I'm a Knight of the Ebon Blade :P

 

“Death. Despite the sun warming my face, a numbing cold chills me to the core. My soul lives, but my desiccated body is a cruel mockery of the hero I once was. I know not love, nor mirth; only hatred of those who did this to me. Stay out of my way, for my revenge knows not friend… just foe.”

Rocking my Knights of the Ebon Blade Tshirt from Jinx. 

PvP as a Blood DK

Well, for the last few weeks I've been taking part in rated battlegrounds with my new guild - and having a great time. My rating is now 1601...and still going up! :)
Generally I'm loving the new guild and now awaiting only two votes before I become an official member. You can find my 'tldr' application here.


My role as a Frost DK has always been to be part of the attack group. My DPS is high and I have some valuable CC in the form of Hungering Cold, Strangulate, Mind Freeze and the very useful ability to stack on enemy flag carriers...Necrotic Strike.


I've also been target caller, mostly because the best target caller is a melee class and I'm one of those people with a clear/loud voice that can be understood pretty clearly. However, I have little RBG experience and this has shown in my target calling - I know pretty much who I would like to see dead first, and who I'd like to see CC'd but there are certain situations and compositions of teams that I've not yet come across and they require the calling of different targets.


The worst of it is, that people keep telling me I'm doing a good job, but I'm lacking so much confidence I'm constantly wondering to myself if I have called the correct target, especially when I see team members attacking a target different to who I've called out. But, I've recently found an addon (thanks to a guildie who discovered the addon first) that I plan on using from now on. It is called Battleground Targets and can be downloaded through Curse. It lists the enemy team and each person's class and role and can be used to target that person. It shows how their health is looking, but perhaps the most important tool for me as a target caller - it shows how many people have a particular player as target.


However, as much as I have been enjoying calling targets, I know there are much more experienced players in the team who would most likely do a better job, but are not suited to the job because of perhaps having a poor microphone, or they play as a ranged damage dealer or healer. I only hope that the team are willing to allow me to learn with them and appreciate that sometimes, it is easy to make a mistake - especially if it is been a long day or things are going on in real life which means the RBG does not have as much of my attention as it should. (There has been some trauma in my personal life recently, that's not appropriate to go into here - but it is my excuse for sometimes failing recently...and I'm sticking to it :P )


However, the team is consistently short of flag carriers - I assume this is a pretty widespread problem as most places are short of tanks for PvE too. At the moment, I know that Blood DK's are the most favoured Flag Carrier, because of their ability to stay alive. I've had in my head, the idea of taking blood as my off spec and so being able to step in as a FC if one is required. (I think that being able to be flexible in which spec I play will give me a better chance of joining the team as a full member.)


So, I finally got round to it. I started farming honor to replace gear so I could gem and enchant for Stamina and Resilience rather than Strength, and I've finally got my Jewel Crafting up to 525 in order to take full advantage of jewelcrafter's gems...101 stamina is luverly! ;)


So I started to scour the internet for a good Blood PVP guide and came up pretty much empty handed. There are excellent guides on places such as Arena Junkies but they only cover Frost and Unholy, and like other places don't mention Blood - or if they do, it's in passing. So I've found that I have had to look at PvE Tanking guides for some tips - so my plan is this...Over the next few weeks/months as I get more experience and play time with my Blood DK in PvP I am going to start compiling a Blood Guide. It's only going to be my opinion, so unlikely to be amazing or ground breaking ideas but it'll give me a chance to collate some research regarding various ideas I have, and see if they work, and see if other players agree.


As I started to play Blood in normal Battlegrounds, I found I was trying to play like Frost - but half way through my fourth Twin Peaks, something clicked into place. I'd already learnt my rotation and some tricks such as using Vampiric Blood just before sacrificing pet with Death Pact, to get a boost to the healing it does, or using Icebound Fortitude when I reach about 40% health or I know I'm about to take a massive blast of damage for example, but I realised I was trying to be too offensive, I was trying to kill the other player like I would in Frost and then I realised. It's not about me killing them...it's about them being unable to kill me.


After that, it clicked into place, single handedly taking on a warrior, paladin and warlock and slowly but surely getting each one of them down and emerging victorious with still half health felt amazing. Yes, I know that they were probably pretty badly geared, and there is no way I'd survive that in an RBG on my own against very well geared players...but the point is, if I'd have been Frost and fighting them - I wouldn't have survived.


So, I'm excited about playing as Blood - part of me wants to get stuck in right away, part of me knows I'll be extremely nervous when the time does come...and what if I die really easily? What if I let down the team, which in turn leads to us losing, and the team losing rating? It's nice to know that whatever character and whatever class or role I play...my insecurities are here to stay.


Afterall, "Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best."


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First WoW Anniversary

Well, my First Anniversary of playing WoW and writing this Blog is almost upon me, and the past year has been amazing in the terms of progress I have made both as a player and a blogger. 


I'm pretty sure when Husband first introduced me to WoW he didn't think I'd be playing a year later, have two characters at the level cap let alone be Raiding, competing in 2v2, 3v3 Arenas and 'Target Calling' in Rated Battlegrounds.


My Blog has always been a blog about 'my first time in...' and never been about 'how to' or contain much useful advice and tips, so I have always felt amazed at the amount of visits my blog receives. It is currently sitting at just under 11,000 views and considering that the blog has suffered a lack of love over the last couple of months due to lack of posts and updates from me - I'm thrilled with that amount of views.


I track visitors to my blog using Google Analytics and I thought it would be interesting to share some of the weirder search terms that have enabled people to find my blog...

• how to get raid experiance (sic) wow
• bastion of twilight or blackwing descent harder
• beaten by a girl
• being a girl that plays wow
• bride playing wow
• cool bedroom computer
• best looking girls that play wow
• is draenei death knight acceptable
• girly names for death knights
• healers are always girls
• never talked to a girl
• im playing wow in 6 days
• our blogs take a look wow girl
• sfk bad girl

and the majority of visits to my site came by searching '/played wow 2011'


So, I must say a massive 'Thank You' to all of you who have visited this site regularly, or even just once since I started Blogging - it wouldn't be what it is without your support! 
-The Girl Plays WoW

August Round-Up

Well, I've been absent from this blog for a month, partly because I haven't had much to say recently and mostly due to real life stuff.

