and Crypts), then did Mags and Kara with Twelve on Panadoll, then BWL on Panadoll with more Twelve, and finally Onyxia with Yuge, Lutzi and a few other people (including Leth). Panadoll got her classic raider achievement! :D I was pretty exhausted by this time though. Took a little break to eat & watch TV, and I was just going to go to bed & read, but I got lured back in. >< I spent an hour or so before bed on Panacea grinding Kurenai rep in Nagrand, and finding out about the guild drama that had been going down earlier in Panacea's absence.

Recently there have been a lot of new people joining the guild, and a lot of them are youngens. There have been a few jokes in officer chat about the guild turning into a creche. I haven't really been paying all that much attention to guild chat lately, but I have gotten some people whispering me about the nublets. Yesterday a new recruit was gkicked because he was swearing at everyone ("fucking noobs" I think was the term he used) because nobody would come help him in STV. There is one particular new guy, called Tigerbum, who gets picked on a lot because he doesn't know much about the game and has a way of talking that makes him look kinda stupid. Yesterday he was apparently getting bullied mercilessly (one of the top offenders is another new recruit who I don't like much due to their bad attitude and general rudeness) when his brother came online and informed the guild that Tigerbum is only 11. If I'm online and see any more bullying towards Tigerbum, shit is gonna go down. I'm thinking of asking Indi to create a new 'sin bin' type rank to demote people for a set period of time if they behave like idiots. There's an officer meeting tonight, so I might bring it up there.

With WotLK so close, my priorities have shifted a bit. I'm trying to get as many Outland raids and old world raids as I can done on Panadoll, and gear her up as much as possible. Unfortunately my horrible luck with rolls has been hampering me. Today I did AQ20 (fun, fast raid), then finished off Hyjal (the servers never came back online last night - not quickly anyways). No tier stuff dropped for me in Hyjal, legs from Archi didn't drop, and I didn't win the only other thing I wanted (bracers to replace my crappy Shattrath Wraps) which was disappointing. Twelve won't go back there again, so that's it I guess. No legs of awesomeness for me. :( I'm hoping they'll do BWL sometime soon, and perhaps Onyxia, so I can get the old world raiding achievement.

Tonight I logged onto Panacea to do ZA with SotM. Half an hour before we were due to go, Lutzi asked me if I wanted to go to Gruuls. So I went and did that, and got Leggings of the Fallen Defender - finally, something! Not quite sure yet if what I can get for it will be better than my gemmed Kara legs, cos I had to log over straight afterwards for ZA.

There were only a few people invited who still wanted ZA. :( So we had to PuG most people. It wasn't too bad though, our PuG was pretty good, despite only managing to get three bosses down before we ran out of time. Better than other PuGs of ZA I've done on Panacea anyways. But I didn't win any rolls for anything (of course ><) and we didn't manage to get the last boss (Zul'jin) down, mostly because people were unfamiliar with the fight I think (move out of fires, first rule of WoW ><) and our awesome healer Pelor going down early most attempts. I'm not quite sure what he was doing wrong. He most often went down in Phase 3, and I know HoTs are better to use in that phase cos you get damage if you cast in a tornado.. but yeh. Our group was a bit melee heavy which may have had something to do with it.

I've been really, really burnt out on WoW lately.. haven't really wanted to play that much. I've been getting a bit depressed about things.. I have problems with both of my toons' guilds.. and problems with the way I'm playing. Like I wish I wasn't so focused on trying to play awesomely and get awesome loots. I just end up feeling like crap when I don't play awesomely and don't get awesome loots. :P I really enjoy raiding but I often can't get past competitive feelings. I guess that's the main thing making me feel bad, cos I don't want to feel that way at all. I want to just be excited about seeing content I haven't seen before and reach my little personal goals. Not be comparing myself constantly to other players. :(

