The Great Noblegarden Egg Hunt 2012

Just a quick note to let you know, if anyone is still out there!

The Great Noblegarden Egg Hunt is on again, hosted once again by the awesome Kamalia.

Sign up here, hide an egg on your blog and join in the fun on Noblegarden Sunday (April 8th)!

For the Children

Firstly, congrats to Rades on winning the Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt for the second year! Also grats to the runners-up Christine and Anslym and a big well done to Kamalia for organising the whole thing this year!

However, Noblegarden is over and we've been thrown straight into Children's Week. These two holidays only run for a week each, so we don't have too much luxury to get the achievements done in time. Leesah didn't do [For The Children] last year - the necessary achievements are quite time consuming, plus it involves one of the least-liked achievements of all the holidays - [School of Hard Knocks].

If you're like me and the thought of capturing the flag and such in battlegrounds scares you to death, I recommend having a read of Cynwise's guide to the achievement from last year. He's done a great job of making it feel more achievable. I'm going to give it a red hot go, anyway.

Good luck to those doing Children's Weeks achievements this year!

Time To Hunt Egg

Happy Noblegarden!

Here in Australia the day is already almost over, but the Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt II is about to begin!

There is an egg hidden on R&R. It's pretty easy to find so I won't give any clues just yet.

If you'd like to take part in the hunt and have a chance to win some great prizes, Kamalia's blog has a full list of participating blogs. You have until midnight UTC on Thursday April 28th to send in your list of egg locations!

Big thanks to all the bloggers hiding eggs this year, and to Kamalia for doing the organising.

Good luck, hunters!

Almost Hunting Season

The Bunnies are busy at work!

Remember the Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt?  Well it's about to happen again. Can you beat Rades and Poneria this year?

Watch this space for more information!

The Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt is Complete!

Time's up! The eggs have been found, and I can now reveal that the two winners are:

• Rades - who sent in his answers first after every update to the list, and even tweeted about the final egg being confirmed before I did!  If I wasn't so impressed with his egg-finding I'd accuse him of hacking my email :P

and

• Poneria - was the second to send a complete and correct list (in a spreadsheet no less) 

Congratulations and well done! I'll put you both in contact with Mason to arrange your prizes.

It was a very tight race, and special mention has to go to Heather, Jaedia, Anea, Iaaiv and Tarinae - you all did so well and thanks for your entries! I'm sorry I couldn't offer more prizes.

Some of the eggs were hidden so well, I have no idea how people managed to find them. Some of the most difficult included Pugging Pally, who stumped a few people by the sounds of it, and WoW Philosophised who linked his Creative Commons License to a Sprite Darter Egg - well done to all who managed to find that one! Which one had you stumped?

Thanks are due to all the bloggers out there who joined in and hid an egg - I recommend you drop by the blogs in the list and maybe add a few to your feedreader - they are the real treasure in this hunt after all!

Also thanks are due to all the WoW Twitterati who re-tweeted the #wowegghunt tweets for me. You're awesome! Also Blog Azeroth and the Twisted Nether Blogcast for helping me gather bloggers :)

I'm interested in hearing your feedback if you decided not to enter the competition - was there too many blogs to look through? Were the eggs too well-hidden? I realise a lot of people may have been away or too busy over the long weekend, but the list is still here so stop by a few blogs and check out the eggs :)

Here's the full list of all the egg locations. I've borrowed Poneria's spreadsheet:

Page w/ Egg	Notes about the Egg's location
http://ahealadinstear.wordpress.com/	Sidebar: in the Single Abstract Noun, I mean, Single Abstract Egg, button
http://altinthefamily.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-cant-wait-for-noblegarden.html	The El Pollo Grande link leads to an egg. =P
http://cannotbetamed.blogspot.com/p/guides.html	At the bottom of the page
http://cynwise.wordpress.com/about/	At the bottom, egg image
http://www.destructivereach.com/about-the-author/	At the bottom of the page, kinda pinky
http://dreambound-druid.blogspot.com/	Sidebar: between 10-man bloggers & other random sites
http://druidmain.blogspot.com/	image on the pages bar (Home, Resources, About Me, Contact Ice, )  Looks like somebody scratched out some background to reveal a golden egg.
http://www.elkagorasa.info/2010/03/shared-topic-starting-over.html	Just before the tilde (~~~~) break, "Now to test my most >>egg<
http://emeralddreamers.co.uk/2010/03/29/bad-aunts-multiple-personalities/	under "Side Effects" there's a link using the word "Egg"
http://wishfullthought.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-main.html	2nd paragraph from the bottom: "Nope, no >>egg<
http://felconcentration.wordpress.com/about/single-abstract-noun/	at the bottom of the page, made out like it's a character in the SAN guild.
http://frostisthenewblack.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/welcome-to-arcane-is-the-new-black/	in the flowchart, in the line above the HURRRRRRRRRRRRR
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/04/01/trollaggedons-coming/	The image is epic: it's Trollaggedon launching a firey egg.  Clicking the image reveals that I've found the egg.
http://healsinheels.wordpress.com/stuff-i-read/	at the bottom, says "easter egg" in binary
http://jadedalt.wordpress.com/blogroll/	Strayegg's blogroll link has been hijacked! :)
http://kamaliaetalia.wordpress.com/party-clothes/	next to the Noblegarden title before the NG pictures (after Lunar Festival & Love is in the Air)
http://killingemslowly.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html	At bottom, firey & with wings
http://lightandleafy.wordpress.com/the-toons/	Under Edainne the level 80 Draenei Priest
http://nether-light.blogspot.com/2010/03/on-arrangement-of-pixels-holier-than.html	The Egg of Mortal Essence
http://www.lorewriter.com/site/	Sidebar: blue egg under currently playing
http://manaobscura.gazimoff.com/	Upper righthand corner, it's a link to "Twegger"
http://mind-blast.net/?page_id=126	Pets & Mounts page, at the bottom
http://oddcraft.net/wordpress/?p=339, http://oddcraft.net/wordpress/?p=434	Almost can't see the bugger!  Below the meta, in the background, there's a dark egg shape.  I've found it on two pages, though
http://www.anea.nu/	Sidebar: next to the RSS & Twitter buttons
http://primalprecision.blogspot.com/2010/04/banes-of-my-existence.html	The icon next to Oracle Egg
http://psynister.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/play-styles-death-knights-for-healers/	at the bottom of the post
http://puggingpally.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/in-other-news-fire-is-still-hot/#comment-356	Rades's comment has a purple & gold laughing Draenei egg
http://www.wow.tartdarling.com/?p=215	in the chart, top right ("Is that a crappy egg I see?")
http://www.sheplayswow.com/about/	horde egg at Caste's feet --> clicking the image leads me to a confirmation page that it's not actually the armory
http://www.storiesofwow.com/my-characters/the-baby-alts/	Between Muffin's feet
http://swiftretribution.wordpress.com/	Sidebar: it's in the Horde symbol of the SAN image button
http://www.owlkin.org/cataclysm/	at the bottom: that evil looking orc egg
http://dailyhunter.blogspot.com/	Sidebar: under the "powered by Wowhead" widget thingy
http://www.brigwyn.com/	sidebar: rainbow egg under all the feed stats buttons
http://www.lazy-sniper.com/?page_id=278	Well, I guess being fish-people, murlocs would, in fact, lay eggs.
http://thephysicianslog.blogspot.com/2010/03/top-ten-things-paladins-can-do-in-bed.html	the lion in front of the druid tree on the right side has it
http://www.therestorationdruid.com/Guides/Druid_guides/Haste.html	at the very bottom, it's a purple egg with a druid tree in it. :)
http://thewowstorm.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/a-dungeon-for-two-and-musings-on-neutral-towns/	The Dungeon For Two etc. post --> link from his name --> this site linked --> sidebar: under picture of Puck the dog, it's Porter wearing bunny ears and holding an Easter basket
http://www.wowhead.com/?blog	Sidebar: down near the "featured"; it's magenta, cyan, green, striped, speckled
http://trollshaman.blogspot.com/p/oh-my-god-i-can-make-pages.html	at the bottom, kinda obvious
http://underwearoptional.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/happy-easter/	the Happy Easter! Link confirms it
http://wowdker.blogspot.com/	wayyyyyyy at the bottom, below the copyright, pink/red & green wavy stripes on it
http://wowinanhour.gameldar.fdns.net/2010/03/epic.html	5th picture down, it's in the lower lefthand corner of the pictured car dashboard
http://www.wowphilosophized.com/	sidebar: next to the TNWiki button, if you hover over the Creative Commons license button, you get the Sprite Darter Egg tooltip from Wowhead
http://youyankityoutankit.wordpress.com/personal-progression/	at the bottom: it has feet!

And now, I shall rest.

Spring is Sprung

First things first - how many eggs have you found in the Great Noblegarden Egg Hunt?  I'm still accepting entries until tomorrow morning my time (midnight GMT Wednesday) so keep hunting!  All the eggs are confirmed as being up now, and some are harder than others, but they are all definately there, and many of them are ingeniously hidden!

Tomorrow I'll post a list of where all the eggs are, and also reveal the winners.

How's your Noblegarden achievement coming along? I must recommend the Noblegarden Guide at Wowhead - it's a comprehensive list of all the items and achievements.