So what has happened?

Well I've turned into something of an alt-o-holic at the moment. I'm currently levelling a Druid, Shaman and Mage and my current favourite? The Shaman. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's something a bit different. The trouble I have is I get bored with Alts quickly, and think I like playing around with the character selection screen more than playing the actual characters...

We are finally settling  in to life on Sylvanas, a world a way from Blade's Edge. We have finally found a guild that we are happy with and in called <Emeritus>, but we are still on trial at the moment and awaiting votes to become full time members. The atmosphere is nice, the players are experienced and friendly and it has a feel of <Drama> about it, which is what I was looking for in a new guild.

Sadly though, I haven't been able to devote as much time to the game and the new guild as I would like. I've become a bit annoying- I signed up to an event recently, and then didn't turn up. I should have at least explained why I couldn't make it, and I used to hate people who signed and then didn't turn up - but we have real life things going on.

We were away for 2 weeks at the beginning of August on holiday on the Greek island of Kos, we had an amazing time - weather, hotel, location, food - none of it could be faulted and we got back and its taken us a while to settle into our usual routine. Then we received some other news. I'm not in a position to talk about it just yet, but it's life changing and so we've had the shock and excitement of that to deal with and the fact that WoW will have to take a back seat until eventually sometime next year, we'll have to stop playing altogether. This is by no means, a goodbye post - It's just a heads up that things will change both in the game for us and regarding the blog. As soon as we calm down a bit, things will be running with some resemblance of normality for a while anyway.

Target Calling

I've been spending alot of time recently getting to grips with Rated Battlegrounds and been running in quite a few with the new guild, I've been given the role of target calling. At first, I was nervous and worried because my experience in RBG's isn't great. Husband did the reassurance thing and I got on with it. I have an idea in my head of who I want to kill in order and who I want to CC, and who I want to leave till last or just control because they don't do anything - and Ive had some really good feedback, so I cant be doing it too wrong. I think I was chosen simply because I have this BBC accent, which is clear and understandable for everyone. I'm also loud, I talk over people and be heard - granted there are times when I'm not listened to, but on the whole I think as a team we are doing pretty well and my rating is almost 1500 (1490)

So who are my targets?
It's completely dependant on the situation.

Holy Paladins and Resto Shamans are always my first choice for CC as they are in my opinion, harder to kill than Disc Priest and Resto Druid. Priest and Druid healers are usually my first kill target calls.

If we are trying to capture a base, I like to take out rogues, mages and warlocks because of their AoE abilities, they are really annoying when trying to capture a flag to continually get frost nova, or ring of frost, fear, or fan of knives. If we aren't trying to capture the flag, I still like to take down rogues after healers because they can be nasty with CC against our healers and then Death Knights are my next target mostly so they don't get the chance to spam necrotic strike and because Frost DK's without a healer are pretty squishy, but left alone can do significant damage.
The rest of the order completely depends on the situation and which battleground we are in. I like to kill mages fairly early on, or at least have them CC'd - but there is no specific order of which class is best to kill first. One thing I have noticed is that Warriors and Blood DK's tend to get left till last.
Also, if a healer is OOM, there is no point in killing him, he can't do anything and killing him would mean he came back with full health and mana - they are best just controlled - kept in CC and they can only watch as their team mates are picked off one by one ;)

We also took part in a raid, to kill the leaders of the Horde. We had no trouble getting into Undercity, Thunder Bluff and Silvermoon, but after one wipe at Orgrimmar, the group disbanded which was a shame. It's going to take a lot of organisation and alot of people to get into Orgrimmar and be successful.

Well, I think that about sums up my August Adventures in Azeroth. Any advice, questions or tips - please don't hesitate to send them my way. Until next time...

"Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution."

Well, the application to the guild was accepted and we joined and then a day and half later - quit. It started so promising but disagreeing twice in the space of less than 24 hours meant that something was seriously wrong. What the guild had advertised was not how they were in reality. We decided to move on.

I saw an advert on the forums, and in trade chat for a new guild - and by new I mean it is only level 2. They are purely PvP. They also advertised that they required a minimum of 2k rating in Arenas and Battlegrounds to get an invitation. Nevertheless, I thought cheekily that the fact they are only a level 2 guild and brand new, they'd be perhaps more lenient on their entry requirements than say a fully established level 25 guild.

The only thing that stopped us from immediately jumping at the offer to join was that we were only prepared to join if our real life friend could also join. Now, she is in almost full season 10 gear but has never experienced Rateds or Arenas, but we were assured she could join as a Social member and so, welcomed we were.

Now we joined the guild at about 6.45pm server time, and at 7pm invitations for the evening Rated Battlegrounds were going out. I got invited which meant that dinner had to go by the wayside, but it was worth it to make a good impression.

I got the vent details, and log in. Say 'Hello' and suddenly Vent springs to life..."omg who is that?" "is that a girl?" I've had that sort of reception before, but in every rated battleground I've taken part in, there has been at least one other female, but from what I gather - me and my real life friend are the only females in the guild.
Which leads to comments like this....

"When Nilaa (Woman) is with us we get 'Presence of a Female Buff' which increases hormones by 20%"

"but we get -50% intelligence."

So the team gets over the initial shock of being joined by a girl playing a Death Knight and we join the queue. We did 4 battlegrounds, and lost only one of them...but it was very close.

It was interesting because we used rather different tactics to how I've done RBGs in the past. It could have been that the situation was just different but in the past we've always avoided killing the healers out right and just keeping them CC'd and out of mana with the idea being that with no mana they cant do anything and we can keep them occupied, but if they die they come back with full health and mana and can create issues. However, we did things differently. We kept the healers CC'd and Interrupted whilst we killed off the DPS and then finished off the healers...just before all the opposition were dead a group of us would then go fast to complete the objective. We worked much closer as a team. We had targets called out and we often switched between targets. If for example in Twin Peaks we died we would then resurrect and help defend our flag carrier and then once we had disposed of the group attempting to attack our carrier we would rush to the EFC and get the flag back whilst they were stuck resurrecting at the graveyard.