Anyways, I've been doing a fair bit of old world raiding with Twelve lately, on Panadoll. We've been to AQ40 (though we didn't down the final boss, and I wasn't online when they went back & did it ><), MC and ZG. I did really enjoy seeing all this stuff :) But I'm pretty crap at the 40-man raiding. Heals go where now? lol. ZG was the most fun I think, though I did really like AQ40 also. I've been wanting to see AQ for ages. I'm just annoyed I didn't get the achievement of completing it :(

I'd organised a SotM Kara for Monday night, but when I logged on Panacea I had all these mails from people cancelling. It ended up that only me, Yuge, Verd and Cretton were still keen to go. The two main people I'd made it on Monday for, Cy and Indi (guild leader) weren't able to go. Cy at least sent me a mail about it but there was no word from Indi at all. Slightly pissed off about that. Anyways I cancelled the Kara, since Yuge wanted to go off and do old world raids with Twelve anyway and Verd is adept at pugging such things. I wasn't into the idea of pugging Kara. Death has organised a ZA later this week, which should be interesting. :)

After talking about running a guild Kara for ages, and repeatedly asking people - in game, on the forums - if they were interested, and getting hardly any response, I finally decided to just make a Kara event on the calendar and invite people as they logged on and were interested. Immediately almost a full group was keen. This group, is made up of nothing but warriors, druids and priests... but since Kara's been nerfed, I think we can run with that.

Anyway, I changed the guild announcement to let people know that a Kara was being organised. What I did not realise was that our guild leader was interested in coming along. I've always been under the impression that Lilac wasn't particularly interested in endgame raiding - stemming back from around the time when I first joined the guild and I heard her say that she wasn't really looking forward to hitting 70. She just never really seemed that keen on anything other than soloing.. I never saw her asking for instance groups, and I had never, ever seen her express an interest in going to Kara. Now Lilac is currently level 68, and today she asked me if there were any minimum gear requirements to come along to Kara. I told her there weren't, but unfortunately all the spots for the raid had been filled bar one, which had been reserved for a geared healer. She told me ok, but then Cy (another officer) began whispering me & telling me that Lilac had been working really hard to level to 70 for Kara, and that she felt that she was being left out of guild events which wasn't fair since she is GL. I was like wut?? This was the first I'd heard of her even being interested in Kara. I apologised to Lilac in guild chat for not sending her an invite and confessed that I didn't know she wanted to come to Kara. She answered like she was pissed off and I was like O_O! I grovelled for a bit but slowly got angry. Why should I be made to feel like I've done something wrong when Lilac never gave me any indication previously that she was interested in coming to Kara?? Also Cy seemed pissed off that all the raid spots had been filled too (I didn't invite him, as he's still level 66) as he has been rushing to level up so he can come to Kara. Why should I be made to feel like crap because I invited guildies as they expressed interest? And Lilac always knew that I planned to organise a guild Kara - if she was interested in coming, she should have told me directly.

Lilac also told me that she could not set up Vent, because of her computer being in the middle of her house where her sons were around.. Personally I don't get this, because she could quite easily plug in some headphones and just listen to us on Vent, she wouldn't need to speak at all. And the detailed screenshots I have posted in the guild forums should make it extremely simple for even the most computer-illiterate person to set up Vent. So her Vent excuses aren't really valid at all. When I tried to explain to her the need for Vent in Kara (especially for first timers) she eventually said that she's not ready for Kara then, and she will wait until she can get her computer away from her boys. Hunh??? I really don't get her aversion to wearing headphones in front of them?

ugh, stupid guild drama is stupid.

I've been running so many instances lately.. it's pretty much all I've been doing, as well as occasionally taking Panacea to Nagrand to grind Kurenai rep & look out for Halaa raids (of which there aren't many, irritatingly). Panadoll has healed a few instances for guildies, but I've mostly been doing instances on Panacea. DPSing is a bit less stressful than healing, and I think I'm quite good at it (often topping damage metres ahead of locks and mages) but it's been fun to heal on Panadoll once in a while. :)

