Holidays, New Years, and WoW

And everything in between, it would seem!

So, in one quick breath, I hope everyone had a happy holiday and New Years [and didn't get too drunk, I hope!]. And maybe productivity in WoW.

As for myself? I had a lovely New Years -- it was spent with three friends from WoW, and we played cards most of the evening. And a few days afterwords, we went horse riding with them [the third was different though], and that evening, there ended up to be eight of us -- seven us of guildies but we all played -- out for dinner. It was a blast. [Want crazy fun people? Apparently, that guild [and Melbourne in particular] are just filled with them!].

I do find myself apologizing, though. With me in Australia and living with the Aussie [we're still trying to figure out if we want to make it permanent], I haven't really had much time to devote to the blog. I know that real life is first, but it's a blog, something I started because I enjoyed writing about my experiences from WoW, and, if I were to judge by how much I've written, I must not have played at all in the past few months.

But I have.

I've been leveling. Slowly, yes, but doing so anyway. Seventy-seven, seventy-five, and seventy-three for Losse, Kanta, and Mel, respectively, as they are the only three I am somewhat actively working on. Recently, though, I've been making a push on the druid -- Getting pressure from one of the Melbourne people, my old raid leader, to get Losse to eighty and geared enough to off-tank Naxxramas. Kind of looking forward to that, raiding again, but, at the same time, the gearing up and then getting stuck in a schedule of living around the raids isn't appealing. Still though, it ought to be fun. For once, I have a raid awaiting me and I won't be doing instances/heroics forever until I get really lucky... For Burning Crusade, I only managed to get into the raiding life five months before Wrath came out. It should be interesting and a nice change. Losse is feral again, as well, which makes levelling easier. She's been back to tanking/DPSing for quite a few levels now [since 72 or so] and it's been lovely. I've converted Kanta to healing, so I have a tank and a healer about the same level.

Shaman healing is... different. It took a while for me to actually settle into shaman healing, remembering my shields and forgetting the fact that I don't really have HoTs, so I have to pay more attention to healing... but now that I'm used to it, it's not really that bad. A bit more interactive than druid healing, a bit more reactive, but good in its own way. It makes me almost interested in trying a priest and a paladin healer, just to see how healing differs from character to character... But naw. I have one squishy character already [being the mage] and I don't need another... and paladins? I could never really get into them. I think it's the lack of real ranged abilities that turn me off from them. Also, though, I realized recently that I have five characters to get to eighty, gear up, and raid with eventually, and I hardly need another.

Oh, and I'll point out that being able to fly again is wonderful. I really missed it.

Somewhat back to the shaman: I'm dreading leveling her to 77. I'm currently broke [it's the leveling professions thing that I'll mention again here shortly], and the Kanta doesn't have a flying mount of any sort, nor the training [having been 63 when Wrath arrived, she went straight from Outlands to Northrend and didn't stop to buy a flier as she didn't need it]. Having all three of my high level characters -- back in Burning Crusade -- with epic fliers, I know that I'm going to want to get Kanta her epic flier as soon as I can... which means that I may just have to start doing a lot of quests. Which I hate.

It ought to be a fun experience... unless I can find friends... -ponders that one-

Anyway! I think I found one of the more useless minor glyphs out there: Glyph of Pick Lock -- although, reading up on it in Wowhead, it tells me that I would save... 1308.75 seconds in training from 1-350. Joy. Well, if you need it, my Dae can make it for you... Until then, I'll laugh at the glyph. Unless one of you guys can convince me of its usefulness?

As to professions in general?
I will say that leveling Leatherworking, Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, and Tailoring at the same time is awful. Sure, one gets greens/blues from two of them to dust, but there just doesn't seem to be enough dust to go around [even after one has wheedled greens from their friends]. It's slow going, all of them, and highly irksome.

I'm excited about the patch though, and its changes to Enchanting:

Many high level enchantment recipes have had the amount of Infinite Dust and Greater Cosmic Essence requirements significantly reduced, but with Dream Shards being added to them.

Meaning, from now until the patch, I hoard all of my mats. If people want enchants, they can use their mats. It's a fantastic change [after all that I've got as donations from people] and I'm rather excited about it.

That's an update, and a few odd notes here and there... and with that, I'm off to bed. [One-oh-four in the morning!]