In Warsong Gulch we would meet the opposition and attack right in the middle to prevent them from reaching our flag, meanwhile we would send a tank and healer to go and ninja their flag. Once we had killed the group we would help escort our flag carrier and then regroup up and send a rogue to identify exactly where the EFC was hiding and then attack as a big group leaving our tank flag carrier, a healer and possibly one DPS. (depending on the situation)

In Battle for Gilneas, we identified a DPS and Healer to stay at Lighthouse, and the rest of the group went to attack Waterworks, we then arranged on a DPS and Healer to remain at Waterworks whilst the rest of the group including one healer would stand in between the two bases and react according to what the situation required. It was a tactic that worked so well for us that the Horde opposition actually ran back to their original starting position and went AFK. We were only about 350 points ahead when they realised that they just couldn't compete...so we headed down to the boat and lined up for a screenshot...

We decided to be graceful in our victory and as the Horde stood on to watch us...we didn't attack, instead we went and danced with them. 

So all in all, had a really good and productive evening with the new guild. We all communicated well on vent, and worked as an intelligent team. I even managed to get my RBG rating up to 1100 in one night earning me the title of 'Private.' However, my real life friend decided this wasn't the guild for her and after we saw discussions on the official forum about the reputation of the guild - we too decided it was time to cut our losses.

Finding a guild is hard work, but i'm sure we will get there eventually!

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In other WoW related news,  decided it is high time I see more of the old raids. I've seen Karazhan, so when my real life friend told me she wanted to tame a pet from the Molten Core, I jumped at the chance to experience the instance. I roped the husband into healing (although he worked more as a DPS) and the three of us set off. We completed it really quickly, as you would expect for a level 60 instance but seeing Ragnaros close up and personal was very very cool.

“Sometimes, the winner is the one who is able to let go and move on. Wise people know when to do so.”

Well, those of you on Twitter have been kept up to date with the goings on in my current guild. I wasn't involved in any of the drama that went on, so I won't be talking about the details. In a nutshell, the guild almost died. The Ex-GM himself wrote that it was dead, and closed down the website.

When we discovered that it happened, it was incredibly sad. I actually feel like for a couple of days I mourned. It was sad that so many people had left, and it was sad that the guild which had worked so hard to get to the top, was taking a massive tumble.

Originally our plans were to stay with the guild. It was taken over by an Officer and I fully expected it to recover after everyone was over the initial shock. However, there were a couple of days that I logged on to see only a few people online and no chat and as is human nature we began to wonder what else was around in the big wide world of Azeroth.

We wondered if we should move to another guild on the server, that way we would still see familiar faces, we wondered if we should even give Alliance a try, we thought about moving to the realm that Sister-in-Law plays on (but she has just got a brand new job so won't be playing much, if at all) We had an offer from a friend on Twitter which seemed like a good possibility until I realised that he is on the American servers. We discussed our options for a few days, but we decided that the major issue, and one of the reasons why the guild was so affected when people left is because Blade's Edge EU - is really really quiet.

So then we decided maybe we should do something really radical, maybe we should move realms and factions! So we created a level one character on a number of possible destinations and headed to the city to check out the feel of the place and the population, and the atmosphere. We had to really ask ourselves why we wanted to move. Is it because we are falling out of interest with the game and we have 'grass is greener' mentality, and we are trying to inject life and interest back into WoW? If that was the reason, moving would certainly have made matters worse. I've seen a few players who have moved realms, but because it was for the wrong reasons, they have gone back after a short stay, or just left WoW completely.

We are moving, because it's time to move on. It is time for me to experience WoW from another aspect. It is good to change things around and the fact that I'll miss players from our guild and realm means its a good time to move. We can look fondly on the time we spent on the realm, and I'll always be appreciative of the fact that <Drama> took me in when I was a complete newbie, and I feel like because of them I've grown into a much better player. I'm fond of everyone in Drama, and want to extend a massive Thank You to everyone.

We had got the feel of a server we liked...a PvP server - Sylvanas EU and we decided to go Alliance aswell. Just as we were finalising when we should transfer, we discovered that the Guild was going to be rebuilt. Old players were coming back and they are currently in the process of putting it back together, to something similar to what it always set out to be - before it lost its way. This made us stop for a moment,what were our plans? Should we stay? Or should we go?

It didn't take us long to come to our decision. We had gotten itchy feet. I wanted to move. The guild I'm sure will get back to it's former glory, especially in the hands of some very experienced and dedicated players - but it doesn't alter the status of the realm. It is not, nor ever was <Drama> that was dead. It's the realm. With that in mind, we emptied our mailboxes, cancelled our auctions and said farewells. (I would just like to point out, we didn't announce in guild chat that we were leaving because we left the same day the guild was taken over by Viene and we didn't want to seem like we left because of that. On the contrary, he knows I think he is an awesome guy who will get the guild on  its feet in no time at all!)

Comparing Orgrimmar on Blade's Edge with Stormwind on Sylvanas:

 (Photos taken just a couple of minutes apart)

The main areas in each city.

The sky above the cities.

The Innkeepers.

Transfer complete, I created my new Draenei Death Knight, called her Nilaa which is a variation of the name 'Nila' which means blue in Indian. Apt I thought for a race that is coloured blue. Husband has also gone Draenei (what a copy cat) and called Tolian. We also took with us my real life friend, who now has a Night Elf called Janya. We have an application for a guild currently pending...fingers crossed!

Whilst it will take a while to get used to the busyness of new realm, the new faction, and the fact that its a PvP realm, I know I have made the right decision. Leaving now means I remember my time on Blade's Edge as a truly awesome experience.

