About
I'm a dedicated WoW player who play several alts, but I focus mainly on my Warlock. Since I have a lot of characters, on this site it's easiest that I'm simply known as Saga.
I'm a raider, guild officer and altoholic who loves chasing after new mounts and pets.
This site is where I ramble about my adventures and thoughts as I continue playing WoW.
Contact
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Dusting off the Priest
As I’ve been writing about we’ve been having trouble filling our raids since Christmas time, and so our progress has been fairly slow. Even now we’re filling our raid with between two and four PUG members each evening. As such we only just yesterday felt that we had a good enough group to try our first Heroic mode in Dragon Soul. Morchok is by far the easiest Heroic boss in there (I’ve done him previously on my Paladin in the Horde guild), and so I figured we should be able to do him even with PUGs.
It took us most of the evening, but we did eventually get him down. However, we didn’t have enough healers to do the job as it were. We were trying to use one healer on Kochrom and two on Morchok, and we were close to doing it, but the Warrior tanking Kochrom was just taking too much damage. Desperate times require desperate measures, and so I logged off my Warlock and onto my Priest.
My badly geared Priest whom I haven’t played much lately. My badly geared Priest with a 374 ilevel.
However, that little bit of extra healing that she could provide was all that we needed, and we killed the boss a few tries later. While of course I’d like to play my Warlock, I don’t mind hopping on another character if the fight requires it. In the end, all I want is for the guild to continue progressing, and if that means that on one fight I have to play another character, then so be it. (Or at least until we can recruit another healer!)
I did feel rather mana starved during the end of the boss fight though, and so I’ve decided to gear her up a bit better. I entered the LFR and already got three upgrades. I got another two from Valor Points, and hope to get another two soon. Reading the tool tips for the 4 piece bonus for Priests, I’m wondering if I should switch from Holy to Discipline when I get it. Is it just me, or does it seem awesome for Disc Priests?
Getting the new upgrades felt great, but it cost me a small fortune since it required nine red gems, two yellow, four enchants, belt buckle… That’s a lot of things to cough up all in one go!
I quite enjoyed going into a raid on my Priest. These days I don’t play her much, but it reminded me of the old days when she was my main. I created her at the end of Vanilla as my first Alliance character.
Today in LFR another Priest was complementing me that I was doing good healing for my gear. I figure he was either being nice for no reason or I’ve still got it! 
Have you gone back to a character that was nearly forgotten and been reminded of what you liked about it?
Ps Also, seriously – should I go Discipline these days or is Holy still good?
Posted in My Adventures/Characters, Random Ramblings
16 Comments
Monday Musings
I can’t believe it’s Monday yet again. I swear it was Monday the other day. Some weeks I really believe that the week has more Mondays than weekends, like some sort of Monday Groundhog Day. I’ve been keeping busy in WoW as per usual, feeling as I have so much that I want to do and so little time. In the end though, I’m quite happy feeling as if I have things to do, since it means I still enjoy the game and don’t sit around afking in Stormwind. (Or at least not all the time.)
On Raiding
We ended up taking the advice from Faeldray and advertised for PUGs who would be interested in joining us on a regular basis. They’re not people who join every raid, but we’ve managed to find enough of them to not have to cancel raids for the time being. A couple of them even decided to join our guild after a few runs. So raiding is going better, even if my preference would be a steady group. For now though, I’ll take what I can get.
The quality of the PUGs we’ve been picking up have been a bit varied, but we’ve found a few very good ones now and I’m hoping that they will stick with us.
I’m also arranging a Firelands run every Tuesday evening that so far is part guild and part Real ID folks. If anyone is interested in joining, just let me know. (This is Alliance-EU side btw.) I have another four weeks of normal clearing to do before I get my Legendary staff. Can’t wait for it to finally be finished. With a good enough group I’d love to do some Heroic modes, but so far I’ve had a group of about 4-5 PUGs and some of them have been less than stellar. Last week the group was so bad that we didn’t even have time to finish the instance. (No Real ID people were harmed in the making of this raid.)
