Fiona

aka Rayare/Galileyo from Sauteed Sunfish and Troll on a PowerBook

Love you, Phae, and everything you have done for the druid community and the blogging world.

My first piece of exciting (at least for me) news is this:

I really didn’t think I’d start getting linked this fast, especially since I only have about a week’s worth of posts under my belt.  I am very happy, though!  Thanks, Phae!

My second piece of exciting news is even less exciting for you readers, and is really more of a real-life status update:

In two days I will be getting on a(n) airplane gryphon and flying to the far north east (and by that I don’t mean Silvermoon or Quel’danas….somewhere much more snowy)!  This also means that my entire life will be pushed forward three hours.  By the time I actually get to camp for the night I will have been awake for over 36 hours.  Hooray.

Once I am there I will be taking a week of sorta-vacation before moving in and starting classes again, so just expect a bit more quiet from me.  After that, though, I will be back and blogging a lot more frequently than I have.

So, enough of the personal news.  In Azeroth news we have….

A very happy Valentine’s Day!

The somewhat un-nerfing of Beastmastery?  Read here and here.*

And the announced dual-specs.  I am really looking forward to this change, especially with Rayare.  It will be fun to be either feral/balance or feral/tree so I can easily switch off between instances and solo leveling.  At the moment I am very uncomfortable with tanking in bear form (the only tanking experience I have is on a prot Paladin), so I will feel a lot less pressure having the extra option to heal or mana-dps depending on the group make-up.  That being said, I should really learn how to tank as a bear.  Note that they have not made this change for low levels yet, so there may be a wait before I can try this out myself.  Read here and here.

World of Matt-who-lives-on-NZ-with-Gal is sporting a great post about female gaming and the general female experience, written by one of his co-bloggers.  Sydera is also a tree, so extra props and druid love to her.  I’ve always been taken while playing WoW (and still am), so most of the people I play with know that it is not okay if they try and make a move on me (however you do that in Azeroth).  I do get lewd comments, but I expect that it is from the appearance of my character, and not that they know who is underneath.  Rayare’s current guildmates think I am male, though, but only because it has never come up and I really don’t know any of them well enough to tell them otherwise.  I do have to say that it is nice to be dating a guy who plays WoW.  They get you nice things because they love you, not because you have boobs.**

Finally I wanted to mention a post or two from Amava-who-also-lives-on-NZ-with-Gal about raid-boosting.  Not only is he encountering this within his guild, it is with his own girlfriend.  Controversy and drama, yay!  Personally, I do not think his girlfriend’s case was raid-boosting, but it is a very interesting read regardless.  I have also always loved his gold-chart.  Yay!

That’s it for now! 

*Can’t help my hunter roots.

**My current boyfriend does not play WoW, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  There will be a post about that soon.

Hooray!

The one thing I feel less inclined to level, but am doing so anyway because I gather huge amounts of cloth every time I play her, is first aid.  At the moment she doesn’t really need band-aids because she can just heal in between fights (hooray kitty time).  I can see the advantages of having them, obviously, but even when she gets older (i e Outland and beyond), band-aids are almost too expensive to justify using when she can just HoT herself from time to time.  Unfortunately low level band-aids themselves don’t sell, and plain cloth does.  I’d have to pick between leveling an almost-useless profession and making profit off of all the rogues, hunters*, and mages that can’t heal themselves, not to mention all the cloth-wearing tailoring types.  Just some thoughts.

I still absolutely love fishing, and I spent some time getting the easier fishing achievements.  I ran to Orgrimmar and fished up the Fishing Diplomat, too, which seems like it could be hard, but even at level 23 I know Org so well that it was a peace of cake.  Maybe the guards saw through my Nelfy disguise to the beastly troll within.  Rarr.  I didn’t, however, fish up Old Crafty.  That can wait.  I also loved all the Horde love I was getting.  I was only ganked once, and it was mostly just amusing.  Heh heh heh.  Although I can see where some Alliance would be supremely annoyed, especially once they dump you in the graveyard at Razor Hill (good luck finding your way back, humans).  I know from experience that there is a graveyard in Northern Durotar near the gates of Org.  That’s how we zerge all the Alliance trying to run through the front gates (dumb dumb plan if you want to kill Thrall).  Oh well.

I also realized how much I miss Orgrimmar.  Sniff sniff.

*Hunter shouldn’t need first aid.

I feel a little violated.

There’s an older man who comes into the offices about once a week.  He’s been a volunteer researcher for an enormous amount of years (like many other old people here), so everyone knows him pretty well.  His name is Bob.

Bob does his research at my desk (read: table that I made a ‘Rayare’s Desk’ sign for) and let me tell you – he is just. like. Treebeard!  I am not even kidding, he is a living, breathing Ent!  He breaths very slowly and with a very tree-esque laugh, and he talks ver………..y slow….ly.  He also yawns a lot.

The reason I was suddenly reminded of this awesomeness is because he is currently breathing right next to me.  He’s very nice!

