Sproutling Has Arrived

I'm very pleased to announce that our Sproutling arrived early on Monday morning!

If you'd like to read more about him, head over to The Sproutling.

In the meantime, please excuse the radio silence while I put my feet up for a little while.

Happy Gaming :)

What's Wrong With This Picture?

That's actually the wrong question to be asking here. The correct one is: What's right with this picture?

If anyone actually falls for this dreadful attempt at phishing they possibly deserve what's coming to them, but in case you're wondering:

1. If a Blizzard employee whispers you in-game, it will be a GM with a character name. GM whispers usually pop up in a separate window to your chat frame, and their name is prefixed with <GM>. A level 1 "Blizzàrd" is highly suspect.


2. Blizzard employees never, ever ask you for your account details, either in game or in other communications. 


3. Most GMs I've seen quoted or dealt with tend to have a very good grasp of the English language. This whisper uses the most dreadful grammar I've seen in a while!


4. The site given is not even a Blizzard site. If in doubt, log into http://battle.net to check your account details. 

This public service message was brought to you in the interests of a bit of a giggle. Carry on.

Whine Time

It's the 17th.  That means, apart from the day when people use the Irish national day as an excuse to get trolleyed, it is also Klepsacovic's Whiny Post Day.

I have but one whine today (that's not strictly true - I have a few whines but most of them are due to the 39 weeks pregnant thing and you don't want to hear about that).

See that picture above?  That was from September 16th last year, six months ago. That was the last time I raided with a guild - my guild, or any guild. Some of that was due to burnout, some was due to my guild turning casual and everyone drifting away. Some of course was my own laziness and being unwilling to move guilds when I knew I wouldn't be able to commit to a raiding schedule for much longer anyway.

The point of the whine is, that raiding has always been one of my most favourite parts of the game and I haven't done it in bloody ages.

Phew, glad I got that off my chest!

Ps. Before anyone says, "Ang, quit your whining!" let it be generally known that the raiding break was pretty much totally self-inflicted. I'm hoping to remedy the situation with a spot of casual raiding with the Effers, if I can get my baby druid up there in quick time and, of course, if they'll take me along. 

Resto Cheat Sheet Updated

Since I haven't been raiding or playing Leesah all that much, I've been neglecting my Cheat Sheets. A few things were changed since the last time I looked at it, especially Mastery. I was reminded that I needed to look into this stuff by Windsoar's post about Haste and Mastery yesterday.

As always you can find the Restoration Cheat Sheet at: http://reviveandrejuvenate.blogspot.com/2010/02/restoration-cheat-sheet.html

And, as usual, it's a work in progress and will need to be updated when 4.1 appears. If you have any suggestions or corrections please get in touch.

For Screenshot Junkies

The screenshots we take and admire later really helps us to appreciate the beautiful artwork that goes into the games that we play, even if we don't always see it in our rushing around.

If you've been reading this site for any length of time, you'll know how much of a screenshot junkie I am. The Gallery page barely scratches the surface of the number of screenies I have sitting around on my computer.

I was quite interested to see over the weekend that http://scrntag.com/ has launched its Beta site. It's a new site for collecting screenshots, not just from WoW but also from a whole bunch of games from Rift to EverQuest II. You can upload your shots, then add tags to make them easier to find.  I think it's a brilliant idea and I've been steadily uploading some of mine over the last few days.

Scrntag is the brainchild of Ritual and Rioriel, and is still in Beta so I'm sure there will be some tweaks and changes before the official launch. If you get a chance head over for a look - there's some beautiful images up there already.

If you need inspiration to take screenies of your own, my post on Tips for Taking Screenshots might help you out!

Effin' It

Yesterday, I joined another guild.

My main characters are all still on Nagrand and I don't really want to move them, but the guild has taken a casual turn. I'm on during the day a bit nowadays and things are just so quiet, I thought, there's only one thing for it - I should roll on a US-timezone server and find a guild to hang out with during the day.

