The Waiting Game

Howdy folks, long time no blog!

As most of you know I stopped writing quite a while ago as I was getting bored with no new content and running out of things to blog about.

With the ever increasing amount of information available about the Beta, my excitement for the game is slowly growing (even though I still try not to read too much about it).

However one of my friends now has Beta access so I'm going to be finding out more about the hunter changes than I would have on my own so I figured its time to brush off the blog!

Since the last time I played I have levelled a Holy Paladin to 90 via PvP (and discovered that healing BGs isn't as bad as I once thought!) I had a lot of fun levelling her and even started to gear her up before I got distracted - that is something I intend to go back to at some point.

I have also bought the Digital Deluxe edition of Warlords of Draenor for my main account! I recently also started a new job (yay!) so my time online and generally looking for stuff to do is lessened :)

I used my free char boost on a Dwarf Warlock I still had back on Steamwheedle Cartel so I have been busy taking her around the Timeless Isle getting her some gear. I also server and faction changed one of my hunters so she is now a Dwarf on Silvermoon - she is busily gearing up as I intend to have a horde and alliance main next expansion. I also bought myself a level 90 Night elf Shadow Priest on Draenor to mix thing sup a little!

Thus I have plenty to keep me busy over the next few months, as well as many achievements and loose ends I intend to tie up.

I finally reached exalted with Darkmoon Faire on my druid, and am working on some of the other reputations that I need to hit my 50 reputations achievement. I'm also 20 mounts away from my 200 mount achievement so will be looking to try and complete both of those at some point between now and the start of WoD.

The Drafia is kind of hibernating until WoD with many of the usual people taking breaks as the lack of content is just too much to take but I am keeping things going as best I can, and there are still some people logging on regularly.

If any of my readers have guilds on Silvermoon looking for a ranged DPS or Flex/Normal SoO drop me a message as I'm looking to get my Dwarf into the action and geared as much as my main hunter!

Other than that, I shall try to get back into the rhythm of posting more regularly, as well as throwing up Beta info as my friend finds it!

Ciao for now! 

The Drafia Needs a New Logo!

As the title says, I'm looking for a new design for our guild logo!

Any ideas or designs would be awesome as we need updating I think :)

Our current logo/header is:

which is very nice, but I feel we need a change.

Current one is roughly 710 x 260.

We would also be interested in one that is roughly 1436 x 104

Only stipulation is that it says The Drafia, Draenor EU, and that it has the Mafia guy on it somewhere (preferably - i'm open to other options!)

So go ahead, show us your skills!

The One Where I Took Lots of Screenshots

Yes I know, I have enough characters, but I love levelling! Plus it contributes to the Year of Faff!

Since my last post I have made a new druid, who is currently residing in the all Druid Guild Druids of the Beast over on Shadowsong. She will likely go the same way of my poor Warlock in The Tweeters guild on Doomhammer and be rarely logged in, but I will level them both eventually and enjoy being able to connect with people I interact with on Twitter!

In other news, The Friday Fun Run group went to Mogu'shan Vaults! I know, a proper grown up raid!

I spent the Thursday and Friday actually levelling my priest to get to 90, and she hit 90 at about 4pm. Queue me rushing around alts finding Timeless Isle gear, and taking said priest off to the Isle for her free Burden!

The raid itself went fine, but I definitely felt a little overwhelmed healing wise, and definitely felt very low on mana on more than one occasion. I need to do some more reading up on holy at 90, but for now, I have switched her to disc and will try that :)

I've also spent some time on the alts, with the Druid looking for Aeonaxx, the hunter actually getting the mount to drop from Stonecore (Woohoo!!), and more levelling with friends :)

 Peekaboo!

Friend's shield just spinning in mid-air.... 

The Drafia are still raiding, and still working on killing Garrosh (got to Phase 3 this week! Progress!!) However, it seems this week, Thrall decided he was hungry and dived face first into our Noodle Cart!

