Community blog topic: What would you buy from the in-game store?

Here are my thoughts regarding WoW Insider's old community blog topic of the week. What would you buy from the in-game store?

I was one of those people who always swore they'd never buy anything from the Blizzard store. That they already pay enough for the game itself. Then came a time when I wanted to revamp my rogue, my second ever top level character. I ended up paying 20€ for appearance change. Later on I paid 40€ for server changes when their prices were reduced.

I would consider buying mounts or pets if they were ones I wanted really, really badly. Same with cosmetic items, but I guess the barrier for those would be higher. I've received two 20€ mounts as gifts: the heart of the aspects and the enchanted fey dragon, whom I wanted from the moment I first saw it, and named her Tiki Tiki. The golden dragon joined my squad early this year, and Tiki Tiki was an early Christmas gift.

I made no pro-alliance gingerbread this year, but nevertheless, I wish you all a merry late Christmas and a very happy new year!

Warlords of Draenor

I am shamefully uninformed about the subject, but I am sure the reason to that won't stay hidden for long.

I was afraid to be excited about the next expansion to begin with. For long it's been obvious that it would be something Burning Legion related. Now, it seems that the Burning Crusade is overall considered the most missed time period of WoW, as well as the best expansion. The mere thought of Blizzard trying to please the older players by bringing back Outland-ish locations and characters makes me grimace.

As I mentioned, I am uninformed. Very much so indeed. Regardless, I think it's rather worrying that the feature I am most excited about is the item level squish. I am not overly worried about it, though. As with Mists of Pandaria, my excitement for the features grew over time, so I'm definitely giving myself more time to acquire information about Warlords of Draenor before my final judgement.

I have to say, however, that having kind of missed out on the whole draenei scene in Outland, I'm excited to really dive into the world and heritage of my main character Nicasia. I think it will bring a lot of depth to her character, as well as make the leveling (and playing overall) experience enjoyable, in-depth and interesting.

But still:

What I had time to Fraps before my PC broke - again!

The title says it. Here are the most recent Menagerie raid videos from Siege of Orgrimmar. I would most certainly record more, as Menagerie is nearly at Garrosh, but Saturday morning my PC showed no signs of life. Therefore it's leaving home yet again to be fixed, if it can be fixed that is. It may be that they will just give me a new individual. In fact I hope they finally would.

Either way, I am working on building a supermachine of my own. My budget is around 1500 euros and I'll probably get around to buying stuff around the change of year. If you have any suggestions for what pieces I should consider, I'd love to know! I'll just say that I'd like to go for nVidia this time, instead of AMD Radeon.

Eleenha Newbury, how I have enjoyed leveling you

As I had run a good number of heroic dungeons on one of my 90s on Argent Dawn, I ended up with a silly amount of justice points. I had nothing to spend them on, so I thought I'd buy some heirlooms. Why wouldn't I expand my loomed empire to that server, too, after all? I bought cloth shoulders and later a chest, since I have two or three clothies to be leveled sooner or later. When Eleenha, the holy/shadow priest received those looms in mail, I felt very hesitant about equipping them.

Recently I've put a lot of value on not taking the easiest way up to the top level. Leveling with heirlooms is faster, for sure, and things die a lot quicker than with those quest greens... but I find that I become much better at a class, when I have to use a wider variety of my abilities to survive; when I don't just one-shot every mob I come across. After leveling so many characters, I feel like I want the leveling process itself to be more rewarding and more of a training, instead of a necessary evil. As usual, I've got a bit bored of the character after hitting 90, but I expect I will feel more inspired about gearing up after a while.

Her transmog is currently one item away from complete. I've been rather lazy with my Hillsbrad runs, but the awesomeness of Lordaeron Medical Guide keeps making me go back there until she gets it. Eleenha was also my fourth character to get her own Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade.

Breakfast Topic: How many characters do you actively play?

Lisa Poisso of WoW Insider asked how many characters one actively plays. My answer to this would of course include my main, who however suffers in the amount of attention when her only activity is weekly guild raids. As I am now able to work on my missing achievements on any character, the necessity to do it with Nicasia is no longer there, and some of my alts, such as Vladan, are much more suitable for soloing things. This I allow myself, because it helps me not get bored with elemental shaman after playing it as main since late Wrath of the Lich King.