Today I went to MgT (normal) for the first time, on Panadoll. I was there healing for a guildie, Verdiline, a druid (and the only real tank in our guild) who had been trying to get through the instance all day, but had all sorts of unfortunate troubles with groups falling apart, the instance resetting, constant wipes, etc etc. It was quite easy at first, as we had a well geared tank (Verd was DPSing) from one of our server's high-end guilds, Over Nine Thousand. Unfortunately though, this tank had to leave after the second boss. We managed to get in a pally tank who wasn't very well geared at all (having just hit 70 I think) and the healing got a lot harder, mainly because the group couldn't seem to keep aggro off me. I died several times and had to go repair, but we chugged through up to Priestess Delrissa. This is where we hit real problems. >< The pally tank decided to log over to their better geared resto druid, as they said tanks were useless on this boss. I brought in Panacea to lend more DPS, but we still wiped, and the group fell apart. Man I knew MgT was hard, but this was ridiculous hard. :(

Later on, Yuge said he would tank heroic slabs (the daily) for Panacea, and my brother (Hannika) said he would respec from moonkin to resto and come along too. But we were only grouped for a short time before Yuge ditched us for Twelve's Mount Hyjal, which he had warned me beforehand he might do, but Hannika had already respecced, and after our group disbanded he had to respec back to moonkin so he could farm, wasting 100g. :( He was pretty pissed off. I got into a group for normal slabs (I have run slabs so many damn times, lol) and afterwards my guildie friend Deatharra (arms warrior) and her holy priest husband Pelor wanted me to come dps normal Steamvault. Hannika agreed to come along as well, so we spent a while looking for a tank. I noticed Yuge wasn't at Hyjal anymore and asked if he'd come tank. Apparently there was some drama with a troll who got their raid leader banned for some Vent thing, and the Hyjal run had fallen apart. So he agreed to come tank SV. I noticed during the run that Hannika wasn't in a very good mood, and Yuge asked me if Hannika was pissed off at him. I spent the SV run in three simultaneous whispered conversations with Yuge, Hannika, and Deatharra (who has grown nervous of Yuge, because he has tanked a lot of instances for her and she knows he doesn't like running normal instances much) and found out that yes, Hannika was still pretty pissed off with Yuge, telling me he was just tired of waiting around for Yuge and he thought it was pretty scummy to leave our hslabs group for Hyjal, when Hyjal will be obsolete so soon. Meanwhile party chat was pretty much silent, except for a few terse directions and passive aggressive remarks... ugh, dramariffic. I think Death's husband Pelor is getting sick of healing instances for Death too.. he is a little better geared than Panadoll, and prefers raiding with his guild I think.

I wish Spirits of the Moon had more 70s who wanted to run instances, rather than PvP, cos otherwise we'll never get enough people geared for Kara before the expansion. :( At the moment, the most likely candidates for guild Kara are Panacea (geared just well enough for Kara I think), Iamleo (enthusiastic hunter who loves instancing and could just about do Kara), Verdiline (druid tank, Kara-capable), Helpfulness (other shadowpriest, geared just about as well as Panacea, but in more PvP gear), Avidmaul (recent addition to the guild, a Kara-geared resto druid), and Deatharra who is still only level 68, but is trying to get to 70 as fast as possible, and who plans to respec prot for the guild. She will need to get geared first of course, but we've been running her through level 70 instances in preparation, and I think she already has some good tanking stuff. Obviously we'd also have to PuG a few people, but maybe Pelor, Yuge and Hannika might come along for the badges (and Panadoll could come heal if it comes to that, but I really wanna get Panacea through)... anyways, chances of guild Kara before expansion are improving but still iffy at the moment.

