Holidays almost over

Sorry about the lack of posts. The holidays have kind of taken over around here. Still playin' WoW, but I'm sure all of you are way beyond me (hence the "casual player blog"). I recently hit level 74. I'm still leveling with my wife and only when the kids are asleep. So, when I play solo I've been working on making money and rep. I'm going for cross-faction mounts, which pretty much means questing in newbie zones. Just need to figure out how to get the rep with those darn gnomes.

Aspect of a Viper Mod!

Its about time! Us hunters who forget to look up to see what aspect we are in finally have a mod to save us!!

Have you been in a raid/instance, run out of mana? You switch to aspect of a viper to get your mana back only to find 30 minutes later YOUR STILL IN ASPECT of a VIPER???!!!! Oh @#$@!, maybe you haven't done that before but I have, felt really stupid. /facepalm.

Now we have an answer: ViperWatch! It keeps an eye on your mana and when your mana gets to a predetermined level it reminds you to switch and when your mana is back up it kindly reminds you to switch back to aspect of a dragonhawk (or if you are a slow leveler like myself - aspect of a hawk). No more embarrasing moments. As long as you keep growl of your pet and don't ramdomly have him pull new mobs to your group.

The Instance

So, if you like following world of warcraft stuff then HERE is the PODCAST for you!!! This is by far the best WoW podcast out there, and I'm dorky enough to listen to about 5 of them. So, click here and check it out. You can find the instance also on itunes.

Dual specing

So, I'm really excited about this whole dual-specing thing, but a little bummed at the same time. Why am I excited? I can have improved traps when I need them (survival hunter) and then I can be awesome dps, even after the great hunter nerf, (BM, MS hunters). I can have my cake and eat it to!

But..... is Blizzard making us all the same???? Are we utterly going to lose our uniqueness in the world of warcraft? They already made it so you can take anybody you want to a raid. No need for a particular class for a particular fight (like doing the demon dude in Kara without a lock - or the hawkdragon guy in ZA without a mage). Now, we're losing the uniqueness about how we spec. Sooner or later we'll all be dressing the same (well, maybe not that).

All in all, I'm still excited about it. What do you think?

nothing new to you

So, a big shout out to Ryan for hitting 50 with his main toon. OOooOOooOOo. When an altoholic hits such accomplishments it needs to be let known. lol, Ryan in 5 levels you can get yourself a DK, aren't you so excited???

Anyway, I'm pretty boring lately. While everybody is now talking about 80 level content I'm still level 73, no big deal. I'm not actually very upset. All you people are obcessed, lol. I've been trying to level my professions for my DK to make gold! So, I spent the morning running around killing raptors for leather and got my skinning skills up to 204 I think. Wow, this is so boring, lol.

Winter Break

So, while everybody is playing more and more I'm playing less and less. Do I like the game less than I use to? No. Does a father of 3 have time to do anything besides working and Christmas preparation at this time of year? No, not really. So, my toon is still at 73, and hasn't budged since I posted last. You have to have priorities right?

So, all of this talk about WoW addiction and it being evil makes me laugh.  You can do studies and show that anything is addictive. Heck reading books, watching TV, other video games, taking walks, running through sprinklers, giving dogs baths, eating old hard candies from nursing homes, etc etc could be labled addictive if you got carried away. So, what's the solution? Balance. I do admit I'm probably addicted, but its not effecting my life too much I don't think. I am able to stop playing when real life gets in the way. I mean really, my family and my job are more important and should come first. Do I always put them first? Well, no, but I'm a lot better than I was a year or two ago. I think my whole guild is going to hit 80 before I do, and that's fine. I'll get there sooner or later.

level 73

73!!!! lol
yeah, while everybody is writing about level 80, I hit 73. But that's okay, that means I'm not playing as much as they are which is a good healthy thing. Now the fact that I'm not to far off from getting my achievement for catching 500 fish leaves something to be said. I have my fishing all the way up to 330. Wooo Hoooo! lol Why do I care? I don't know, I don't play my with my mountain lion who would eat fish anymore. The Gorilla doesn't care for it too much. He's rather have a bananna or some fungus or something. If I was a hardcore player I would be a geek about getting all of my achievements up and all of my secondary professions up. So, this is my casual playerness being geeky but somewhat muffled I guess.

I'm back

Most people probably thought that this Thanksgiving weekend was a perfect time to get a little bit farther to 80 (or get some gear for you people who are already 80). Well, I didn't touch my Hunter at all this weekend. He's a whooping level 72. But I wasn't home and I don't like playing my main anywhere but on my home computer. I don't have my macros on other computers and now that I have... a lot of macros... maybe too much? idk. But I don't like playing without them anymore. So, I leveled my wife's druid all the way to 24 (I know I know, I'm bad@ass).

My wife and I finally got back to our DKs and finished the beginning quests. They are awesome. I don't want to give any spoilers away (sorry Ryan), but even if you are not planning on rolling a death knight, I would still suggest doing the beginning quests at least then make them your bank alt or something. It was just too cool of a story line.