Now, I have been reading a bit lately about Alas' guild <Eff the Ineffable>, and despite what Alas may think I do actually think they and the others who I knew to have moved over to join them recently are awesome people. I rolled up a baby Nelf Druid on Azuremyst and asked them if they'd take a casual bum.

So now I have a day guild and a night guild! Hmm, this could get confusing.

I was given such a warm welcome over there that I am sure I'm onto a good thing! I may not ever get a chance to raid a lot with them, but they seem such a lovely bunch of people to chatter with during my daytime that I am looking forward to leveling my new little Druid over there in the next couple of weeks (Sproutling permitting, of course).

The Effers are still looking for people to join their raiding team, so if you're looking for a weekend raiding guild, do check them out!

A New Venture

No, Sproutling hasn't arrived yet! But The Sproutling has - a place where I can write about baby-related things without cluttering this blog up too much.

If you haven't seen Fannon's new blog, Dear Dwarfling, I suggest you go have a read.  It's the inspiration for me to write about my Sprout - yes I totally copied the idea - but imitation is the greatest form of flattery, right?

It's still a work in progress - eventually I'll fix up the backgrounds and banners.  I just wanted to get it out there first.

Normally scheduled Wow-blogging will resume shortly!

Forest of Feralas

Click the image for a 1600 by 900px wallpaper image.

The Forest of Feralas.

Want to see more pretty pictures? Visit R&R's Gallery Page.

The Future of the Rockpool

If you've explored the new Blasted Lands you might have seen them already - the Rockpool tribe, driven out of their homes by the ruthless Bloodwash naga, forced to fight as gladiators in the pits for the enjoyment of gamblers.

It's a sad tale, unless of course, you are a murloc hater.

Angelya, like most characters, did her fair share of dying to murlocs in her early journeys, but even the hardest non-beating forsaken heart couldn't resist the pitiful cries coming from the abandoned baby murlocs.

They looked dry and thirsty so Angelya dragged the crate down to the water, fighting off the Bloodwash as they attacked.

As the crate reached the water, it started to float. The strong currents offshore quickly dragged the ropes out of Angelya's grasp and the crate drifted away from her, further out to sea. Hopefully, those little murlocs would find a better home, away from the oppression they faced on the Red Reaches.

As she watched though, Angelya was struck by a mounting horror that she had just set three tiny murloc tadpoles adrift into the open sea.  What's out there, really?  The Forbidding Sea is vast and uncharted - they could drift for weeks without ever sighting land!

I've discussed this before in a post about Geography - do the Forbidding Sea and the Veiled Sea meet up on the other side? Is there some unexplored continent in between? Interestingly, just up the coast a little there are the ghosts of shipwrecked Gilneans - considering Gilneas is on the other side of the Eastern Kingdoms continents, at the very least that indicates that the currents in these seas must be deadly, unless some magical shenanigans has taken place.

Angelya will just have to hope that the little murlocs are carried north and around to Swamp of Sorrows to join their brethren along the coast there, but not so far north that they end up dodging dragons in Twilight Highlands.

The quest is [The Future of the Rockpool] and you can pick it up at (61.1,63.7).

But now...

The World of Blogs

Did it ever occur to you that each time you open your feed reader, you're taking a trip not just around Azeroth (or whichever online world you're currently inhabiting), but also the real world?

Syl and Larísa recently had the idea of plotting bloggers' locations on a world map, as part of an exercise to see who blogs in a language other than their first. MMOmeltingpot took up the task and it seems it's now become a way to see how bloggers are distributed around the world.

You may or may not know, but I'm a huge map nerd and in fact, make them for a living (up until earlier this week, anyway!  *cackle* Ahem.), so naturally I think this is an awesome idea.  If you're a blogger and haven't seen it already, head over to MMOmeltingpot and show them your support. 

Feet Up

I'm back! The last couple of weeks have been totally hectic but now I've finally started my maternity leave so I can spend some time catching up on things.

What did I miss?  Looks like there was a bit of drama around the place... not so upset about missing out on that, but then again I rarely weigh in on such things so its no great loss.

But now, it's time to stop and have a rest, and work on a few projects that I've been neglecting - the cheat sheets, for example. Watch this space!