fantasy – A Pixel Nomad

Catching up On 20+ Years of Content

I have a plan (of course I do) to try to catch up on all of the content that is currently missing from my brand new EU World of Warcraft account. Now, it’s absolutely NOT necessary to play catch up this way, you can play through the current content and be perfectly happy with that – but me, well. I want to try to get this account close to my old account.

Week1 (July 7-13): The War Within (Campaign, Undermine, etc)
Week2 (July 14-20): Vanilla (factions, pets, dungeons, raids)
Week3 (July 21-27): The Burning Crusade
Week4 (July 28-Aug3): Wrath of the Lich King
Week5 (Aug 4-10): Cataclysm & TWW
Week6 (Aug 11-17): Mists of Pandaria
Week7 (Aug 18-24): Warlords of Draenor
Week8 (Aug 25-31): Legion
Week9 (September 1-7): Battle for Azeroth
Week10 (Sept 8-14): Shadowlands
Week11 (Sep 15- 21): Dragonflight

While I do realize that there is a LOT more than 1 week of content in each of these expansions, and there are multiple quests and achievements that take weeks to do – I am hoping I can at least manage the main storylines + dungeons + raids of each expansion within that week, while continuing to complete TWW content. It will depend on how much time I have to play (it is summer, so I do have more time than usual) and how much ‘stuff’ I am doing in TWW, I think. I’m also going to try to complete it all on ONE character, and finally achieve my goal of having one character who has ‘done it all’ as opposed to 60 characters who have done little bits here and there.

There’s no hard and fast rules about any of this, I just wanted a small guideline to get myself focused so that I wasn’t (once again) all over the place. We’ll see how it works out. Some parts I’ve already completed ahead of time, too. Like I went and opened up the Garrison and with timewalking taking place I’ve started doing Draenor dungeons. My gold is also in short supply over here on the EU servers, so while leveling up professions IS on the list, it’s not going to be as carefree and easy as it was over on NA where I have … everything.

In any case, I like this challenge. I like having direction. I really like trying to get everything completed on a single character (I do have 4 characters total, that may expand in the future, we’ll see). Now I’m trying to level up some pets so I can get situated with pet battles.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Mist, Memories, and Mana Potions

I was only trying to queue for the cooking daily.

One click too many and—poof—I was standing in the upper reaches of Hellfire Citadel, wrapped in the vaguely sulfurous scent of The Blood Furnace, wondering why I’d equipped my tea-stirring spoon instead of my proper staff.

“Wait, are you the healer?” asked the draenei paladin at the front, squinting at me as though I might still poof away.

“Er. Yes! That’s me. Auremai. Mistweaver monk, mostly merchant, occasional healer,” I said, bowing. “I dabble.”

The group charged ahead before I could elaborate, which was probably for the best because my last healing run had been before Deathwing redecorated the planet.

I took a deep breath and shifted into mistweaver stance, letting the familiar flow of chi swirl through me. It was like riding a gryphon: you never really forget… but that first jump still makes you question your life choices.

The first pull? A lesson in humility. And combustion.

I targeted the wrong person, cast Life Cocoon on the rogue who hadn’t taken any damage, and managed to roll directly into a Firebomb.

“Gnome down! Gnome down!” the mage laughed, while I extinguished myself with a small squeal and a health potion that tasted like burnt pennies.

But I didn’t give up.

Monks fall, monks rise. And monks—especially gnome monks with a sense of misplaced confidence—improvise.

I planted my Jade Serpent Statue this time (in the right direction!), let Renewing Mist dance through the group like a breeze, and used Vivify so fast my fingers blurred. The tank, bless him, only died once more after that.

“Getting the hang of it, shortstuff,” the rogue grinned after we survived a rather dramatic encounter with a room full of technicians who really needed a union.

“Thanks,” I muttered, cheeks warm, as I ducked behind my cartwheel to dodge another Fel Nova. “Just… channeling the mist. And mild panic.”

By the time we reached Keli’dan the Breaker, I had settled into the rhythm: soothe, roll, heal, repeat. The boss ranted something about destruction, but all I could think about was how very rude it was to yell indoors.

When he finally exploded in a spectacular burst of fel energy (and flair), everyone stood—somehow still alive. Even the mage.

We looted in silence, the good kind, and the paladin finally gave me a thumbs-up. “Not bad for someone who said they ‘dabble.’”

I shrugged, blushing as I tucked a small healing charm into his bag when he wasn’t looking. “Helping people is the easy part. It’s the not panicking that takes training.”

Back in Stormwind, I climbed onto my cart, pulled out my notebook, and jotted down a new idea: Love in the Time of Felfire. Maybe with a paladin and a baker trapped in a fortress together…

Maybe next time I’d heal on purpose. But for now? I had tea, a story brewing, and no scorch marks.