On Project Ten (sort of)
I know I completed this project in the beginning of January, but I couldn’t stand to play my Worgen Druid. The shapeshift forms look nice, but whenever I tried to play her as resto I would cringe. I’m sorry to the Worgen lovers out there, but I can’t stand the sniffing and the wild flailing of the arms while casting!
I’m rather low on funds at the moment, so I couldn’t afford a race change. So what did I do? I deleted her.
Bye-Bye Worgen
Does this mean that my Project Ten is now void? I made a new Druid, a Night Elf this time, and I’m suddenly enjoying the class a lot better. (I can’t help it, I’m fickle that way!) I’m trying to level her back up as quickly as possible, since I do want to maintain my “perfect ten” achievement.
Hello Night Elf!
I’m now considering doing the same for my Alliance Paladin. While I have nothing against humans, I’m thinking that maybe it’d be nice to have something else for a change. Like a Dwarf or Draenei. I’m not convinced I’m insane enough to delete and re-level yet another character though. What do you think? Should I re-level the Alliance Paladin as a Dorf or Draenei? Or stop this madness…
On Nothing
I actually have nothing else specific to write about, but it seemed silly only having two headers in the post, so I made up a third! By the time I got around to writing this my Druid is actually level 80 and I’m just about to start the Cataclysm zones. Can I just say that by now I am so sick of them? Especially Mount Hyjal and Deepholm because I feel they always have to be done. Mount Hyjal due to the dailies later which you can’t access without completing a certain amount of the zone’s quests, and Deepholm in case you ever want shoulder enchants. (Make them BoA, Blizzard. Please, I beg of you!)
That was it for this Monday, it’s time to grind out some more levels to get that new Druid up to 85. I hope everyone will have a great week!
Posted in Random Ramblings
5 Comments
Sixth
Recently Gnomeageddon fired up the Sixth meme and I’ve been tagged twice now (by Syrco and Aralosseien) so I guess it’s about time I get cracking!
The challenge is to go into your sixth screenshot folder and bring up the sixth image. This is what I found in my screenshot folder:
My screenshots are a horrible mess. They’re saved per year, but that’s it. I’ve not removed duplicates or screenshots taken by mistake, so there’s a lot of stuff in there.
This particular screenshot is one of about ten of the same scene. It was Love Is In The Air 2008, and I was having a lovely picnic with my good friend (who has since stopped playing). My character is my old Draenei Mage that I never leveled much beyond that point since I switched to a Gnome. (I know.. I know.. horrible decision!)
Now, time to tag six new people to do this.
Stubborn
Kimzowy
Reala
Elkaragosa
Shintar
Amerence
It’s hard to keep track of who’s been tagged and who hasn’t, so if any of you have been tagged before I’m sorry!
Posted in Screenshots
7 Comments
15 Days of Screenshots (Day 11)
This is the eleventh post in a series according to the 15 Days of Screenshots challenge issued by Saz over at World of Saz.
Day Eleven: Profession of Choice
Show us an image of you doing what you like to do best.
Farming Time
I haven’t found a good screenshot to go with this, since a picture of me standing still and crafting just doesn’t seem like much fun. When it comes to professions I can’t say that I have a favourite one. I like feeling self-sufficient and for that reason I have every profession maxed out on my main’s realm, spread out over all of my alts. My main herself has Jewelcrafting and Tailoring, something she’s had since I created her and I don’t see it changing.
Then I have a dedicated farmer who has Mining and Herbalism, the two raw materials I use the most. I have a Skinner/Leatherworker, but together with Engineering they’re the professions I use the least. I have a few duplicate professions of course (with ten alts it’d be impossible not to). Mostly it’s duplicates in some characters having a gathering profession together with a crafting one, but I also have three Alchemists.
On my alt realm I’m busy leveling a few alts now, and the plan is to have my own Alchemist, Jewelcrafter, Enchanter and farmer with Herbing/Mining. As long as I have those professions I feel that I can make do.
