Screenshot Sunday: I Will Name Him George

I just got a [Phoenix Hatchling] in heroic MrT! He is so cute! I will hug him, and pet him, and squeeze him, and pat him, and pet him, and love him forever.

Screenshot Sunday: Elekktrofied

So, I've been making a huge push to get my shaman to level 70 before patch 2.4 hits. This week's screenshot is from Blade's Edge earlier in the week, back when he was 68. I hit 70 yesterday at 10 days, 3.5 hours, which I figure isn't so bad since a) I wasn't trying to keep a pace, b) I have a tendency to stick him in an in and wander off without logging, and c) a fair bit of his Azeroth leveling happened before the leveling changes in patch 2.3.

The best part about leveling my shaman, in addition to the sheer fun of whacking things in the face and having a short-timer interrupt, has been leveling on rested XP from 61-70. That just rocks.

I've also had a great time leveling enhancement, and will probably keep the spec as I finish out most of the early quests -- I have a tons more to do in Netherstorm, and I haven't even touched Shadowmoon Valley. But the other big push this weekend has been to get my Kara key. Sure, they may be unnecessary in just a few short days, but in the meantime, our Monday newbie Karazhan raid needs a second healer, so I volunteered my undergeared self to the task.

Will I survive? More importantly: will my raid survive? I'll let you know.

You Think You Have Bag Space Issues

He's just a level 70 warlock engineer in full Devout gear wearing his Sunken Temple quest reward, trying to get by in the world.

Screenshot Sunday: Addendum

Screenshot Sunday: Pwned.

Archimonde has us on farm.

Screenshot... Um, What Day Is It Now?

It's been a busy week at Girl Meets WoW, not that you'd know it since I haven't stopped by to share anything. (Oops.) As you can see above, my raid has been working on Gurtogg Bloodboil, and we finally downed him Sunday night.

More accurately, they finally downed him Sunday night, as my main contribution was getting my mage the heck out of the way so that less squishy people could step in. Gurtogg is not a good fight for Firkin -- the raid takes tons of damage, and in the recurring phase two, everyone has a chance at being the tank.

Mages make very bad tanks.

So that puts us at 4/5 Hyjal, 5/9 BT, and in high spirits for moving on to Reliquary of Souls.

On the personal front, I've spent the last week and a half throwing my heart into a new freelance job, which has been cutting into my play and blogging time more than usual. So far it's been incredibly fun, which is a nice bonus on top of the whole paycheck thing. I promise I'll be writing more here though now that I've gotten into the swing of things, so thanks for bearing with me during the downtime.

Screenshot Sunday: Boo!

Right now my raid is in Black Temple working on Teron Gorefiend. BT's my new favorite instance, thanks to cool fight design and some some neat little details like this one, above. At a certain point as you're clearing trash, you enter the room where the Shade of Akama is being held. Without warning, Akama himself (for whom you've previously created a distraction so that he can sneak into the temple) appears out of nowhere, looming over you (especially if you're a gnome!). It's a cool effect, and a fun fight.

All kinds of patch 2.4 excitement is bouncing about the interwebs now that the PTR is up, and I'll be on the PTR and talking about what we have in store, soon.

Update: Gorefiend down, moving on to Azgalor.

Screenshot Sunday: Goodbye to All That

Little Hooloovoo took his leave of Azeroth last night. Having finally dinged 58 on my shaman, it was time to turn in a last few quests and head back to Shattrath.

I'd been making a real push for 58 lately because two of my guild's more prolific jewelcrafters have all but quit the game, causing the AH jewel market to be temporarily thrown into chaos
a few weeks back and (more importantly) leaving Firkin without a lazy in-raid option for getting Veiled Noble Topazes. And trust me when I say this: Firkin goes through those things like candy.

And so began my stint of alting on Hooloovoo, a bright-eyed and not so bushy-tailed super-intelligent shade of blue. He's my first real melee class, and I have to hand it to shamans: they are incredibly fun characters to level. It's just the right balance of pure whack-things-with-a-stick dps with a dash of dps caster and some mana-efficient healing. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with him besides jewelcrafting, but he's been surprisingly entertaining to level so far.

And as for Azeroth? It's gotten a lot more tolerable with all the leveling changes, but I'm still glad to be heading back to Outlands. There's something about all those now-useless factions ticking away as I turn in quests to the Argent Dawn that just makes me grit my teeth every time.

Screenshot Sunday: Death By Spine

Today's Screenshot Sunday comes from the Naj'entus fight.

With SSC and TK on farm, my raid's attention has turned to new encounters in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple. On my mage, I don't really get too excited about Hyjal (yay, another wave of trash!) , but I really like the feel of BT. High Warlord Naj'entus is the first boss in the Temple, and is reached by entering through a crack in the wall and fighting your way through the sewers.