For those of you in Drama who read this: Thank you for everything, you are all brilliant and friendly players and I'll remember you all. I still have Churel around, so I'll pop by now and then to say Hi, and please don't hesitate to keep in touch via here or twitter :)

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So finally, it brings me round to why I've been MIA for the last couple of days. Husband and I went up to my old home town in Scotland for the Wedding of a school friend of mine. We had a great time. The weather was absolutely stunning (don't think we ever saw weather as good as that when we lived there) and the Bride and Groom make an amazing couple...

Couple of photos from our trip across the border!

Testing Out 3v3

Well, the other night, happily hanging around in Orgrimmar before deciding on what to do next, lazily reading Guild Chat, I somehow ended up with a 3v3 team. What I had written as "yeah would like to do some 3v3 at some point" magically turned into a team ready to go at right that moment.

I perhaps should have realised early on that it wouldn't work out too well. The main problem was my newness, and the learning curve I had to undertake and the fact that the guy who joined me and the hubby, had many years experience in Arenas and PvP and WoW in general. Having over 13k Achievement points sums up my point exactly.

The other issue, well, a slight language barrier. The guy is really nice, and his grasp of English as another language is great, but at times he was hard to understand and would make statements and expect us to answer, when there was no answer, because it was a statement, and at times would be searching for a word which meant that sentences were very long and getting a word in edgeways was nigh on impossible. *phew, exhale and take a breath* Then I think he struggled to understand us. I was using my best cut glass English BBC accent but when things were happening in game and my fast Black Country mixed with Scots came out, I think he was sat scratching his head. For example..."ah chunty ah cannae, ar am stunned an am nae trinket" or "sae yowm wan me tae keep th' Warriur aff th' priest?" or "och aye we won, bostin gam troaps."

However, he taught me a lot and spoke sense, but at the end of the day we wanted different things out of a 3v3 team. He wanted high ratings, and I wanted a taster. It didn't help that I was tired and not performing at my best, I'd also tried to take so much of what he said on board that sometimes I forgot what he had said to do previously, but I don't think I was terrible, and I certainly don't think that the times we lost were completely down to me.

I did however, enjoy myself most of the time. I don't think we did too badly considering it was my first attempt at 3v3 and bearing in mind my DK has only been played for a couple of months, hell, I haven't even clocked a year in WoW yet. We got our rating to 1339 and I'm really pleased with that, taking  everything on board.

A couple of days later, the player left our team, and I'm kind of relieved that he did - although it would have been nice if he had contacted us and told us that he was leaving considering he's in the guild, but don't get me wrong,  I'm grateful for the time he did spend with us and I've learnt alot that can be applied to both the game in general and 2v2 arenas, but I'm much much happier to go back to 2v2.

In fact, our 2v2 is going much better this season since we have started off on the same playing field as everyone else. We got our rating up into the 1650's, so hopefully we will continue to learn and get better and  most of all enjoy ourselves. I think playing with Husband gives us a unique advantage. We understand each other and sitting right next to each other, we can talk normally without having to use vent and we can also at a quick glance see what is happening from each other's point of view.

I'll never say never to having a 3v3 team again but maybe someone on our wavelength, on my level of experience of the game, and someone looking for the same sort of results as us.

So what did I learn, well, not to be so quick to jump on a bandwagon, to enjoy what I have and if I'm in Blade's Edge Arena to "use my brain" and DeathGrip off the bridge...

I have truly arrived in the world of PvP

This is a little known fact...I love to terrorise Alliance players and judging by the response I got last night...I have succeed in my mission! I also realise that this post makes me appear completely ruthless, and a bit of a bitch. Well, Sheorc my Death Knight is my alter ego, she is my sassy, no-nonsense character and she is made especially for PvP, she is made to specifically kill Alliance, something I take great pleasure in doing.

My usual routine after a Tol Barad battle is to camp on the bridge waiting for any stray Alliance stragglers and basically kill them. Yesterday, despite losing TB (which I haven't done in a while) I mounted up and ran straight through the centre of TB and their quest hub. Husband was with me and 3 Death Knights tried and failed to kill us...anyway, I've digressed...

After that, we go 'clean up' TB peninsula. Yes, I run around trying to find any flagged Alliance players. I think that if they are still flagged they should be prepared to fight, if they want to do daily quests in peace, I totally respect that, but hang on 5 minutes until you are no longer flagged.

Usually we get a few kills, one time recently there was one hunter who after the 5th kill finally decided to go do something else.

But last night was disappointing, we went straight to the first spots Alliance tend to start questing and no-one was around. Admitting our disappointment but assuming it was because it had gone midnight we headed back to the Horde camp. Out the corner of my eye, I saw an Undead Mage with very low health, trying to escape, so I did what any respectable fellow Horde would do...I went to help.

When I got there (just outside the Alliance camp) I was faced with two Death Knights, a Resto Druid, a Warrior and a Mage, against my Death Knight, My husband's Disc Priest and a random Horde Mage. I felt for sure that we were about to die. We didn't, we killed them all and then more Alliance came - a Hunter and a Paladin, by this point we had been joined by another random Disc Priest and once again we annihilated them. A couple got the picture and didn't come back, but the Druid, Warrior and the Hunter we must have killed at least 3 times. The Paladin was also mind controlled into us where he then swiftly came to an end.

Now throughout the fighting, I'm quite a respectable Death Knight, I don't feel the need to /emote because I know that them dying is good enough for me, but the Druid was spitting on me (which makes me think it was him) and I did shamefully retaliate by laughing at him just before I got the killing blow.

The next thing that happened, is probably my highlight in the game so far. One of those players which we killed, logged off and created a level 1 Horde character called 'Sheorclol' just so he could whisper and tell me how annoyed he felt...'aaw diddums'. I think he set out to make me annoyed/angry, but all it did was make me do a *happy dance* in my chair, I had annoyed him so much that he had to create a character to abuse me...and he seemed to forget that I was only coming to the aid of a fellow horde...I took it as a massive compliment and find it extremely flattering, and it obviously means I have arrived in what I set out to do...

I then obviously annoyed him even more when I ignored him, because he then whispered my husband...