A pretty good day, all told.

Let’s Talk about the Single Button Assistant (spoiler alert, I LOVE it)

Blizzard recently implemented a controversial mechanic to World of Warcraft, where you can attack & cast abilities with a rotation by pressing only one button – but your global cooldown of abilities will be 25% slower thus you’re going to lose some DPS. For example, after looking at some parses, it was a 7% loss in dps on my hunter who uses GSE, an addon that does almost exactly this but also requires a lot of maintenance.

I LOVE this feature. I absolutely love it. This allows people who have disabilities to play. This allows people who are reluctant to try new classes because they don’t know how to play them, a chance to jump right in. Are people going to be rushing M+ with these? Probably, but since they do less dps, it’s going to be painful. Those who are interested in the min/max side of the game won’t use this feature, because it will be a downgrade.

More people in the game is a good thing. More accessibility, also good. Less barriers to playing new classes, amazing.

Don’t like it? DON’T USE IT. No one has to, it’s completely optional. Whether or not someone else is using it has absolutely zero impact on my gameplay – unless I’m doing a high level M+ and in that case I would expect them to be able to keep up with the group no matter what system they’re using, and if they CAN’T keep up in competitive gameplay then I might have an issue.

World questing? Looking for raid? Timewalking? Fantastic.

Does this mean I’ve wiggled my way back into Warcraft?

Well, yes and no. I’ve recently started playing on my EU account – the account that does NOT have all the mounts, pets, or other fun things that my main account has. Why? It has been something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. The time zones are more to my play style, and I have a lot of EU friends. I also gifted the account some game time and the shop sold auction house mount some time ago. While I can’t share bnet balance or gold between EU/NA, I can gift items to the account (has to be a completely separate bnet account). Of course it does make me miss everything I have on my main account so there’s no telling if I’ll actually stick with it (spoiler alert, I won’t) but it has been a lot of fun returning and it feels like a comfortable time to be back. I’m also excited about the future with player housing and all of that good stuff. I’ll just have to take it day by day, and see how things go.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Finding Motivation

I think this has been the longest I’ve ever been away from World of Warcraft, and it’s not really because of the game, but it is because of my lack of community within the game. I used to have some very good friends playing, and now none of them play. I have nothing holding me to the game, I’ve got as much gold as I could ever possibly want, and I’m not interested in the gear grind.

The things that keep me playing EVE Online, or Wurm Online, is the players. I don’t necessarily need to DO things in game with others, but I do like the social aspect of it. I’m also awkward, and don’t know how to act around people very well. Having generic goals in these games is simply not enough for me. HOW to go about finding a guild of like-minded people is another issue. It was just so much easier when I had a static bunch to play with, and I miss that dearly.

This rambling post is for nothing other than solidifying my desire to return to World of Warcraft, and the first step to me doing that was to jump right back into the goblin side of things and get my characters selling again. I’m keeping it more simple than in the past, while I do have two separate accounts with auction house characters on each, I’m only posting with one account for the time being. I have no idea how far behind I am, or what I’ve missed. Or where I should be. All of that is a bit overwhelming to think about. I’d like to move my characters to a roleplay server, and find a suitable community before player housing comes out. I used to love attending roleplay events, and I think I’ll have a better chance of finding ‘my people’ that way.

We’ll just have to see. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

It’s PoP Time, Baby!

This weekend was spent hunting down various named through Luclin, and eventually ending at working for bane weapons to defeat the bosses in SSRA – which we did. It took some time, we had to farm the basement for some green mist ore, do a combine with some shissar weapons, and then actually defeat the named – which I feel was our most difficult encounter so far, because there was a nasty slow that curse that needed to be cured.

Speaking of cured – that’s right, I can now cure. I’ve dropped my beastlord spec and instead decided to go cleric. So at the time of this post, I’m a cleric, ranger, enchanter. Having complete heal at this stage of the game is pretty much a requirement. I’m a ranger for the forage ability (I didn’t want to go druid, and those are the only ones who have the proper forage), enchanter so I can enchant metals for my crafting, and now cleric to help with progression.

Now that Plane of Knowledge is FINALLY unlocked, I can hang out there to tradeskill – except the machines are usually already all being used. Oof. I did get baking to 45 – thank you Batwing Crunchies.

Next? Well, we’ve completed flagging in plane of disease, and plane of innovation – we’ve also taken down thule (I was having too much fun and did not get screenshots of any of this). I believe up next we’re doing the trials of Justice, but I’m not 100% sure. I’m also leveling up my class idol and finally have something in the charm slot.

Over all? Still having a lot of fun – I’m excited about maybe getting into plane of time before too long (this has only been released 2-3 weeks or so now). As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.