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!