Which professions do you consider “must have”?
Posted in 20 days of..., Screenshots
Leave a comment
Duo Leveling
Through the years I’ve done most of my leveling alone, but every now and then a friend wants to play or level a new character and I’ll tag along. Since I’ve wanted to build a base of support characters on my Horde realm (I feel naked without my own farmer and Jewelcrafter), I recently started leveling a few characters together with a friend.
Leveling together can be a lot of fun, but I also ran into some things that make leveling together frustrating. I think it’s a shame, because WoW is supposed to be a MMO, not a solo player game. I feel that Blizzard should make it so that leveling together isn’t a hassle, but something rewarding. I know there is a group bonus, but in a lot of cases it doesn’t make up for the shared experience from killing mobs. Now, that wouldn’t be an issue (since you kill mobs quicker when there’s two of you) if it wasn’t for the drop chance quests.
When you have to collect drops from mobs with a low drop rate it’s frustrating when solo, when there’s two of you needing fifteen odd items off mobs and they only drop from every third or fourth mob… it’s excruciating. Since you out level the zones so fast these days, you can’t really tell yourself that “at least I get XP from the mobs”, because they often give very little at this point. I wish more quests would drop quest items for every member of the party.
We ran into cases where there weren’t even enough mobs in the area for both of us to get our quest items. We’d clear the entire population out, then have to sit and wait for re-spawns before we could finish. This was also often the case when we had to collect items like boxes or mushrooms. Often there weren’t enough for two people, and the re-spawn rates were quite bad.
You also have to make sure you don’t both decide to be Herbalists and Miners. But there’s nothing Blizzard can do about that, and I’m okay with it. It’s just a little frustrating to see your friend level ahead of you when they get all that extra XP from herbing and mining!
Another little tidbit I noticed as we were leveling (but has nothing to do with being two) is that when you reach Eastern Plaguelands around level 40 the quests start rewarding Plate items. Great! Except in Cataclysm they changed it so that no class learns Plate Specialization until level 50. So my friend ran around for about 10 levels with the new quest gear in their bags before they could actually use it. Bad planning Blizz!
I’m having a lot of fun leveling through the Horde zones though, I haven’t leveled a low level Horde since Vanilla and a lot has changed since then! Silverpine Forest and Hillsbrad Foothills are two favourites so far. Eastern Plaguelands are about the same for both factions, but also a zone I quite enjoyed. Sadly I out-leveled a lot of the zones and didn’t finish them since we wanted to get the proper experience. I might go back one day and finish them though.
We made it through!
We’ve now made it through the Dark Portal and are starting in Hellfire Peninsula. I never did the Horde quests here either, so it’s interesting. They’re very similar to the Alliance versions though. Sometimes there’s a slight spin to them, but for the most part it’s the exact same quests. I wonder if all the zones are like this. I’ve heard that Northrend (at least Howling Fjord) gets a bit more different from Alliance, so I can’t wait until I get there.
How do you enjoy your leveling? Do you do most of it alone or together with a friend/friends?
Posted in Random Ramblings
19 Comments
World Event Overload!
I’m sure I’m not the only one out there feeling overwhelmed by having three world events at the same time. Mr. Zowy is so fed up with it that he’s letting Darkmoon Fair go this month in favor of the two annual ones. Between the Lunar Festival and Love is in the Air, I’m all world evented out!
Today’s To Do List: (in-game)
- Turn in bracelets to all for faction leaders (farmed 3 days worth yesterday)
- Do Love Daily in Orgri on 4 chars
- Do Love Daily in Uldum on one char
- Do Seasonal boss on 4 chars
- Pull some time out of my backside to get into those dungeons to hunt down the Elders and kill them, then steal their tokens! (not very priestly, but I did say I’d had enough *smile*)
- Do DMF dailies on all chars I have time for remembering the mounts and pets are worth it.