I found it pretty boring levelling through Terrokar, Nagrand, and Blades Edge Mountains, because it seems like such a short time ago that I did all the quests on Panadoll. I got through all the quests a lot quicker because I knew what I was doing but.. after I finished BEM, at level 68, I was kinda not really into the idea of going on to Netherstorm. So I decided to go level in Shadowmoon Valley - Panadoll never did any of the quests there, besides the Netherwing ones. Since I moved over there I've been enjoying myself a lot more. It's a bit slower going, but everything is new and interesting. You get to know a place a lot better when you're limited to a ground mount. :P

So Panacea is halfway through level 69 now. So close to 70! I believe I will ding this weekend. :D Running a bit low on quests though. I hope I can ding in Shadowmoon. I've also been helping out guildies a bit, running UB with Deatharra and her 70 holy priest partner (who is up to the same raiding content as Panadoll, but a bit better geared) with Yuge tanking cos tanks are still so hard to find on our server. :( Also tomorrow night I've got to do a run of VC for lowbies in the guild, which will cut into my racing-to-70 time, but people were begging and I want to be a good guild officer. :P

( Shadowmoon shenanigans )

( tonight's UB run )

There's another shadowpriest in the guild, called Helpfulness (also an officer), who I've been sort of "racing" to 70 since we were level 64 or so (he's level 68 atm). I quite like this guy.. he knows what he's doing even though I think it's his first toon, and he levels at a pace similar to my own, unlike most of the other people in the guild who generally level a lot slower. Would be good I suppose if he was planning to turn holy at 70 (cos we have no holy priests) but he's pretty set on staying shadow I think - already getting together his FSW set, which is ahead of me (I haven't quite got my tailoring up to speccing shadowweave). Two skilled shadowpriests in a guild is a good thing to have though right? :D We do however have a severe lack of tankage in the guild. :( I'm hoping once all these 60-somethings hit 70 we'll be better able to entice more 70s into the guild for endgame content though.

I've been very busy with Panacea lately. Mainly cos I've become very involved in her guild, Spirits of the Moon. I'm really becoming quite fond of the guild.. there's a core group of people that are online every day and we're all very friendly with each other. It's nice to log on and have four or five people immediately say "hi Pan!" lol. I've never been in a guild like this before - and never really made friends through the game before - so this is all new & cool to me. :) It's very different from Panadoll's guild, Twelve.. mainly because, the people in SotM are generally friendlier.. and people in Twelve are much more skilled at playing WoW (and far more progressed, obviously). I won't be taking Panadoll out of Twelve because, despite SotM's big plans to raid and do endgame stuff in the future, realistically I know that Panadoll will have a far greater chance to progress being in Twelve, even though she's at the bottom of the heap. :P At the same time though, I am getting a lot of enjoyment out of being one of the more knowledgable players in SotM, being an officer and having a say in how things are run. It's very different!

I'm particularly loving the way these rambling, silly conversations happen in guild chat all the time.. makes doing all these quests for the second time a bit less boring. :P Some examples...



Iamleo posted a picture of himself on the forums, with his 'Elvis' hair :P




We had an officer meeting in the Goldshire inn the other night. I went along thinking "hmm, wonder what we'll discuss?" We decided on a few things, including "raid" nights - 9pm Wednesdays and 4pm Saturdays, in which we shall raid Horde towns, lol :P Also we decided on Sundays being the day to run lowbies through instances, and other similar things... I kinda felt like I was witnessing the very beginnings of a future well organised and progressive guild. Everyone seems to be quite committed to getting all our toons to 70 and starting endgame content, and I think we'll do well when WotLK hits. :)

enough rambling about the guild, lol. In other news, Yuge and Panadoll took a short trip to ZG the other day. :D We snuck past everything like ninjas to Gahz'ranka, who, after several attempts due to him resetting, we killed. Took half an hour to get him down.. most boring healing evar. >< He didn't drop Tome of Polymorph: Turtle unfortunately, just some crap that got de'd into other crap. We attempted the tiger boss after that, with the flimsy strategy of me staying up on the hill out of the way and not doing anything unless Yuge hit his panic button, but the mobs on Yuge stunned him at some point and immediately aggroed on me.. I died & popped into Spirit of Redemption form in mid-air falling down off the hill. :D We gave up on it after that, having other things to do with our time. :P We'll probably be going back again though.