In addition to Nica, I'd say I play 2-3 alts actively, one of them being Horde at the moment. But this varies greatly from day to day and week to week.

Breakfast Topic: Which playable race would you like to see come to WoW?

Here I present you with my thoughts regarding the WoW Insider breakfast topic "Which playable race would you like to see come to WoW?", asked by Elizabeth Harper. Recently I have felt like I haven't had all that much to say, so this'll probably end up being a short post, too.

Since I'm from the north, I've always felt that Northrend was my place on Azeroth. I'm very much at home there, and the Storm Peaks chose itself as my favorite zone in the game by giving me the Time-Lost Proto-Drake whilst I was digging, and the polar bear mount the first time I did the daily quest. Due to my nordic identity, I would really like to see vrykul as playable race. Whether it's been in Skyrim or Tyria, I've always chosen the nordic race. Another nordic race I could be happy with would be the tuskarr.

Ever since I met the Klaxxi for the first time, I've loved mantid. The mantid and I share a very good taste in music. I would totally make a mantid warrior if I was able to.

One of my favorite items ever

I've got Valor of the Ancients on Argent Dawn. For once. I don't think I've had it more than three times since Mists of Pandaria came out, and definitely not on AD. All thanks to the dream I had the other night: I was gearing up my rogue and got all sort of awesome loot on him. Well, the loot hasn't been exactly as it was in the dream, but I'm not complaining. Anyhoo...

Dragomirov was a couple of hundred valor away from his 522 tanking ring, so I thought I'd run a couple of heroics. While the healer was "getting bored with healing" and killing his boredom by running ahead whilst I was tanking the previous pack, and pulling the next one, sometimes dying doing so, I was close to leaving when we reached Armsmaster Harlan in the Scarlet Halls. I however stayed, unaware of the fact that I'd experience some of my biggest W00T moments ever in the game.

The item I have cried after the most since the pre-Pandaria patch, one of my favorite items ever, has made a comeback. Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade dropped and I won it. There it is, resting peacefully in my monk's inventory. Granted, Jester has nothing to do with the Crusade, but this makes me incredibly happy, for I thought the tabard was gone for good. The item holds incredible RP value for me, because many of my characters are somehow related to the Scarlet Crusade.

Despite the drop chance being as low as 0.08%, and the fact that you no longer have multiple mobs dropping it in the same dungeon, knowing that the tabard is back makes me incredibly happy. That is all I have ever asked. It is completely enough for me. Thank you, Blizzard, thank you!

Vlad, Eleenha and Angelus, you'll get your tabards now!

Aimless

Aimless is the best word I can come up with to describe the way I feel in the game at the moment, and have felt for a few months now. I thought I was just getting bored with the game, but as I've pondered my situation the past few days, I've come to the conclusion that I'm a bit lost and uncertain about my purpose in the game.

Raiding has always been my main end-game activity. I don't know how I should say this, but our raid group has changed a lot and after my three month break due to technical difficulties, I no longer feel at home in raids, despite the fact that I love raiding just like before. I've always been a lone wolf online and offline, and I find it difficult to integrate into groups. It's almost like I don't even want to. I think coming up with a new storyline with characters that I could play and level might help during these kind of times, but inspiration for that is also hard to find. I'm also relatively fed up with Moonglade, as I even transfered four characters over to Argent Dawn, but that's a whole different issue again. I can't leave Moonglade, period. Nor do I want to, since all the people I enjoy playing the game with are there. It's complicated.

With nothing better to update this time, I'll end the post with a couple of screenshots from Twilight Highlands. BioShock Infinite has been a huge deal in this house recently, and seeing those zeppelins and industrial pipes made me want to do something like this:

Happy news

I have finally got my good PC back. And that's not all! After getting a new fan, it runs WoW and other games a lot more smoothly than it did before - the same way as it did when I got it. No driver update or registry cleaning could match that, and it really made me understand how much effect the fan has on PC performance. I've been quite busy playing WoW and other games, namely Dishonored and D&D Neverwinter beta, so I haven't got back into blogging yet, but I was happy to sign up for next week's raids.