That’s my story.

Bob.

((The computer is mine, and you can see my little sign.  It is also raining outside.  Rare occurrence.))

We travel far and wide to get our delicious herblings.

*

Achievements in two words: Addict, ing, and Bonding.  Three words?

Addict – Although I am always pleasantly surprised to gain an achievement on Rayare, I basically spent most of my gold on the few remaining mini pets I needed to get Galileyo to 50 (and I still ended up falling short, mostly because I haven’t spent time on farming rarer drops).  Even though Gal won’t be joining the big crowd in Northrend, it was nice having gold to spend on alts and random frivolities.  And I am way too lazy (read: proud) to think about doing dailies again (that seems pathetic, being the last geared 70 in Azeroth and going off to kill mostly-defenseless Blood Elves with the baby Death Knights).  I am frustrated that I can’t easily obtain the last few that I need to hit 50, and I am nowhere near having enough mounts for the Albino Drake.  Gal is now sitting pretty at 150 gold.

ing – On Ray the achievements are very happy-go-lucky, although I often find myself eying those harder to get achievements (ones I know she’d never be able to get – can anyone say black war bear at level 23??).  Elder Rayare would be pretty snazzy, especially considering my old guild on Onyxia was called the Elders (I was GM).  Ray has a fun time doing random activities that I essentially took for granted on Gal, and is dinging achievements along the way.  Technically, I never experienced my First Honorable Kill Achievement or many of my professions achievements (the night I leveled from min. to max. in first aid on Gal should have been an achievement in its own).

Bonding – I like that I am suddenly noticing all of these little details about my character.  It makes me feel more in tune with them, and I share a deeper bond knowing the intricacies and inner workings of my other selves.  I was extremely proud of Ray when she got her Expert in First Aid achievement last night, and I loved gaining a reputation as the flower child of WSG and AB when I ran around healing and hugging people.  I think the reason why we play a character is because we feel like they are an extension of ourselves, and I am happy proudly showing off my feats.

I quite enjoy rediscovering the joys of my “firsts.”

*Have I mentioned how much I love the lore behind Stromgarde?  Getting to visit as an ally (rather than an antagonist) was a real treat and worth the long run!

So how are we doing?  Well….

We’ve got an extremely amusing (dry and sarcastic is humorous, but only if done right, and we all know QQ delivers) post from Euripedes over at Critical QQ about Death Knights in battlegrounds.  Hooray for Death Grip!  Personally, after Wrath hit I did two Alterac Valleys on Gal (in the 60-70 bracket), came up against my first couple of Death Knights, and decided I didn’t feel too threatened.   They weren’t much of a problem, mostly because they were lower levels and I was geared.  /Grin.  For the most part it was easy to ignore them, and the only time I really noticed they were around was when they did their giant bubbly red AOE thing, and frankly I didn’t even know if it was theirs or ours.  I did get Death Gripped a couple times, but it really just made me chuckle.  Truth be told, however, I didn’t look to see how many were present on either side, but I’m almost certain I remember there being none in the top half of the damage meters at the end of both matches (we won both).  I would like to go up head to head against one, but it seems like most of them are racing to 80, and I am staying where I am – happily epicced and content with a rather large kitty and some BM lovin’.  Anyway, go read that.  It made me chuckle.

I also really appreciate everything Siha over at Banana Shoulders is doing for us non-Beta Wrath players – i. e. her instance guides.  I find that Siha really knows what she is talking about, whether it be instancing, healing, paladins, or professions.  I always love reading her articles.

Pike is rerolling – what what??  Her hammer-swinging paladin reminds me of how much I loved playing my Blood Elf prot pally Fiali.  And it’s amusing to me that I find myself on the same Battlegroups as her.  I’ve been playing on Ner’zhul and Ony since I got the game, and low and behold Ner’zhul and Silver Hand are both on Bloodlust, and Onyxia and The Venture Co are on Nightfall (both great BG names, by the way).  Great minds think alike, right?  Hello, Pike!  And hey, tons of people from the hunter blog world are transferring to Ner’zhul, too.  Unfortunately they’re all Alliance, but I guess I’m cool with equipping my Orb of Deception and having a party!  What’s up, Amava Amiva, Lassira, and Matticus?

What else can I comment on?  Ah yes, His Excellency Ratshag – I love Kinnavieve!  Well, I love everyone on the Ratshag Team (Palintera being one of my other favorites), and I wish he’d write up longer posts.  I miss all the “Essential Ratshag”-ness of his older posts.  I guess raiding and gearing has got him pretty busy!

Finally, I just wanted to say how much I miss all of my companions.  Gal almost has 50 of them, and Ray has 3!  Ray’s bank alt also has one, but that is for another story….

*For some unknown reason, WordPress put me in a strange time zone, so my last post covering the Wowhead article is from the 3rd instead of the 2nd.  It is going to be strange going back to school and being three hours ahead again!  Also, fish?  ((see below))

**Can kitties roll?

<O<