( screenshots from ZG, and random pretty )

This evening I was all set for a night of levelling Panacea, but when I logged on I discovered a guild event was about to happen, involving hide & seek in Elwynn Forest. Dubious at first, I went down there to have a look. Fun times ensued! xD

Under the cut - many many ( screenshots! )

/wave to any guildies who've come to see the screenshots! :D

I edited my new awesome macro to fix my problem with the shift modifier.. I just took it out. *facepalm* Now, whenever I click Mind Blast it will cast Inner Focus first if it's up, then pop my first trinket if it's up, then cast Mind Blast. It seems that the macro can only cast two things before casting Mind Blast.. so if Inner Focus is still on cooldown it will pop both my trinkets, and if the first trinket is on cooldown it'll just pop the second one, etc. I think that's how it's working. My second trinket has a 15 minute cooldown so it's a little hard to tell.

Late Monday night I hopped on Panacea to talk to my guild leader about organising a guild run of Ramps and/or Blood Furnace. I am so wary of PuGging them now. >< She was quite happy with the idea, and said she'd come on her lvl 60 resto druid Lilacmoon. She said she'd never really done any instances before though, having been run through things up til now, so we'd have to be kind to her. I can totally relate to this of course, as it's the way I took Panadoll to 70. So I told her we'd get Yuge in to tank for us, and it should be a breeze. We organised to do the run on Tuesday night at 7pm. She said that would be 9pm her time, as she's in Perth.

On Tuesday I hopped on in the middle of the day to make sure she was still up for the run and discuss who else we'd need for the group. She was still keen, so all was good. I logged off, and then later when Yuge got home he told me that 7pm our time is actually 5pm Perth time. Bah!! I logged back on at 7pm and sure enough, Lilac wasn't there.. I asked Yuge if he'd be ok doing the run at 11pm instead (9pm Perth time) and he said that'd be alright.

In the meantime, Yuge tanked a PuG of Ramps for me. It went so well.. I got the feeling the rest of the group was just as nubish as the first PuG I was in, but Yuge made up for that with his awesomeness. I got Crystalfire Staff, yay! It's pretty. ^_^

Later on I finished off all the Hellfire quests and moved on to my beloved Zangarmarsh (not really, anymore.. I loved the zone so much when I was levelling Panadoll but not so much this time around since nothing's new). At 10pm, to my horror, the server said it was going down for maintenance. Wtf, there wasn't anything on the login page! Should have expected it for a Tuesday night though, I guess. Anyways, so no Ramps/BF at 11pm with Lilac. :( Maybe we can get a group together for it tonight, though I'm not sure if Yuge is raiding. He's getting home from work late so... maybe he's not?

Panacea got into the most awesome PuG last night, for ST of all places. :O I'm finding as I'm doing these higher level instances, people don't want me for heals as much - which is good! But I'm also finding that the locks and mages are getting their act together now and beating me at dps. :P

So I dpsed my way through ST. It was lots of fun, even though I was lagging a bit. Everyone in the group was familiar with the place and knew what they were doing, so we got through relatively quickly and I got all my quests out of the way. :D They were friendly people too.. always nice when the group not only knows what they're doing but also isn't super serious. :)

I tried going to BRD a couple of days ago. It wasn't very successful. We spent like an hour looking for a tank, til in frustration I asked Yuge if he could come tank - breaking my rule of not letting Panacea be helped in any way by Yuge. >< But we didn't get very far into the instance before the group fell apart after a wipe, and I didn't get any quests completed. So I'm not going to count Yuge's involvement. :P Man BRD is a boring instance. I'd never been there before, and I don't think I'll be going back.

A week or so ago Panacea joined a cute little levelling guild called Spirits of the Moon. It's run by a lovely lady who has two toons, currently levels 49 and 59 I think. She's very friendly and helpful, as are a number of other people in the guild. The guild has, surprisingly, a number of 70s, as well as 60-somethings. But it's just a levelling guild for now, they don't raid, though they have plans to raid in the future apparently. I'm enjoying being in the guild as there are quite a lot of people around my level. I hoping we'll all get to 70 around the same time, then we'd have almost enough for a Kara raid. :)

anyways, what would an entry be from me without screenshots :PPP~ Here's ( ST and some random shots from Silithus )