Anyway, I'm back for all of you thousand of readers (ha ha).

too poor for epicly uber mounts

Well, I'm kind of stagnant at lvl 72 right now. This weekend was too busy to play (BYU vs UofU football game, family thanksgiving dinner, etc etc). I did buy myself an Armored Bear Mount which doesn't do anything that special and only cost like 700 gold or so. But in my casual pathetic attempt to get every mount in the game I had to do it sooner or later. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get the Mammoth /cry. Too poor, 20k gold, it took me like a month to come up with 5k gold for my epic flying training (that was before the days of 25 dailies per day though). Maybe I should worry more about leveling before I focus so much on trying to get the gold for these mounts.

BTW, is there a flying mount that takes passengers? It seems like a gnome flying machine would be perfect for the job. I guess I should stop being lazy and find out myself.

On a complete different random subject, I've been finding myself wanting to do RPing more and more, but all of my family on friends are on a regular server. Should I just roll a toon on a RP server? I hate having to start from scratch, but then if its all about RPing then maybe it wouldn't be a big deal (because its all about the story anyway, right?). Well, maybe I should stop rambling and get to work since I'm at work.

hunter pets - What's in your stable?

So,
As a hunter with new stable slots I got all giddy with excitement. What new wild and crazy pets will I get. Well, this is what's in my stable at the moment:

level 70 cat (mountain lion from southshore) ShereKahn
level 71 gorilla Munula
level 70 Devilsaur Kharon
level 69 Rhino (unnamed)
level 67 Slithid Twitch

Now, the gorilla is by far my favorite pet. My wife agrees, she can actually not die from doing AOE spells. That's doesn't mean that the gorilla can always keep the aggro away from my sexy fire mage of a wife, but he does a better job than anything else out there.

I'm holding on to the Devilsaur for raiding, but I'm not liking him too much lately. I think its just because of the fact that we're questing not doing instances right now. I'm iffy on the size, I love how cool it looks, but I hate it when I can't see anything but dinosaur butt.

The Cat is an old friend, but truthfully, its such a boring skin. However, you can't just kick out the family pet can you? He's been with me since level 35 or so. And he's cute. We've had many a good times, so I can't let him go (he wouldn't know what to do without me anyways).

The Rhino is just cool, but I can't see any practicality for him outside of PvP. And since I suck and PvP and my wife hates it, I don't know if he'll see much action. I would love to send him on the bridge in AV and make those hordies fly. he he, for that reason alone, I'll keep him around.

The slithid, well, I wanted a cunning pet and he looks cool (even if he is duped up on too much caffiene). But I don't like playing with him. I'm tempted to get rid of him as well. I'm not that attached to him anyway. I'll just take him back to his home in Tanaris and he'll be fine (I probably shouldn't abandon him in Northrend, the bug will probably end of freezing to death and I can't have that on my conscience).

So, I want to replace the bug, but with what?

Why the rush to 80?

This is exactly what I'm talking about:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12661344288&sid=1
Why rush through everything? I guess I'm a casual player so that's easy for me to say, because there is no way in h3ll that I could ever actually get to level 80 that quickly.

Speed Leveling

What is the point of speed leveling anyway? I just read this blog post: "ISU vs Wrath vs Twentyfifthnovember" at Arms and Fury blog. The TwentyfifthNovember guild going through the PvE content as fast as humanly (possibly inhumanly) possible seems silly and a waste of time for me. As for me, I may use questhelper, but only so I don't get so frustrated that I quit questing (which consequently is what I do for much of my leveling up to 70 with Aoirselvar). But I've been trying to enjoy the story line this time and actually read the quests. It takes a little time and sometimes the NPC gets annoyed and walks away (which then annoys me, I mean come one I'm trying to listen to the guy), but its so worth it. Of course I'm finding myself wanting to play on a RP realm more and more, but not willing to leave my guild and pay lots of money to transfer.

So, what's the point of speed leveling through all of this new content? If this game starts to feel like a job then its time to go find something else to do, like watch TV or something. I mean come on, why add the stress of getting to level 80 in 4 days (while the rest of your life goes to h3ll). Just relax and enjoy the game.

Super Obama World

Do you like mario brothers? Do you like Obama, then I got the website for you: Super Obama World. lol. Not wow related, but at least its a video game... I guess.

random pictures and random thoughts

So, my wife and I got our pictures with Arthus. He showed us his sword and everything. Yeah, I'm cross tooning on my Death Knight, partly because I thought the male Dreani (spelling check, lol) are kind of ugly and I wanted their racial ability to heal theirselves.

The other picture is my dwarf, Aoirselvar, and his human girlfriend, Kydra. All the other dwarfs are jealous, they can stick with dwarven women and gnomes.