I was so excited that I caused this player to rage so badly he had to create a Horde character just to let me know he really is a failure, and the fact he got beaten by a girl probably made him throw his PC out the window!

Oh and on the off chance that the player sees this blog, I have a little message... come face to face in Tol Barad with me again... and you are going to have to run because I will do it All.Over.Again. 

You got pwned by a girl! Peace.

Weekly Round-Up

Well,

Its been a while since I've written a weekly round up of everything that's happened in-game, but its time for one of those again...

My First Rated Battleground

Last night I took part in my first ever rated battleground, and I loved it. Being in a battleground and on vent at the same time is a strange experience but it was great to co-ordinate attacks and offense/defence...certainly blew pug battlegrounds out of the water. 

Starting a Twin Peaks in the Alliance starting area on my very first one, did throw me. It took me a while to figure out where I was and then to remember which flag carrier was ours. That's something I need to get used to, but I'm glad I wasn't the only one slightly thrown.

It still feels strange for me speaking on vent, but it comes down to confidence which will grow with time. I listened to what I was being told to do, tried to speak as much on vent as possible and I hope I did a good job, for my first evening of runs - I'm very happy.

We had a very good win in Twin Peaks where we literally had a minute to kill the enemy flag carrier, we did it and our flag was capped and we won, and one Battle for Gineas which was very close, but sadly we lost - only by a few points. 

All in all, I took part in 8 battlegrounds and we won 4 and lost 4, and so for my first time, and a couple of others first times, I was really pleased with how we did overall and think that given time and more experience the guild could get a really strong team.

So the guild, are deciding to set up a PvP rank and I'm seriously considering applying seeing as PvP is my main focus in the game. I guess I'm worried about making a fool of myself in my application, but I've got nothing to lose so definitely going to go for it...watch this space for an update.

Archaeology

I have to say, I'm not a massive fan of this profession and since I started my Death Knight, my skill has sat at 1, and seeing as I'm still in the process of levelling my other professions (Mining and Jewelcrafting) I always thought it would be last on my list...but, the husband starting doing it and I hate to be left behind, so I begrudgingly started too. Its something we've been doing in between battlegrounds. 

My skill is now 140 and I got the rare Druid and Priest Statue Set, which gave me the title Assistant Professor and is a fairly cool item. 

That title is the first one I've earned on my Death Knight and given me a strange love for Archaeology, I still think its a boring and long winded profession but its also strangely addictive.

Googee

I have to take a moment to mention this character. Googee is a Troll Hunter who is played by my real life friend. Googee is at level 84, and I've been assured by my friend that she will be level 85 tomorrow...I am holding her to that! 

I had the chance to run a normal Cataclysm dungeon with her the other day. We got Throne of the Tides, I was happy to run through the dungeon, as Churel my Priestess got an outing, and I so rarely play her these days. It was nice to heal without any pressure, without any mana issues and just enjoy it for what it was. I thought I had forgotten how to play Churel but instinctively it all came back, even remembering which key my dispel was bound to, and I think Husband enjoyed dusting off his Warrior Tank.

Googee did really well in the dungeon, but occasionally she comes under fire from some unpleasant players. I'd just like to say that just because a character has reached the level cap does not mean they are an expert in the class or game. Levelling is so quick now, that it really takes more time at the cap or experience playing other characters before you know your role inside and out. I've now been playing WoW for 9 months, pretty much everyday, and I'm still nowhere near an expert, so please, take a moment to remember what it was like when you first started - and give the new people a break, and be a bit more understanding. We all play for fun and the pettiness, sniping and moaning make it an unpleasant experience for everyone involved. 

I'm really amazed at the progress my friend has made in the short time she has been playing WoW...

Real-Life

Finally taking a moment to explain why my last post was a couple of weeks ago...I was getting myself ready to take part in the Race for Life. I've never taken part in any runs before, and despite sponsoring other people who were raising money, it's been a long time since I got out there to raise money for something myself. 

I took part in the 5k race on Sunday just gone, and raised £139 for a charity close to my heart. I'll definitely be doing it again next year, the atmosphere was great with over 2500 ladies running on the day, I feel good for doing something worthwhile and I got a medal too...woohoo.

(This was taken after the Race. We are the ladies from Bootcamp, Paul is our Trainer, I'm 4th from Left with number 32376, the blonde next to me holding a jacket is my Mom and the dog is our Mascot)

I have made this blog longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter. ;) Peace. 

Arena Recording against a Frost Mage/Ret Paladin and Arms Warrior/Feral Druid

Firstly, apologeis for the quality of the videos, as we were only playing around with this we only wanted to use free software. Hopefully next time we'll record a commentary too.

These recordings were taken last night, my second night in the arena as I've spent the last couple of days re-keybinding my abilities and needed to get comfortable with them before entering another arena. We had a really great run in arenas last night taking part in 18 and only losing 3 of them. My current rating is 1377 which i'm pretty pleased about considering how new it is to me.

We recorded a few videos last night, another favourite of mine was against 2 rogues but I think that hails back to my time as a Priest and Rogues would like very much to kill me. I finally got my own back :)

The videos are from my Husband's point of view, and we know we both made mistakes...myself especially but I know what to do different next time.

Anyway, enjoy the fight and leave a comment :)

Stepping into the Arena

Well, having finally got Sheorc in full Honor gear we decided it was about time I see what Arena's are like. I still haven't experienced rated battlegrounds, old content raids and Wintergrasp, but hopefully I can experience those at some point soon.

As we joined the queue for my first ever match, I have to say I was a little bit nervous. I cant remember what we faced as I was just full of adrenaline, we didn't win that match mostly because I wasn't thinking clearly and just spamming and not sure who to attack first, but won the next one which gave me the achievement Step Into The Arena which was against a Frost Mage and Shaman.