I also took advantage of the battle.net service sale that ended on the 10th of June. I threw my warrior Aleksej, my monk Dragomirov, my hunter Milkajelen and my rogue Desrosiers over to Argent Dawn. I had been considering such for a good while, and the sale was just what I needed to make the move, which really had two major factors behind it. For one, I wanted to roleplay those characters more and did not get the chance to do that on Moonglade. Second, I had run out of character slots on Moonglade, so I can now level more alts there. My main and guild still reside on Moonglade, so it's definitely my home realm, but I'm also getting used to dividing my time between the two servers. Life on Argent Dawn is a lot to get used to: high population and (E!)RP everywhere.

20 Days of WoW blogging #11

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Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws

Jealousy in more than one way. I can be quite jealous of various things - mounts, achievements, loot, status - and it's something I can't seem to get rid of even with time. What I can, though, is try to hide it the best I can, and keep it out of the way. Of course there's also the classic jealousy of one's attention, particularly if it's that special person, or someone else that I unjustly claim as my own somehow.

Then there's competitiveness. I always used to say I wasn't competitive, but the truth is that I am not competitive for as long as I don't feel threatened. It only applies to things I care about, but it can get really annoying to people who are close to me, as they might feel like I am always racing them in something.I suppose behind this lies my need to be noted for things and fear of being left behind or considered incompetent.

My pride is both a good and a bad thing. It's become an inevitable part of what I consider myself to be like, but often prevents me from solving arguments involving myself. I find it difficult to apologise, and try to come up with reasons why there's no need for me to do so. Thinking about it, I'm surprisingly narcissistic for someone that's actually lived under the tyranny of one very much like that.

I don't want to mention this, but I must. I'm horribly lazy. Whether it's on WoW or in real life, I rarely come to complete unpleasant tasks. You know, those that I should do, but just can't be arsed. This is a prime example of how I don't learn from my mistakes. Those uncompleted dailies or messy tables always find a way to come back to haunt me in some form.

A whole new spark

Good evening! After a long while, I come bearing good news.

In the absense of things to do, I've found an entirely new spark for WoW. I never would have admitted this while it was the present feeling, but I almost got bored of the game during the spring. I didn't particularly feel like logging in and I only really did so for the purpose of raiding. I had no projects regarding leveling or gearing up. But now, as I am unable to raid with my guild, unable to run dungeons, unable to explore the new heroic scenarios, I've been doing LFR on most of my maximum level characters. Nicasia and Vladan are quite nicely geared and well able to do Throne of Thunder, but in addition I am working on Raleigh's (holy paladin) and Jester's (brewmaster/windwalker monk) gear to get them into ToT as well. Raleigh is currently lacking three points. Jester's situation still looks a bit grim with an item level of around 465. Oh, and by "doing LFR" I mean relying entirely on the performance of the 24 other people - but hey, three, two and even one FPS is better than no FPS at all. Positive thinking all the way!

I do miss raiding a lot and I hope to get my primary PC back soon. I have given full raid leadership to a very trusted officer with whom I've been raiding since early Firelands, so there should be no more raid burnouts for me. I'm actually really looking forward to being "just a raider" without so much responsibility. Of course I'll still be doing the usual yelling of things and whatnot, but I'll be doing it because I like to do it, not because I must do it. What I am most of all looking forward to is not having to look after others so much, and being able to look after myself more when it comes to raid performance.

Something interesting I've noticed for the first time in my WoW life is that I feel ever so slightly bored of elemental shaman - which I find completely normal, considering I've had an elemental shaman as my main since late Wrath of the Lich King. I sure have respect for our offtank, who has had the same character as his main since he started playing in vanilla. I still intend to raid with Nicasia as I am able to, but I may look into the possibility of raiding with Vlad, for example, when possible. I had a ton of fun tanking and DPSing Dragon Soul with him in late Cataclysm. My gear lacks behind severely compared to the rest of the raid group, anyway, so it won't make much difference which character I am on. Nicasia will continue to be my main character, regardless of who I end up raiding with, though. We've got such a long history.

I am absolutely loving the 5.3 fact that you can choose to get loot for a different specialization! It's enabled me to work on Raleigh's gear through LFR. I wouldn't dare attempt to heal with craptop. I also think it'll be a good help when getting Vlad some new tanking gear, as I don't enjoy tanking LFR. So, yay for 5.3, yay for gearing up, yay for WoW.

One year of Adventures special: Nica IRL

It's been exactly one year since the first post on Adventures of the Hex Machine saw daylight. Happy birthday, blog! In honor of my first year of WoW blogging, I decided to introduce the person behind Nicasia the Hex Machine, or should I say, her partner in crime.