I also finally figured out how to get up on the bridge by Huolon! (Yes I'm aware this is old news to most, but its taken me a while :-p) I spent a nice half hour there AFK while i browsed Imgur.

And because this post doesn't have enough screenshots yet, have this one that I don't even remember taking!

In wider WoW news, new character models for human female have been released! Even when I played Alliance, humans were one of the last races that I would choose for a few reasons. The biggest reason is that I felt playing a human in a fantasy game was a waste of a character, but also, the fact that the model itself looked completely naff.

I am so glad that the new model looks so good, it gives me hope for the rest that we are yet to see (I'm even starting to hope that troll females will have more than one face to choose from!)

Apart from this, I have mostly been playing Donkey Kong on my 3DS, and am awaiting the arrival of Pokemon Y (the first Pokemon game I will have ever owned) to see what all the fuss is about!

Busy Busy!

So many things going on in game, so I've been rather busy!

The Drafia have managed to finish the first part of Siege of Orgimmar on Flex difficulty! With two days a week dedicated to Flex raiding, we seem to have a fluid group of between 13 and 20, and boy can you tell the difficulty change with more people in the raid!

I am really enjoying the new raid so far and am following the storyline closely as a massive fan of lore (that's lore as in story not Lore as in the person ^^ tho I'm sure he is important too!) Not entirely sure how the Timeless Isle ties in to this, but my alts are certainly not complaining!

Due to all this though, I am behind on the blog, behind on my daily screenshots and also behind on my alt appreciation!

I also finally remembered to take a kill shot! However, it was after the Sha of Pride died and of course there is no body, but here we are:

The beauty of Flex as well is being able to bring in old friends from old servers to join us! The dead body in the forefront is an old friend of a guildie from SWC! All I need now is a mechanism to bring my old Alliance friends x)

I also stepped up and healed one of our Flex raids on my priest, which wasn't actually as scary as I thought it would be! I even healed as Holy which I haven't done since TBC, and even more shocking - I did not hate it! I actually enjoyed my priest again which I haven't done in the longest time, which I think was connected to my complete lack of knowing how to deal with the atonement mechanic and being really really bad at it.

In other news, the monk has a full set of Mistweaver gear (as mentioned in this post) tho I am yet to brave anywhere to actually heal! I shall get there eventually ^^

The second hunter is almost fully geared except for horrendous luck with weapon drops, she is still using a 450 crossbow. She shall be slogging her way through LFR again soon. The Lock and the Mage are coming along nicely, though again I am yet to find time to take them through LFR, but they are both hovering around the ilvl 500 mark. The druid is just over 500 and is resto/feral so shall have fun sorting her gear out too.

The baby mage (who in #MageWeek was a Panda) is now a goblin! I have decided that I must mog her as per the goblin casters in the Gob Squad scenario! It shall happen (as soon as I remember where I get that colour of gear, I know I have white and red on tailor I think!)

SoO normal raids for the Drafia are slowly taking shape, but we are still seeking more healers, so if anyone knows of any healers on Draenor looking for a new home (or elsewhere!) point them in my direction :)

I have also now got all three of the Zandalari Warbringer mounts thanks to Buv, and he has had a load of materials to help with levelling his third (or fourth, I lost count) engineer. We shall be continuing to get him the other mounts at some point. He has also been teaching me how to play my warrior!

I have an interesting relationship with warriors in that I've not been able to get myself to level one at all. The one I have now is currently level 84, but I had her as a free level 80 from a Scroll of Resurrection. I got to 81 and had not touched her since the beginning of last year (I think).