We then spent the rest of the evening in the arenas, I need a victory in the Ring of Valor, in fact I haven't even had a match in there yet, in order to get the achievement World Wide Winner. Considering it's brand new to me winning 40% of the matches we did, makes me feel pretty happy. My favourite win was against 2 Frost Mages and the funniest loss must have been against a Resto Druid and a Frost Mage. The Frost Mage had about 25% health left and I made a mistake which basically allowed him to be healed and after a long fight I died, they then ganged up to kill husband on his Disc Priest and it took them a further 10 minutes to kill him! He kept running out of line of sight and fearing them, in the end it was the fact he'd run out of mana that allowed them to kill him. Nevertheless, it was funny giving that team the run around and making them work really hard for their victory. My fastest death was to a Warrior and my fastest kill was against a Hunter...in fact in every team we came up against with a hunter we won.

Everytime we lost a match we discussed the tactics for beating it next time, and we are having alot of fun in the process. Even though I've reached the conquest cap for the week, we're going to continue having matches because its good experience and enjoyable - even when we lose.

When I first started playing WoW, I hated all aspects of PvP thinking it was completely "disgusting"' and it took me ages to just do my first battleground. If I had thought then, that in a few months time it would be my favourite aspect of the game I would have just laughed, no way in a million years was I going to PvP.

(nervously awaiting my first arena match)

(stalemate so the other group left the arena)

(winning score against a Warrior and Rogue)

Winged Guardian

"When you take to the skies astride a blazing, eagle-winged lion, your comrades will know you mean business.  Serious business.  So saddle up, because the Winged Guardian will travel as fast as your riding skill will take you."




Well, it didn't take me long to cave in yesterday and purchase the new mount: the Winged Guardian. Can you blame me? He looks so cool flying through the air. I even waited in the queue for 20 minutes to buy it, sad perhaps, but I don't care.


I even got a few whispers even though they had already started to become very popular. One person whilst in the Isle of Conquest said to me "very cool looking mount, it just doesn't suit WoW," me thinks...jealous much?

“Don't think of it as being outnumbered, think of it as unlimited target selection”

It's been about a month since my last post, and I think that's the longest break I've had since I started the blog. It's also been the longest break from the game I've had.

I cant say for sure what happened, I just got bored of running the heroic dungeons, especially since they are a walk in the park and I've just completely off PvE, perhaps I'm just burnt out but I just don't feel like struggling through the new Zul instances...the struggle through the other Cataclysm heroics is still fresh in my mind. I'm sure I'll be back in the land of PvE, but for now I'm having a ball in PvP.

I got my DK to 85, and she's almost fully PvP geared and she is pretty much unstoppable. Husband has specced his Priest in Discipline so between us we've become untouchable as well as unstoppable. We've just made ourselves a 2v2 team, it'll be ages before we are ready and I'm not even sure if a Death Knight and Priest are a good combination but I really want to give it a try. I'm not bothered about winning, I'd just like to see whats involved, as the PvP side of the game until now has been very much neglected by myself.

Last night we had just gotten out a battleground and still flagged for PvP when we zoned into Tol Barad Peninsula for the daily quests, we were happily minding our own business about to bomb some boats when 3 Alliance players happened along. They were all in the same guild and obviously grouped together, but not flagged for PvP. Husband said "I wonder if they will attack" and with that, the Paladin decided to rush in. They obviously thought between the three of them they could take the two of us...but they were delusional. Their Death Knight decided to attack me and it became a competition between the two of us and despite also having the Paladin and the Hunter on me, the Death Knight died and then the hunter went down and the Paladin shortly after. They made a massive mistake. All three attacked me and left my husband free to heal me. They must have been so frustrated that their hits were just being absorbed. We thought they would come back and have another attempt once they had resurrected but they didn't. By this point they were flagged for PvP so we did think about going back and doing it again, but we figured their pride would have already been dented enough. Sadly, these three stupid players are what gives Alliance a bad name, but they certainly gave us a laugh...

Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.

Firstly, an apology for a lack of posts recently. I've had a busy couple of weeks with the bank holidays and of course attending Will and Kate's Wedding ;) and also, I have a little confession to make. Me the hater of all things 'Alt' did not only start a Druid as posted about previously (which I have since abandoned sitting in the 50's) I have started a Death Knight, which is now 79. So that's what I have been doing...in between celebrating Royal Weddings and Easter, I've been pwning (yes, I said pwning) in all aspects of Melee DPS both in Dungeons and Battlegrounds and I'm having a superb time. It has also crossed my mind once or twice - that a Death Knight is not an appropriate name for a girl. Girl's are not Knights. They are Dames. Therefore, I have not a DK but a DD. Yes, Sheorc is a Death Dame ;)

What prompted a Death Knight? Well, Children's Week. Husband needed to put rabbit ears on an Orc female and as there is a minimum level the player must be for the achievement. I decided that a female Orc Death Knight would be the perfect solution. What I didn't bank on was actually finding the class interesting. I decided to level a couple of levels and see what playing it would be like. At first, it took me a little while to get used to the abilities and runes. I mean, wtf are runes? runic power? and why do all the abilities sound similar? However, by the time I left Acherus: The Ebon Hold, I had a better grasp and once it clicked into place, I literally went 'aah.'

At the moment, Sheorc (yes, highly original name I know) is just slicing through enemies before I can complete a rotation, she's topping Recount by a long way and making mincemeat of the Alliance players. I have to say, it's an enjoyable position to be in. From being the healer standing at the back, throwing out a few ranged spells if mana or situation allows, to being up close and personal and whilst I glance at my health bar now and then, its not something I really have to worry about.

One example springs to mind. It happened last night. We entered Warsong Gulch. My Husband had got the Alliance flag and an Alliance player had our flag, it was currently 0-0 and we had a stalemate. Husband was hiding on the roof of our base waiting to cap the flag. The alliance mage with 22k health (I had 16k) was doing the same. The Alliance player had a shadow in the name of a Shaman Healer and was protected by a few others. I was determined that I was going to return our flag. I rode a suicide mission, on my own, expecting to be killed by the gang of alliance but willing to give it my best shot. I armed myself with all my cooldowns and my ghoul pet.