Although on WoW, my primary game, I've been an elemental shaman since the summer of 2010, I am a rogue in real life. A human subtlety/assassination rogue named Olivia to be exact, or as the URL of my personal blog indicates, "that rogue Liv." I'm from southwestern Finland, which makes Finnish my mother tongue. I became a rogue at the age of 13, when I found that stealthing around was a great way to avoid unwanted attention and remain unseen. Yet there were moments I couldn't hide, perhaps the work of Nefarian (BWL), which resulted in me getting ganked a lot. So I've been a rogue for pretty much seven years now, as I will turn 20 next month. When did I get that old, seriously?

Which of my characters do I resemble the most? Elias Desrosiers is what I would be like if I were male. Nicasia carries my passion, Raleigh and I share a lot of personality traits, Vladan's burden is partially my own. Every character of mine represents something of me, which is why they sometimes feel like my virtual children, or creations the same way a child would.

Some of my favorite blog moments/posts from the past year include Ress please!, my MoP beta memories, the wedding of Sol & Lykke and the launch of Pandaria.

Although I've been quite an inactive blogger the past few months due to real life things and my primary PC letting me down, I'm very thankful for my first year of WoW blogging and I'm eager to see what the rest of those years are like. Thank you all for reading and visiting the Adventures, and stay tuned for my future shenanigans.

Just as I thought I was finally back for good...

...I decided to run Dishonored and realised that the same memory circuit shutdown issue is still there. It no longer occurs with WoW (apart from one time), but it does with Dishonored, so I will have to take my computer back to the store yet again, hopefully to receive a whole new machine, since the Acer people don't seem to be able to fix this one. I am only slightly fed up with the endless (re)installation of Windows, driver updates and software installations.

Before that happens, I do have some time to enjoy a bit of raiding (hopefully!) and work on my gear that is lagging behind so very horribly after the WoW break that I never planned. The guys and girls in Menagerie, my right and left hands and ribs and spines have done such a brilliant job running the guild and organising raids without me. I couldn't do it without you anyway, but I'm very proud of each person that has participated in running the guild during my absence and I owe much to those people. Meanwhile I had a brilliant time in England and will likely start planning my next trip soon. Should you find this interesting in the slightest, there is a post in my personal blog that contains some photos from my trip.

Sadly Adventures will not be updated often at all while I'm not able to play WoW properly, but I should get semi-back into my normal blogging habits once all the technical issues are fixed.

Back, not quite in business though

Turns out I was able to reinstall and run WoW on my terribly bad old laptop, "craptop", after updating as many of its drivers as I was able to. As expected, the play experience is far from desirable with less than 10 FPS standing still in an empty room. As you have probably already figured, raiding is not an option for me before I get my primary PC back. Until then, I may redirect you to my attempt to maintain a personal blog number infinite+1, called That Rogue's Broken Keyboard and Other Lame Excuses. Despite the name, it's pretty much Finland-exclusive.

Lanfranco and I were responsible for this year's April fool's guild message of the day in Menagerie. A Menagerie ghost roleplay event was to be arranged in Hearthglen, Western Plaguelands (a very strategic location for Menagerie). Everyone taking part would be required to remain dead throughout the event. The idea of ghost RP first came up in a humorous recruitment advertisement we posted in the Moonglade trade chat once. Last year's April fool's message asked everyone to add 'lol' in the end of each message they posted in guild chat, or they would get a warning.

It's likely I won't be posting anything to Adventures while in England (9th - 24th of April), but when I return, I will have my good computer back. Below is yet another video that gets posted late.

I wasn't sure if I would ever post the next one, but decided to do so anyway. It's my first ever, and due to technical difficulties, also my only experience in the solo dungeon loot scenario...whateverthedevil thingy. I'm looking forward to doing smoother loot runs in the future!

¤$%"@#£&#¤!! PERKELE!!1

Siiiiiiiiiiigggggghhh.

No. Windows reinstallation did not help. Emptying the PC of everything did not help. Updating all drivers did not help. I am still unable to play WoW; the machine keeps shutting down after a minute or a few. Guildies and friends have offered me help in our Facebook group, which is much, much appreciated. However, it looks like I will have to take the machine back to where I bought it, as it is likely an issue with memory circuitry. And that means I will not be playing WoW for some weeks, probably not for another month, since I will be abroad from the 9th of April till the 24th.