Items 1-4 will take up all the time I can be logged in if I neglect house work and play during nap times. So now I’m faced with a problem. Do I neglect the Love event for one day to get the Elders out of the way, or do I skip the last 6 elders and do them next year? Maybe I can ask Blizzard for an extention. We responsible parents simply don’t have the time! *sad face*
Posted in Random Ramblings
4 Comments
Monday Musings
In General
I feel like I have a lot to do in WoW at the moment, which is good since it keeps my mind off the struggling guild. This week is extra busy with Darkmoon Faire being available (it’s time to get a mount!) and Love Is In The Air going on (I want that mount too!), which means lots of dailies and grinding to be done.
When making the trek between the four faction cities to give my gift of a lovely bracelet to the faction leaders, am I the only one who spends the entire time wishing I was a Mage with Teleport?
Guild Matters
We had a chat between the Officers and decided that we will try to keep the raiding going for now, even if it means on some evenings we PUG anywhere between 2-4 people. It’s still better than nothing, and if we’re lucky we might find some new guild members that way, or at least some people who may be willing to come PUG with us regularly.
Last night we even managed to kill Madness with 3 PUGs, something I’ll admit I didn’t think would be possible yet, even with the 5% nerf.
Hopefully we can find some new members, or at least keep the raiding going for now this way. Then we’ll have to re-group and discuss what we want to do for the next expansion.
More Leveling
As if the ten 85s wasn’t enough I’ve been keeping myself busy by starting some alts on the server where I play and raid with my Horde Paladin. I’ve been leveling together with a friend, something I’ve not done for a long time and it does mean that you run into issues that you normally don’t think about when leveling alone. More about that another day though!
Questing Buddies
The reason for me leveling alts on my Horde server is because I want to have a few more professions to support my raiding. I miss having Alchemy and Jewelcrafting handy, and it also means I need to get myself a nice farming character to supply the goods. For now I’m leveling a Death Knight and a Priest with a friend (and a Mage alone). I might level a Druid as well though since Tauren Druids make such awesome farmers.
Personal Life
I finally got a job again. It’s a project employment for 6 months and it’s only part-time, but it’s a start. I’m going to be setting up a web shop for a local company, which will be a lot of fun I expect. For those (few) who read my personal blog, the address was changed during my recent move to a different webhost. It’s now located at http://blog.spellbound.nu.
I’m finally recovering from the Cold from Hell v2. I can’t believe I had what seemed like the same horrible cold twice in less than a month. Winter hates me, obviously.
Posted in Random Ramblings
10 Comments
Darkmoon’s back!
Last night after the raid we were greeted with two things I’d forgotten about. Love is in the Air world event, and DARKMOON FAIR!
While all my guildies were busy grouping up for the new world event boss fight, I flew over to TB and hopped through a portal, being sure to have all of my quest items in my bags! I only needed to turn in one for my purpose.
Turned in my Mysterious Egg then ran over to the guy who promised me a mount last month! I asked him if he still had the one I wanted in the colour I wanted and he did!!! BAM! Dancing Bear mount!
Darkmoon Fair Bear Mount
So, what’s the first thing I did with my new mount? Replaced my mechano hog and ran up and down the fair while doing all the quests! I also did a bit of ….dancing!
Call me crazy, or maybe it was the late hour, but I couldn’t figure out how to make him dance! After typing /dance 20 times, I decided to see what his roar looked like. <spacebar> He started dancing… Yeah, makes sense after you know how!
Next thing I’m getting from DMF will be the DMF cub pet, or maybe the turtle since I don’t have a turtle on my priest yet. After re-completing all those quest item quests, I nearly have enough for it. Happy Carnivale!
Darkmoon Dancing Bear - Dancing
Posted in World Events
Leave a comment
Proof that Gnomes are Evil
See, even Blizzard GMs agree with me that Gnomes are evil! This is irrefutable proof that it must be so!
Proof. I has it!
Have a nice weekend everyone!