In the past week she has gone from 81 to 84 (though some of that was from pet battling!) and I am actually enjoying her now that I sort of know what to do! All I need now is for someone to do the same thing with my Rogue ^^

Coming up shortly:
a catch up of daily screenshot
my alt appreciation post

Also, its my 30th birthday today! Who needs to grow up when you're having this much fun? ^^

Edited to add: My good guildie Arideen gets my award for astounding patience - yesterday he did the first part of Siege LFR, and hit a group that were really struggling. However he stayed with them through 8 stacks of the Determination Buff to down the Protectors. (Though he had to leave when shortly after they kept wiping on the trash to the next boss!)

Why do I call myself an Altoholic?

The answer is pretty straightforward - I like levelling characters!

My original aim was to have one of every class at max level, an aim that I'm still working on, but have ended up with more than one of some classes (which I shall explain another time!)

I didn't always have a small army of alts mind. In fact, it took me long enough to get my first character to max level that a new expansion came out!

It all started back in 2008, some friends where I worked were playing so I decide to give World of Warcraft another try (having tried it a year or so previously and not liked it at all, with a human priest).

So I created an account and made a character. Ideally I wanted to create an elf (and the only ones that looked how I wanted were Blood Elves) but my friend was playing Alliance so I made another human priest. Progressed slowly through the start area and got as far as Goldshire.

The server I started on was Steamwheedle Cartel, a role-playing server. It bears saying that I had no idea what role-playing meant or how to do it, I only started on that server because that is where my friend played.

Goldshire was no where near as bad as I later found it could be (and no where near as bad as Argent Dawn EU or Moonguard US are!)

However while levelling around here I encountered more players than I had seen previously. I had no idea there were so many things people could be! And it was here I first encountered Night Elves! These fantastic creatures could ride tigers!

It was then I saw a Night Elf hunter, not only was she riding a tiger, she had one for a pet!

Well, that was it, I had to make a new character because I wanted to ride a tiger and have one as a pet!

And so, Aurorasofia the Night Elf hunter was born.

However, I still basically had no idea what I was doing, so spent ages levelling her through the start area (back when the mobs were still red names!).

Had a blast bumbling along on her through the levels, with my good friend Varethius despairing of me because I was taking ages to level. I didn't care though, I was having a great time, and if I couldn't quite do a quest because it was too hard for me, well that was fine, I would just ride around uncovering the map and exploring.

He tried to get me to do some dungeons, but after one attempt where I died over and over I refused to do any more (and this lasted long into Wrath!)

Despite this I was still unsure exactly what a dungeon was, and still managed to get myself killed by accidentally wandering into them. "Ooh a swirly portal!" I would think as I went to explore and experience yet another inevitable death.

This coupled with my complete lack of understanding about how gearing worked meant a slower levelling experience. A while back I managed to find a website that for some reason had the armoury of my hunter saved back when she was level 51. At the time she was battling foes wearing a mixture of cloth, leather and mail, some white quality (bigger armour number means I live longer!), and spirit gear (for the mana regen of course!)

Here she is pictured with her trusty Warpstalker (that I still have) that I had no idea at the time was a Tenacity pet! My understanding of the different types of pet was as noobish as the rest of my understanding at the time.

Every now and again my friend would check what I was wearing and give me an overhaul, however, when he explained that green gear was better than white, and blue better than green, I assumed he meant the colour of the armour itself, so I was rather bemused when he told me my gear was no good. What did he mean by this? I'd worked hard to make sure it was all the same colour!

I didn't care how long it was taking me, I was enjoying myself! So I carried bumbling along, and then Blizzard announced their next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King!

We were excited and I vowed to reach level 70 before it came out! (Quite a feat as I believe I was still level 50 odd at the time, and levelling was no where near as fast as it is now).

Fast forward to three weeks before the release and I still wasn't level 70. I think I'd reach roughly level 60, and remember distinctly hating levelling in Outland, so found any excuse to be back on Azeroth when I could.

I also discovered add-ons! How great were these? Queue some of the most horrific UI set-ups I've ever known.

I can't remember all of it now, but I remember running around various parts of Azeroth whenever we heard that a new invasion was happening, collecting the scourgestones! I ended up collecting enough to get my first full set of epics, (and boy do I wish I'd kept these now that transmog is in the game!)