Although the machine runs WoW and other games well, I am certain I will never buy a laptop again. I wouldn't have bought one last time if I hadn't had the need. I had to change my location every now and then, and a laptop was the obvious choice. However, my next computer, which will likely come around in late-ish 2014 or early 2015, will be a proper gaming computer.

So, this is just a little update about my situation regarding gaming equipment. I will pop around with more news and WoW-related posts even during my absence in the game. Have a fabulous spring if you are in the northern hemisphere. For people in the southern hemisphere I wish a fantastic autumn. If you only experience two seasons, I wish you an excellent either of the two, probably the rainy one.

20 Days of WoW blogging #10

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Day 10 – Blog/website favourites

Some of the first WoW blogs that I visited were It's for My RP Spec! and The WoW Debutante. It's a real shame that the former is no longer active, and the latter one's author stopped playing WoW. Both inspired me greatly to create a WoW blog of my own. Before coming across them, the thought of blogging about WoW felt nearly absurd, but once I read them more it began to feel like something I'd love to do myself.

Although guides and other informative stuff is useful and handy, as a blog follower I prefer humane blogs over "professional" ones. Don't get me wrong, I read both types regularly, but I love to read blogs for the people behind them. The more the blog represents the author themselves, the more personality it has, and the more interesting it to me. This I've certainly adopted as my personal blogging style as well, but that is mainly because I have no potential to write a more professional blog. I can only guide you towards listening to heavy metal!

Some WoW-related websites that I visit regularly or for certain purposes include Icy Veins, my number one helper when learning a new class or spec. Icy Veins is also my personal favorite when it comes to class guide sites; WoW Professions that I couldn't do without when leveling most professions; Wowhead for news and information regarding items, titles, events in particular, and Wowpedia for lore.

20 Days of WoW blogging #9

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Day 09 – Your first blog post

In case this means my first blog post ever, I must say that is too far in the past for me to remember. My guess, however, is that it was a blog on the Finnish blog hosting site Vuodatus and likely contained boring things regarding my uneventful life. I was a kid back then anyway, what else could you expect?

Nicasia and Lanfranco in the first background image.

On Adventures my first post saw daylight on the 6th of May 2012 looked like this. The blog had a different layout then and went by its working title Gloria, gloria Nicasia. The name changed to Adventures of the Hex Machine a couple of months later. The first post introduced me and made an attempt to describe what I am like as a blogger. Mainly it was just rambling that I tried to keep together somehow. Overall it was a pretty good first post, considering it was written by me, heh. Since then I have also learnt to remember to name posts!

The blog's first background was the result of a great idea and bad editing. I made a kind of a promise to myself in the first post:

My goals for this blog include not posting anything empty, which to me means something without even the slightest meaning or story behind it.

And I have kept that promise. WoW is far from being just a game to me, and that is all this blog is about: my experience in the World of Warcraft.

An unplanned break

Hello everyone!

I've been an extremely inactive and indifferent blogger in March, for a reason. I hate vague explanations that strive to invoke curiosity within readers, and I don't want anyone to think that is my aim. I will, however, say that due to an event, a big and sad change has taken place in my life. I decided I wouldn't write about it yet at least. Perhaps I will one day, but for now I will not, and I won't stress about it. It's enough as it is. I intend to just live one day at a time, and learn to live with the change.

I haven't stayed away from World of Warcraft because of that only. I encountered an issue that caused my PC to shut down after spending a few minutes on the game. I am hoping a Windows reinstallation will fix this, so I am currently working on that. It's something I was planning to do anyhow, so now I have a very good reason to complete the project. It just takes a while to save all the files and things I want to save.

As I leafed through a few screenshots on my old laptop, I got reminded of how much I enjoy World of Warcraft. That was why I decided to try to get back to the game as soon as possible. Those screenshots featured absolutely horrible graphics, because the PC was horrible for gaming. When I played on that machine, I thought the bad graphics made my playing experience worse. Now that I play with good graphics primarily, I realise that I couldn't have been more wrong.

All in all, I will be back in the game soon. I will finally begin to gear up properly - I've done a horrible job so far! I also heard Menagerie has done a great job progressing through Throne of Thunder in my absence. Well done, you all!

