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.

20 Days of WoW: Day 2

Day 2: Why you decided to start a Blog:


I had always had an interest in blogging, but prior to starting to play WoW had nothing to blog about.

I thought it would be interesting to document my journey, like a diary I could look back on in years to come and I thought that it might be interesting for seasoned and expert players to reminisce and remember the first time they got a mount or won a duel or dinged at the level cap, or raided. I thought I could make people smile with my tales of complete newness because remember, I'd never played any sort of computer game, or knew how to work a PlayStation or Xbox. I knew none of the basics, I didn't know how to make my character move forward let alone anything else.

I also thought that being a girl would add a slightly different perspective. Ive realised now that you can be a girly-girl and still play WoW successfully and to a high level but nevertheless, I hope my posts are somewhat interesting to read.

WoW is changing for me now, and its all about raiding. Hopefully you will continue to follow my journey in the game.

20 Days of WoW: Day 1

I'd been totally oblivious to the 20 Days of WoW challenge until I saw posts on Moments in the Life of a Death Knight, and was directed to Saga's blog for the list. So here goes:

Day 1: Introduce Yourself:


Well, I probably don't need to write much here, as this blog is still fairly new. I don't have a specific reason for doing this challenge other than i thought it would be fun for me to complete and interesting for people to read...I promise it will get better than this!

My name is Francesca, I was born in the West Midlands, I have a younger sister called Katrina. My Mom is a Primary School Teacher and my Dad was an Aerospace Engineer, he has a Degree in Law and now works as a Support Worker. My Mom's side of the family are Irish and my Dad's side are Scottish.

My early life consisted of dance classes mainly as my parents are ex-professional Ballroom and Latin American dancers. I competed from an early age and despite having taken classes in all forms of dancing, Irish Dancing became my new love and Michael Flatley my idol. The highlight of my Irish Dancing career was competing at the Irish Dancing World Championships. Unfortunately, all the dancing played havoc with my knees and it made sense to give up dancing competitively. However, I still take dance classes every Sunday but in Belly Dancing. Yes, I am a Belly Dancer.

When I turned 13 my parents decided to get out of the 'rat race' and city life so we moved 350 miles away to the West Coast of Scotland, a very rural location that required a Ferry journey to the mainland. The dancing was soon swapped for horses and at one point we had 7. Yes, you read that correctly...7 horses! Ragamuffin, Cochise, Galaxy, Snippet, Isla, Chopin and Hamish. One time when my Dad was putting together a new field shelter, Isla who was a foal at the time decided to pinch a plastic bag full of nails and run round the field scattering them everywhere...funny at the time, but then days followed of us combing the field to make sure none of the horses stood on a nail. We also kept the horses in a field owned by a famous actress, and would often find  a stray paparazzi wonder into the field...Isla was very friendly and loved nothing more than to rear up to say hello...needless to say, the press didn't like being chased round the field like something out of a Carry On.

The quiet and idyllic surrounding soon became an issue as myself and my sister started to grow up. We could get to the mainland to shop and go out but we were restricted to catching the last ferry back which wasn't very late at all. We did have a Cinema in our town but it was in a building nothing more than a corrugated shed which leaked when it rained (which being Scotland it often did) and had 2 screens which showed films around a month after they had been released. However, the town had one set of traffic lights, 2 round abouts and one traffic warden.

The time then came to go to University, so off I went to Edinburgh Uni to study Theology in order to become a Minister with the Church of Scotland, yes honestly, I had plans to be the next Vicar of Dibley ;) I was 17 when I went off to Uni and last a few months before I decided that I wasn't ready to be preaching to a congregation. I did a complete u-turn and moved back down to the West Midlands where I studied for my Law Degree and joining me on my course was my Dad. We spent 3 years sitting next to each other in lectures and exams and fighting over various textbooks..we both passed and I became Francesca LLB (hons) ACIArb.

Shortly after my degree I met Ian on a dating website and we eventually got married. Strangely, his Dad's side of the family is from the same town in Ireland that my Mom's family are from...spooky! He told me about his WoW playing days and various other computer games he liked to play but it was something which held no interest for me whatsoever. Eventually though, I asked him to show me WoW and the rest as they say is history.

So that is me, in a wall of text :)

Level 25 Guild!

We made it sometime around 11.30pm last night Drama, dinged 25. Sadly we were out on realm first by a couple of days, despite that, it's still a great achievement.

In other news it was Social Raid night and we managed to progress a bit further so i have another boss under my belt now. We got down Halfus, Valiona and Theralion and Magmaw on the second attempt of each and got down Omnotron Defense System, after a few attempts. We had a few unsuccessful attempts on Chimaeron and Maloriak, but by this time it was getting late, but I think we shall have Maloriak at the very least on our next raid night.

I was however, lucky with a couple of pieces of loot. I received the Wyrmbreaker's Amulet from Halfus and the waist item  X-Tron Duct Tape from Omnotron. I also had enough Valor Points to get the Heavenly Breeze cloak, so all in all a great night in WoW yesterday, and I'm now sitting at item level 355. :)

Awesome Parents

This weekend was mine and the husband's First Wedding Anniversary so we went away to London for the weekend and had a great time.

Now, I'm always talking about playing WoW but when I talk to people who don't play or have any interest in the game what so ever, it only takes about 30 seconds before they start to fidget and their eyes glaze over...my Mom falls into that category...or so I thought.

Before we went away, she brought round a present and card for us. The present is a gorgeous painting which will fit right in with lounge décor, but the card was a stroke of genius.

Bearing in mind, she doesn't play any kind of computer games, let alone WoW, this was the card we received:

What amazed me the most was the time she spent reading through my recent blog posts and hoping that it made sense.

I just couldn't resist sharing this with everyone :)