A fight broke out on the Alliance roof between the few players guarding the flag carrier and a few players from our side who had the same intention as me. The flag carrying mage, jumped off the roof to escape the fighting and I took my chance. I jumped down, death gripped him and killed him before his shadow had even time to cast a heal. I returned the flag. Husband capped their flag and it was then only a matter of a couple of minutes before we won.

Now, most of you may think..."yeah, yeah, I do that all the time, what's the big deal?". This is how we differ. I was never a massive fan of PvP, especially on my Priestess. Yes, I enjoyed healing, but I was always the first target and although I could survive a while, if someone was really determined to kill me, it would only be a matter of time. I was always standing at the back, trying to hide and became hesitant, and because of that, I didn't find much enjoyment in the PvP side of the game. Even on my Kitty, I would enjoy stealthing and pouncing but there was part of me that always hung back a bit. With the DK its different, yes, I still die - especially when its 3v1 but I feel that much more confident. In fact, it may not be purely because of the new character I'm playing, but just because my experience of the game is improving. Whatever you may think, I'm really proud for riding straight into an Alliance filled room and getting the flag back - and it left a smile on my face for the rest of the night.

Perhaps it was a fluke, perhaps the mage didn't react as quick as he should have done, but the point is - I'll be willing to try again and as the title suggests: courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.

20 Days of WoW: Day 9

Day 9: Your first blog post:


I remember my first blog post took me ages to write. I wasn't sure how to write or what to write so I spent some time researching a few blogs and two in particular that caught my eye were Sorority Girl Plays WoW and Moments in the Life of a Death Knight, from those I then found links to other blogs.

Even despite this, my first blog post was short and basically introduced my Priestess...if you feel so inclined click here, I hope that my posts have improved with time!

20 Days of WoW: Day 8

Day 8: 10 things we don't know about you:


This is actually quite hard to come up with 10 interesting things that I haven't already mentioned somewhere in the blog but here goes anyway:

1. I have spent 2 days in the Sahara Desert on a Camel
2. I swam with Dolphins in the Caribbean Sea on my Honeymoon
3. When I put on shoes, I always have to put the right shoes on followed by the left...I can't do it the other way around!
4. I play the Flute, Violin and Piano but none of them very well.
5. I have 21 years Performing Arts experience to date including Acting, Singing and Dancing.
6. I went to a meeting to meet a bunch of 15 people off the Internet I had never met before and we all spent the weekend together. I have made some great friends, in particular a person from the USA, I think of her as another sister.
7. I was in a Look-Alike band, I auditioned along with over 500 hundred other girls and I got the spot. We performed a few times and appeared on Sky News and Breakfast TV. I wonder if you can guess who my look-alike was?
8. When I was a child I was a model for the Wedding Photographers Guild - I spent my weekends posing as a Bridesmaid and got paid to do it but I've never been a Bridesmaid in real life.
9. When it comes to reading, I'm a bit of nerd. Its my aim in life to have a personal library filled with all sorts of books preferably with a ladder and looking like this: 
10. I did an 'alternative' First Dance at my Wedding:

20 Days of WoW: Day 7

Day 7: The reason behind your blogs name:

I don't think the name of my blog is very good, but it took me ages to think of something and it seemed like a good idea at the time because I am a girl and I do play WoW, I realise its not as catchy as some blog names out there but i thought that I would be the only person who ever looked at it!

What I would love to do is get someone to create me a drawing/picture of my main character and perhaps my new druid so I can have more of a custom header...if anyone wants to volunteer, I would appreciate it!

20 Days of WoW: Day 6

Day 6: Your workplace/desk (photo and/or description)


In February we moved house and although we are settled in for the most part we still have more serious organising to do. We are using one of the spare bedroom as a study and it makes a change to have a whole room dedicated to playing WoW. We used to live in an apartment and we had a very cramped set up.


In our new study we even have a framed...yes framed, poster of Thrall, and I want to add to our collection but in a way that it doesn't look like a teenagers bedroom. That might take some work. 


Anyway these are our desks:

I sit on the right...i may have a smaller monitor but have a slightly more powerful computer and I have a super cool mouse. (excuse the quality of photos was taken on a very sunny day with my mobile phone)


and a close up of my desk:

So, moving from left to right:

A mug of tea on a coaster that says IT Girl, a selection of costume jewellery that I no doubt was wearing until it began to annoy me whilst trying to play WoW...the only jewellery that i keep on whilst I play is my Wedding and Engagement ring. For some reason, I find that wearing bracelets and necklaces tend to annoy me so as soon as WoW loads...the jewellery is dumped. 

There is also a tube of Deep Freeze Gel, this is because I often log into WoW after coming home from my Bootcamp or Dance class and I usually have an injury of some sort. I suffer with knee problems and shin splints so ice packs and cold gel are my friends. 

Then obviously is my PC. I know it has good gaming specs but I leave all the technical stuff to my Husband who is a Computer Programmer. 

My Mousemat is of Northrend which I pinched from my Husband's Collectors Edition of Wrath of the Lich King. He didn't use it because he already had a cool (and expensive mat) My Mouse is a World of Warcraft Cataclysm SteelSeries mouse. It was a birthday present from my husband and I adore it! Its so big though that its pretty much the size of my hand. It took me a while to get used to it, but its got lots of my useful spells bound to it and it glows pretty colours and I wouldn't be without it now.

On the left of my speaker is a pile of hair bobbles, this is because I have quite long and unruly hair and just like the jewellery, when I need to concentrate the hair has to be away from my face which also explains the headbands which live on my speaker. There is also a  book of stamps. I'm not sure why the stamps are there...no doubt husband used them for something and then just dumped them.

To the right of my speaker is a headset which I use for vent. I tend to only use it when I'm in a raid because otherwise I prefer not to wear the headphones because they are somewhat too big for my head. Its also useful to be able to hear whats happening on my husband's monitor because I can then almost predict the damage coming his way, I can also see things at a glance from his perspective which is actually really useful.

Finally the blue folder is my Raid tactic folder. It contains all my notes about Cataclysm raids which I add to on an almost daily basis. Hiding underneath the folder is a notepad and just out of shot a load of pens and a highlighter.