Posted in Funniez
4 Comments
GL Guide: Attendance
Okies, so a friend of mine’s guild is going through a rough spot and for once, we aren’t regarding attendance. What are the differences and what am I, as a guild leader, doing differently to what I’ve done in the past?
Where did all the people go?
We know guilds fluctuate all the time with trends over the hollidays, Start and End of school terms and summer always has an interesting effect. Lately, all guilds have seen a decline, many good ones have gone bust as a result! There is a lot of speculation as to where the people have gone. In our case, we had 3 social members make the move to SWtOR and two main raiders (that we know of) play it part-time.
Are we bitter? Hell no! But we do wish to know what people’s plans are so we can recruit accordingly so those who are sticking to WoW won’t have to miss raids or struggle gearing up another new member who just returned after a 2 year break. *sigh* My friend’s guild saw similar numbers of people moving over. Some let them know their plans, others just disappeared never to be heard from again.
Attendance and Punctuality
Two of the main problems guilds are having at this time is Attendance and Punctuality. This is a tough thing for a casual guild to address since you’re supposed to be, well, casual! Right? Wrong!
Casual doesn’t mean irresponsible or rude. It means understanding of the time restraints people have in their lives and trying to get as far in the game in as little time as possible. My guild raids Max. 2 nights a week for a max. 4 hours per raid. Because we don’t raid more, we need everyone to be present and prepared to roll at the same time. Our progression is comparable to many guilds who raid 3 or 4 times in the week. I like to think this is much thanks to the responsibility and consideration our members have for each other.
What to do?
Many small casual guilds are faced with the problem of missing one or two sign-ups for a raid. Leaders don’t want to punish those who showed up by calling the raid. Often, they don’t want to replace the late people with pugs in fear they will be offended and not sign up next week. We went through this phase for most of last year, and it caused a lot of unnecessary stress!
- Ask for consideration and responsibility. It’s not crazy to ask people to behave responsibly in a game. Just like in the real world, if they can’t make an appointment, they call to cancel. Exchange contact info (even if it’s only an email used for game purposes) so that anyone can leave a message somewhere you look often. People don’t always log onto a guild website, but in today’s day and age, it’s hard not to be able to send an email or text message.
- Don’t be afraid to pug spots. We found many of our best members by PUGing. It is a good way for potential new members to test run your guild and see if your raiding style fits in with what they are looking for. They are PUGing for a reason and you clearly missed a spot. You also get to see how they perform and behave. Are they loot crazy or relaxed? Do they play well or not quite ready for your level of raiding? PUGing is a great way to get to know people on your server.
- Don’t be afraid to call a raid. By cancelling a raid due to low sign-ups, it brings it to everyone’s attention how important every member is. Chances are, the guild will discuss and encourage the no-shows to sign up next week.
- Make your expectations clear. Something I notice is that people like rules. We like to know what is coming. Set your expectations, act accordingly, and people will rise to meet them. If you get into the habit of making exceptions for the “slackers”, the hard workers will see no reason why they should bother trying so hard to do what’s right.
- Replace repeat offenders. Do you have someone who is always late, consistently for the past few months? Ask them what they want, what the problem seems to be. Do your raid times no longer work for them? You can look into changing your raid times if it suites the rest of the group to do so, or demote the person to social and start looking for someone who’s able to make the raids on time.
What works for us?
Every guild will have different rules that suites your group of people. Our guild is made up of somewhat older professionals, students and parents. People who have lots to do in the real world and little time to play for hours on end. We also recruit only those who we feel would be a good fit, regardless of how much we need a certain class. As a result, we keep a harmonious environment of like-minded individuals.
For us, a clear simple set of rules works. Being reliable leaders who set good examples is the best policy! In the beginning of our “new” way of doing things, it was painful. We cancelled a few raids and had some poor PUGs, but after a few weeks, it’s been smooth sailing ever since, something we’re very proud of!
Posted in Guild Leader's Guide
2 Comments
RSS - Follow me!
@SpellboundSaga
Personal Blog
Saga@spellbound.nu