Okay, so my wife and I ran a couple of the first instances last night. Nexus, and the other one in Howling Hjord or whatever (i'm tired and I don't care too much about spelling this morning). I've been so use to rounding up everything with my Mungula (my gorilla) and tanking big mobs that I forgot how boring it was to sit there and just shoot at things. I really would like to get my hands on attempting to tank some instances with my pet, but I don't know if I have enough gear or enough people to take me serious. It really can be done. Check out this website for hunter tanks: http://bigredrhino.wordpress.com/.

Okay, we've all been busy playing and leveling non stop for the last few days. I'm a little bit slower than everybody. I only play after I've put my kids to bed. My wife, Kydra, is a fire mage that I level with. We're having a blast questing in the Borean Tundra. I'm letting my gorilla, Mungulu, AOE tank tons of mobs while Kydra obliterates them with her AOE spells. But we usually have to call it quits. But we haven't been very good at going to bed at a decent hour. So now we're tired all the time (seeing how our kids don't let us sleep in past 7:30am. Oh what to do...

Anyways, here are a couple of pics of me pretending to have new mounts. I love having lots of mounts, but I don't do a good job of getting them (lack of time & money). Some day I'll get that white drake. Someday...

A little exploration and ... dum dum dum dum, The Expansion! yay!

Well, I ended up going over to gamestop and waiting in line to get my preordered copy at midnight last night. I was debating of going or not (not last post) because I would go by myself. How fun is that? My wife and I can't very well go at the same time and leave the kids at home. So, we finally got the rascals to bed and we jump on, started exploring (I know there are a hundred other things to do, but got to get one more step to the world explorer title). 11:50 comes around and I jump in the car to take off while my hunter is following the cute human mage around exploring the last bit of the Eastern Kingdoms.

I stayed in line till about 1am. Nice to talk to people, we all had something in common, nerdom, yup thats right. Wife called me up to try to figure out where some last area was to explore and she got her achievement for eastern kingdoms. Yay! Too bad the guild was asleep. So, the first thing I did was roll a Death Kuh'ni'gut. These guys were cooler than I previously gave them credit for. Okay, first guy you talk to for a quest is .... the Lich King himself??? how cool is that? Maybe my death knight will be more than just a farmer for me. Anyway, I went to bed right after that.

And now I'm freakin' TIRED!!!! I guess its good that I didn't stay up and play or I wouldn't be able to function at work.

Dear shoppers, would the owner of a ....

I saw this picture on http://outofmana.blogspot.com/ and just thought it was so freakin funny. A little pre WotLK action going on here. And don't you hate it when  you leave your lights on?

midnight party

So, WotLK comes out TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT! But I don't know if I should bother going to pick up my two reserved copies or not, seeing how I'm not going to be playing it tonight. I mean I kind of have to stay awake at work right? When I start falling asleep at work I have my students saying, "Hmmm, Teacher.... teacher?" Yeah, I think elementary kids forget that adults get tired too. Especially since the only time us adults have any time to ourselves is when our cute kids are in bed. So.... should I go pick up myself my copies tonight? Even though I won't be able to play until late Thursday night? Probably, if not just to say I was there at midnight, lol.

So, my hunter is hankering to go back to the good old leather working (which I dropped like 3rd period french back at lvl 60). But I'm hearing too many good things about leatherworking for hunters. Right now I have engineering and mining. I can't drop engineering. There are too many cool things that I can live without. But mining is my money maker (and I need all the ore to make my Mechano-hog). So, what to do... what to do... well, my highest alt is level like 32, man pathetic, can't switch my shaman to be a miner/skinner. Hmm, then it came to me! You can roll your self a death knight! I wasn't going to really, but h3ll, why not? I can skip 55 levels? I wasn't really interested in one before, but then I came make him have skinning/mining so I can have only crafting profs for my hunter. Okay, its a done deal. Shoot, I still have to level him from 55 to 80 now. Well, that's still going to take sometime.

Studpid servers down

:(
I guess if the servers are going to have to be down I'd rather it be before WotLK than after the release.

Thursday is coming up and I want to jump right into it, but Lindy has a church thing that night and I think there's something else is probably up. So, I may very well be the last to actually hit level 80, but at least I'll have fun getting there.

First Post

Okay, so I am making a World of Warcraft blog like everybody else and their cat. Yes, their cat. Why am I making this blog when there is way too many out there as it is? Well, I have no body to talk to about my geeky stuff. Even my family and friends who also play world of warcraft don't care about my geeky hunter related stuff that I ramble on about. So, this is a place for me to ramble about my geekiness to the world. Regardless if I get any followers.

 

I am a casual WoW player, I have a life outside of wow. I have children and a career that I must attend to. I have had to come to the conclusion that I will never be on the cutting edge of raids or will I ever get all the cool stuff, be on the top for arena or be the first to hit 80. If I did my wife would probably file for divorce, and my kids would never see me. So, I get to play some of the time (mostly when the kids are a sleep). So, I'll probably go off on casual gaming issues, time management, balancing life, etc. But mostly I want to share what I'm doing in the game, and geeky beast mastery hunter stuff. Is anybody actually going to read this? I have no idea, but what the h3ll, why not. So here is my first blog entry on my geeky wow casual gamer blog.