The fight itself is noteworthy primarily for requiring everyone in the raid to have at least 9k health. For mages, this means throwing on all kinds of PvP gear, or old mage tanking gear from the Maulgar fight.

The reason you need at least 9k health is that every 45 seconds or so, Naj'entus puts up a tidal shield, a giant bubble effect that makes him impervious to all damage. In what I consider one of the coolest fight mechanics in the game, there's only one way to break this shield. Periodically during the fight, Naj'entus will throw a needle spine at a random player. (You can see Firkin dead to one above.) Another person in the raid must pull the spine out of the targeted player's body and then throw it to burst the shield bubble. When the tidal shield breaks, everyone in the raid takes 8500 frost damage.

Naj'entus went down for us last week along with Supremus. The first few fights in BT and Hyjal are definitely easier than Vashj or Kael, which is a nice break. As The Boy put it last week: "You've beaten Kael'thas. Here, have a cookie."

Screenshot Sunday Aggro, Oh Noes!

Where was Screenshot Sunday? It's indefensible and kind of sad, really. Like inviting everyone to a party and then not being at home. Plus, it makes the moonkin angry. And you won't like him when he's angry. Could it possibly still be Sunday for some GMW readers? I hope so. I really do.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, all you lucky folks getting tomorrow (today?) off. And for everyone else... well, hopefully you're all asleep by now and reading this on Monday.

Screenshot Sunday: World PvP Remembered

This week's screenshot features one of my favorite moments in World of Warcraft ever, as well as my first real taste of WoW celebrity. Operation: Everything Must Die was a 900+ person world PvP raid orchestrated on Dark Iron by the Penny Arcade Alliance (with which my guild, Annarchy, just so happens to be affiliated).

On November 29th, 2006, just days before dishonorable kills were removed from Blizzard's honor formula, we canceled all scheduled raids in the 12-guild Alliance just moments before they were about to begin, and launched a multi-pronged attack against every major horde city, with additional groups of lowbies sent to Brill, Tarren Mill, and Crossroads.

The shot above is from my mage's archives, and made the rounds of WoW blogs and websites back in the day (in most, you can still see the green bar representing my Brood of Nozdormu rep on Firkin). Just moments before this picture was taken, Annarchy and the Disciples of Divx were stationed at the bottom of Darrowmere Lake waiting for the signal to invade the Undercity, with warlocks providing underwater breathing to everyone as we summoned more people in. As the attacks on other cities got underway, we surfaced and grouped up to charge.

Once inside Undercity, the lag made every cast a thirty-second affair. With the news that Cairne, Thrall, and Vol'jin had bit the dust, we killed Varimathras and had Sylvanas to 50% when the server went down for the first time. Dark Iron never really recovered for the rest of the night.

Thinking back, it'd be nice if Blizzard provided a little more incentive and technical support for large-scale world events like this (fingers crossed for the Sunwell opening events not being as laggy as the AQ gates). Right now, forming a world PvP raid to kill a racial leader gives a small amount of gold per raider, plus a chunk of honor. Though I'm not sure exactly how much you get these days, I do know that I see far fewer capital city raids than I used to; with a few exceptions, people have found better ways to spend their time.

Back in December, Eners on Drak'thul gave a number of suggestions for how to encourage raids to take on the racial leader, instead of abandoning this aspect of the game entirely. His thoughts:

• Boost the gold and honor reward for killing faction leaders
• Create a cool buff (like the Warchief's blessing, or the turn-in for Magtheridon, Onyxia, or Nefarion's head) that would increase honor gained by everyone involved in the kill for the next hour
• Make a new title for players who've killed all of the opposing faction's racial leaders
• Develop a quest or quest line that rewards honor or rare loot for killing racial leaders

Silvais of Dragonmaw server adds one more suggestion to the mix: why not let each racial leader have a small chance of dropping a unique version of their race's mount?

How about you guys: have you raided the opposing faction's capital cities? What kinds of changes would make you want to go mano-a-mano with Thrall or Bolvar?

Screenshot Sunday: Bear Conga Line

Screenshot Sunday is the start of what I hope will become a weekly feature here at Girl Meets WoW. Every Sunday I'll be showcasing some in-game photography or conversation-starting screen caps from my own playtime or from you, the GMW readers.

So if you've got a really unique or interesting shot from WoW you'd like to share, feel free to send it along. But seriously, I mean unique - what's up with the ones at WoWInsider lately? "This is my character waiting to cap the flag in WSG. I was bored, so I thought I'd share that boredom with the rest of you." I know you guys can do better.

This inaugural Sunday screenshot is a leftover from my guild's New Year's party on Dark Iron. Have I mentioned we have a lot of druids? I believe I have.