I think I was working on the Felwood quest achievement then.

This made me want to re-mog Vlad's stuff.

Sha of Fear video

This one is indubitably a bit late. I uploaded it in a hurry and immediately went to pick up my visitor, who stayed with me for a week, so there hasn't been any time to update the blog. My life is now, sadly, back to normal again.

The visitation had a perfect timing, because Menagerie managed to clear the current content on the last raid day that my visitor and I could attend. We missed out on two Throne of Thunder raids, but as I get back to the world of raiding on Sunday, there will be more raid videos soon enough. I have been busy and more or less exhausted the entire day, but I am certainly looking forward to experiencing the Isle of Thunder and everything else that 5.2 has to offer.

Tsulong & Lei Shi videos

Pushing through four new bosses during the same lockout is definitely our record!

HoF & ToES videos

Here are some recent Menagerie raid videos from Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring.

Screenshots on a Saturday

Fallen soldiers taste the steel of death, the daylight dawning
Sun will shine upon the lives of burning hearts of ice
As you break through the boundaries of life, this feeling of despair
And they die in their sleep for the world that will not care
You feel lost in this labyrinth of pain, this sickening dismay
There's a voice inside that's calling another wasted day

(DragonForce - Soldiers of the Wastelands)

Those times I wish WoW was "just a game"

I have no idea if I am yet in the state of producing any kind of intellectual text that is not completely overrun by emotion and comparable to drunken Facebook messages that should never have been posted, but I just have to do something. I have to try to get at least a few sentences out, because that contributes to me eventually feeling better.

I'll start by saying that WoW does not feel good at the moment. WoW is not my haven right now. Logging into the game is not the moment I forget about things, but the moment I get close to something I have remembered all along. It's like a drug addiction and I cannot decide whether to wean myself once and for all, or whether to reduce the dose slowly. And what that dose is exactly, I don't even know. Another question I keep asking myself is if I should let the sha infest me for as long as I become immune to it, or at least numb, or if I should try to push it away.

Truth is that WoW is not just a game. While I now wish I didn't always stick my heart in absolutely everything I do, that is exactly what makes WoW as it is. It's a game people play with their hearts. They've grown up with WoW and experienced life-changing events as a person who plays World of Warcraft. That's not to say I'm happy with how I feel, because it's bloody hurts. But that's life, and that's WoW. WoW is the only game I am willing to play even when it doesn't make me happy, and I don't even know why that is. Maybe it's special, maybe I'm just tied to it. Quitting WoW was never an option. Maybe it wouldn't make a difference if I did, maybe some people's WoW days would just shape back into what they were before they knew me. But I don't play World of Warcraft because it's a good game. I play it because it's my game, because it's permanently a part of me, whether I want it or not.

Good loa do I feel bad, though. There's no denying that. I absolutely hate feeling this way, but I also see melancholy as something beautiful. I'm emo like that, yes. Or just too much of a Finn. I can't help but wonder what things will be like from now on. Maybe now I can complete Loremaster of Outland and take some pleasure in it. Maybe now I won't feel like interfering someone else's domain. Or maybe I will find myself sitting on that bridge in Howling Fjord just staring at Skorn, because that view makes my soul rest. But what do you do when absolutely everything reminds you of something in particular? Do you just colour new content with new memories, or is it just a matter of getting used to it? Time gilds memories, does it not?

Nicasia's transmog in the spotlight

I'm no fashion blogger, but I've stuck to my main character Nicasia's transmog for quite a while now. I'm still not bored of it, so I figured I'd share it. It was the result of a sudden impulse, not the most serious one either, yet I am quite happy with the result.

My goal with her mog was to show as little skin as possible - quite unusual for a female draenei, eh? And to make it black. It had to be black. The belt is not entirely fitting, but I've loved it since WotLK. It was the first thing I bought with my emblems of... frost, valor, what were they again that bought you 264 gear? Although I do miss her signature look, the "frost shaman" that goes with her backstory, I am sticking to the following for now - probably until I get a 1-hander and a shield.

Earthfury Helmet
Ironaya's Discarded Mantle
Cloak of the Brood Lord
Chestguard of the Lasher
Gloves of Taut Grip
Waistband of Despair
Leggings of Dubious Charms
Stillwater Boots
Jin'ya, Orb of the Waterspeaker

Something to always be noted with Nicasia is that she does not show her hair. Not unless it's an intimate situation, and well, she doesn't end up in those very often. So now I would love nothing more than a black mail hood.