So now you know where I sit and what I see when I play WoW :)

20 Days of WoW: Day 5

Day 5: favourite items in game:


Green Proto-Drake - it might seem like nothing compared to newer and cooler looking mounts but for me it meant I could get rid of the ugly wind rider. I got my reputation up with the oracles in order to buy the egg, but it took me about 6 eggs I think before the mount actually dropped. When I clicked on the egg and expected it to be aged yolk yet again and instead was the drake my heart leapt.

I can't remember the details now but on the day it finally hatched I'd had a rubbish day in WoW, probably a failed PuG or something. I soon cheered up!

(Deepstone Oil for the win)

20 Days of WoW: Day 4

Day 4: Your best WoW memory:


This is a hard one because I have a few memories that are all up there.

Getting a mount was a notable day in WoW, I'd spent so long running around and it took ages to get anywhere, finally having a bit of speed was amazing and this was then beaten by the day I got my flying mount.

Getting to Dalaran. When Ian first showed me around the game, he flew into Dalaran. It looked amazing...a pretty city, high in the sky and full of people at the level cap on amazing mounts and so it became my aim early in the game to get myself to Dalaran. When the day finally arrived and I made my approach to dalaran, I must have taken hundreds of Screenshots because for me...it meant i had finally arrived in the game. You can see what I thought here.

However, upon reaching the level cap, there was something that I had been waiting to do and that was raid. It was an amazing experience. I was so nervous and excited and even though it was only Baradin Hold for me, it was a major step in the direction I want my life in WoW to take. My thoughts on my first Baradin Hold run.

20 Days of WoW: Day 3

Day 3: Your first day playing WoW:


I remember my first day like it was yesterday. One of the very first quest I had (once husband had explained to me about quests) was to kill an animal of some description so I targeted it and pressed the one attack button i had but I knew nothing about auto attack so i kept turning auto attack on and off, and I died many times. I got frustrated and made my husband complete my quests. I bet he thought at that moment in time that my WoW life would be very short lived. I soon got the hang of attacking though and my next fear was interacting with people.

I knew that the other characters were people in real life, but I thought that included the NPC's too and when I rocked up at Ironforge (yes I had a brief stint on Alliance), husband told me that to find the Auction House I should speak to one of the guards. I panicked. I actually thought that if i clicked on the guard, I would have to talk to a real life person and I didn't know what to say and I didn't want to come across as stupid...lol.

Ah, its amazing to think how far I've come in the space of a few months. Now my days are spent researching my class and reading news about WoW and Blizzard and I even tried to talk Husband into attending Blizzcon this year. (It's not going to happen this year as we are off to Greece in the summer...but maybe next year)

Having said that, I still have so much to learn from big things to little insignificant things, like for example, yesterday i learnt that I could type /mountspecial.

I'm digressing now...

Shortly after I started to play, I decided that having a level cap Priest to follow me around would make life easier so I got my husband to play his main in order to help me level. In order to do that I faction changed to Horde. He had taken a break from the game, because I wasn't interested and within minutes of him logging on he was getting whispered by old friends in game. We joined them in guild (which incidentally is my current guild) but I felt like they would laugh at me, and find me irritating or annoying because i was so new. By then, I'd had enough of the character that didn't feel like mine and cataclysm was due out shortly so I made us re-roll new characters...I took on a Holy Priest (my current main) and husband started a Protection Warrior. We made it to 80, 24 hours before Cataclysm came out. I didn't want to stay in the guild though because I felt so overwhelmed by all these amazing players so we did some stints in truly awful guilds until we started our own. It did quite well as a little social guild and we had a laugh with all the members but sadly, the quality of players was just not good enough and so we made the decision that if Drama would have us as social members...we'd go back. Going back was the best decision in game that we have made.

Maloriak is down

This is just a really quick post to let you know that last night on the Social Raid I got down Moloriak for the first time making it 5/12.

We got down Magmaw on the second attempt and one-shotted Omnotron, and after a few attempts got down Moloriak. We moved on to Atramedes and although we got very close, we didn't manage to get him last night...I'm sure we will next week and have a go at Chimaeron too. We gave Chimaeron a shot last week but it just wasn't happening and I have to keep reminding myself not to panic with healthbars.

Anyway, we made progress on the raid and I'm happy with that.

Introducing... Franzipan

For some time now, I've maintained that I wouldn't want an alt. I felt that levelling up my Priestess was such a hectic and fast process that I would enjoy not having to quest everyday, and I have been. I've still found things to occupy my time with and not feeling the pressure to level has been lovely.

Recently though, husband and I had run through 5 heroics in one day, done a couple of Tol Barad battles and we got bored standing around in Orgrimmar. Now I'll let you in on a secret...ever since Cataclysm has come out I've been wanting to try out a Worgen. I think the running wild looks awful, but nevertheless I wanted to give it a shot...so we started a couple of Worgens.

I started a Druid and Ian started a Mage. I adored the Worgen starting area, I thought the quests were fun and the setting was cool. (I did start a Goblin Warlock but found the Lost Isles to be boring and long winded and I ended up just deleting the character.) The Worgen quests were going well, playing a Druid is a lot of fun...but then we went to Stormwind and it hit me:

I missed the Horde and I missed the guild.

This was perhaps magnified by the fact that all the Alliance I came across in the day I spent in Stormwind were complete idiots and I saw at least 3 guilds with their names spelt wrong - and that, just irritated me beyond belief. Surely if you are starting a guild...you double check the spelling of the name you want, lest you should end up with names such as 'Dragon Slayors'...hmm. Maybe its a fashion thing? Probably not.

So we made a quick decision, faction change was the way forward so husband is now an Undead Mage and I'm a Tauren Druid.  I'm having a lot of fun playing as a feral cat, consistently doing alot of damage for my level and when we ran Gnomeregan and the Tank quit I was able to switch to Bear form until a new Tank arrived..so I'm already loving the versatility of the Druid. I'm also loving dueling the husband...the fights are close but I usually win. :) It is a huge change for me to play a melee class and to some dps...but so far so good and I'm loving it.