I also remember spending a large amount of time avoiding cities as I didn't particularly want to be a zombie, but then I can also remember standing with my friend (a paladin) and a few people he knew as they were healing people? I could be mis-remembering this and maybe we were just standing by one of the NPC healers, I confess, I'm not 100% sure.

All this combined meant that I still wasn't level 70 and the release date of WotLK was drawing ever nearer.

I booked some time off work and settled down to level, and managed to get to the end level, two days before the release of Wrath!

However, I still had no idea how to play properly, and could still be found meleeing things on occasion if the mobs got too close because "it was easier". Also I had just gotten Misdirection at level 70, and had no opportunity to use it, so it was a fairly long time until I learned the proper use of it.

I remember being dragged through a run of Karazhan shortly after hitting 70 with my friend Varethius and his then guild the Furlocks, the first (and last time for a long time) that I did a raid! I had no idea what was going on and was told to just follow and stay close, and make sure my pet didn't attack things.

I wasn't even aware at the time that it was a raid, I just assumed it was a long dungeon - I had no way of knowing it was any different thanks to my time avoiding all things instanced!

My levelling to 80 went smoothly enough, so smooth in fact that I can't remember most of it. I spent the majority of my time levelling unguilded, as I saw no point in them and was quite happy going about by myself. I'd briefly run my own guild with a few people from work (Twilight Legion) and joined a couple here and there, but none kept my interest for long.

Not long after hitting 80 I was wandering around Dalaran, trying to decide which achievement I wanted to go for next, (seriously, achievements are THE single best addition to the game!), when I noticed an advert in trade from someone looking for raiders for their guild.

Ordinarily I wouldn't have paid any attention but the name of the guild grabbed my attention. it was The Wanderers. I loved it straight away as I spent a large part of my time wandering around exploring!

I whispered the person and he asked me what raiding experience I had. I said I hadn't been 80 very long, but I had done something called Karazhan if that was a raid? I wonder if Kalevipoeg still actually remembers that conversation? ^^

And thus started my time as a social member of The Wanderers! A guild I was to spend many happy years in until very recently.

I still avoided raiding like the plague, despite helping the team on a few occasions through their Naxxramas and Ulduar runs, my raid awareness was 0 and my skills close behind so I kept to myself.

I started doing dungeons with some of the people in the guild, who taught me the different types of pet (after I tried a few dungeons with Blinkie the Warp Stalker and couldn't understand why my DPS was so much lower), and with the help of Allaria the hunter class leader, I slowly learned how to actually play my class. I also learned how to choose better gear as I went along properly!

Then came a social raid set up in the guild, for the non-raiders and people who had alts to take part in to Naxxramas. I signed up and checked all the tactics, and was incredibly nervous the entire way through.

It was a lot of fun, and I even got myself a new bow!

Shortly after I made a priest and a druid, and then truly started my altohlic ways, with this character taking a back seat and doing not a lot else except getting to max level in Cataclysm. For the rest of Wrath I played my druid and levelled another hunter and raided Dragon Soul heroic in Cataclysm, both tales for another blog.

Now I've come full circle back to my first character, who now looks very different and has moved home and faction, and joined another guild. 

Towards the end of Cataclysm I faction changed Aurorasofia to horde, I decided that I wanted one hunter on each faction, and wanted to experience the horde side of things properly. Still on Steamwheedle Cartel I joined The Drafia, a guild that I knew some people in as they had alts in The Wanderers.

Fast forward again to Mists and The Drafia decided to move server as SWC had become dead on horde side (and not much better on alliance!), so I decided to move a few characters with them. Draenor was chosen as the server and it is so much busier than SWC!

I had never played on a busy server before so I brought some more characters over and haven't looked back!

Plus, it finally means that Aurorasofia can be the character I always wanted her to be :)