What gear means to me

Item level this and that, don't you just hear that everywhere? I must admit I do keep close track of my item levels as well, and I would like to take a moment to explain why that is.

Most of all, gear means access to me - in more ways than just one. Having good gear gives you a VIP pass past all sorts of queues. While it's been long since I bothered pugging anything at all (excluding LFR), I am now looking into the opportunity of achieving the impossible via OpenRaid.eu, and I do feel that my item level is going to make a difference on that path. And whilst, very much thanks to the looking for raid system, there are well-geared people, who are more or less hopeless when it comes to playing the game, it becomes very important to realise that good gear does not equal good performance. Just like bad gear doesn't equal bad performance. Yet gear does set limits. Gear is the canvas you paint with your skill. To me, this represents access, as I find soloing content a very enjoyable way to spend time on the game.

In addition to that, gear can also be a personal achievement. It tells others I've been there and done that - hopefully also earned those pieces somehow. I don't really raid with anyone else but guild mates, and I am usually the loot master. I'm not really too fussed about winning as much stuff as possible. If the item's stats are better for someone else that needs it, I have no problem giving it to them, as long as I can trust that they will continue to put their effort in raiding with the group. After all, the point is not to acquire as much for yourself as you can, but make decisions that benefit the group as a whole. How I feel about raiding and loot is similar to - and please do forgive me for this allegory, it just happens to be perfect - relationships and sex. I wouldn't get into a relationship for sex, but it's a nice extra that comes with it.

What does gear mean to you? How important do you consider it?

Last stage of Dragonwrath! & other dragons

If I had stuck to my original schedule, I would have finished my Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest quest line months before the release of Mists of Pandaria. Sadly I spent ages attempting to collect cinder, but was too lazy to get 1000 of it until yesterday. Thanks to a very nice guild run in great company, I am now on the last stage of the questline called Heart of Flame. At the last stage I must siphon 250 smouldering essence from dead Firelands bosses with the power of Runestaff of Nordrassil, and steal Ragnaros' heart. After this task, which will, knowing me, probably take months, it is time for my very own staff party.

Earlier that day we also got around to killing Sinestra in the Bastion of Twilight.

That Garalon we love

Who would grow tired of watching a berserk as awesome as Garalon's, anyway?

We've got this... Really...!

As we got around to doing our usual Wednesday Mogu'shan Vaults run, suddenly after the Stone Guards I got the idea of recording our raiding for the first time since Dragon Soul, from where we sadly don't have much better material than the Kalecgos part of the Madness of Deathwing Chromatic Champion achievement, a (very stylish indeed) heroic Morchok clip and some early Dragon Soul progression kills like Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, Hagara and Ultraxion with the classic bad screaming, despite clearing the raid on heroic mode. Those videos actually make me miss Dragon Soul, heh. The oldest raid video of us, known as "Shannox now", dates back to early Firelands and, well, Shannox, Rageface and Riplimb.

We are well past our progression phase in normal mode Mogu'shan Vaults, but my sudden idea to Fraps the raid really messed with our heads. Before beginning, I told everyone how we should portray ourselves: we mustn't stand in poop, we mustn't die, we mustn't go out of mana, we mustn't do anything stupid! We mustn't do anything that wasn't what I did. For long I've thought I don't really tunnel vision, but after Feng, well, I am humbled. Please do enjoy this exclusive content of a Menagerie raid that was by far the most fun raid I have attended. We sure didn't live through our smoothest kills in history, but people were positive all the way from the first second to the last and beyond, which was really spectacular and made me incredibly happy. It really reminded me of why I fell in love with raiding in the first place.

I just wish Fraps had been running when the Eye of Kil'rogg made the first pull on Gara'jal the Spiritbinder.

Then came the time for the most flawless Elegon kill.
"Did you record that?"
"Nope."
"...You're kidding me?"
"Nope."

This is just one of those times when I try to say that you guys mean a ton to me.

Ruins of Korune screenshots

I got on the quest to retrieve the Divine Bell from the ruins of Korune, and I thought the quest took place under pretty cool circumstances.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent and the Refinery, anyone?

The Divine Bell.

In addition some music I thought of while bullying those mogu statues.