I want to hunt eggs in-game on Aefa to get the rabbit polymorph spell (mostly because of the awesome spell icon), but I want to get the Noble Gardener achievement for Leesah. I find I can't camp egg spawn spots for more than half and hour at a time before I expire from boredom, so it's slow going but I'll get there! I did just discover tonight that the final minutes before maintenance shut-down is a brilliant time to speed-gather - there were only about 3 other people zipping around Brill with me tonight and I got to 100 eggs just before I got disconnected!

In other news, you may have heard that there were some announcements today from Blizzard. I'll just quickly go through the news for Druids. Of course, keep in mind this is all early days and could change completely by the time the expansion is actually released.

Firstly, there was a blue post about changes to dispel mechanics planned for Cataclysm. The MMO-Champion copy of the blue forum post is here.

Basically, Druids are going to lose Abolish Poison. Abolish Disease (Priest) and Cleansing Totem (Shaman) are also getting the chop, which is a shame.  Druids will still be able to cure poisons and curses, probably with one single spell, similar to Cleanse. Resto Druids will also be able to dispel defensive Magic such as polymorph on a friendly player, but we will have to talent for it. 

It will soon become clear what Blizzard is planning for talent changes, because they have also today posted a schedule for information on class changes for Cataclysm.  The information will be released over the next few days and Druids are scheduled for Friday, April 9th.

The last piece of news released today makes me cry, because they will soon be rewarding a new flying two-seater rocket mount for the Refer-A-Friend bonus. We only finished RAF last week!  LAST WEEK BLIZZARD!  /shakes fist at the heavens

Let The Egg Hunt Begin!

Happy Noblegarden, and Welcome to the Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt!

The army of Noblegarden bunnies has been out and about overnight and hidden eggs all over the Blogosphere!

In the blogs listed below, there are Noblegarden Eggs hidden.  The eggs could be hidden anywhere on the blog - in an image, in the sidebar, in a post less than seven days old.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to find all the eggs, then email your list of exact locations to [wowegghunt at gmail dot com] by Midnight GMT, Wednesday April 7th.

The first person to email a complete, correct list of egg locations, wins a character portait drawn by the talented fan artist, Mason Cole.

The second person to email the list, will win a montage image of either Horde or Alliance characters, also by Mason Cole.

There is more information on how to submit your entries in this post from yesterday.

Please make sure you send your entry to [wowegghunt at gmail dot com]!

And remember, the world has a built-in time delay. If you can't find an egg, check back later because there's a chance it's not up yet.

ALL EGGS ARE NOW CONFIRMED!  Send in your complete lists before Wednesday morning Australian time ;)
 
I'd like to give a BIG thank you to all the blogs participating - you guys are what make community events awesome!

Happy Hunting!

List of Blogs

A Healadin's Tear (confirmed)

Alt in the Family (confirmed)

Cannot Be Tamed (confirmed)

Cynwise's Battlefield Manual (confirmed)

Destructive Reach (confirmed)

Dreambound (confirmed)

Druid Main (confirmed)

Elkagorasa the Casual (confirmed)

Emerald Dreamers (confirmed)

Escapist Scrawl (confirmed)

Fel Concentration (confirmed)

Frost is the New Black (confirmed)

Gnomaggedon (confirmed)

Heals in Heels (confirmed)
Jaded Alt (confirmed)

Kamalia et Alia (confirmed)

Killing Em Slowly (confirmed)

Light and Leafy (confirmed)

Light in the Nether (confirmed)

Lore Writer (confirmed)

Mana Obscura (confirmed)

Mind Blast (confirmed)

OddCraft (confirmed)

Oh look, an Alt! (confirmed)

Primal Precision (confirmed)

Psynister's Notebook (confirmed)

Pugging Pally (confirmed)
PW:Bubble (confirmed)

She Plays WoW (confirmed)

Stories of WoW (confirmed)

Swift Retribution (confirmed)

Sunfyre's Nest (confirmed)
The Daily Hunter (confirmed)

The Hunting Lodge (confirmed)

The Lazy Sniper (confirmed)

The Physician's Log (confirmed)

The Restoration Druid (confirmed)

The WoW Storm (confirmed)

The Wowhead Blog (confirmed)
Troll Racials Are Overpowered (confirmed)

Underwear Optional (confirmed)

Wow I'm Lost (confirmed)

Wow in an Hour (confirmed)

WoW Philosophized (confirmed)

You Yank It, You Tank It (confirmed)

Total number of eggs to find: 45! (added Jaded Alt)

Note: If your blog is not marked as (confirmed), please email or DM me to tell me where your egg is hidden, so that I know you haven't forgotten.

Here's my recommendation as an incentive:  Every time you find a blog egg, nom on one of these irl :)

PS. Image at the top of the post was pinched from the World of Warcraft Noblegarden gallery, and is credited to a player called Matticai. Soon I'll have my own Noblegarden screenies and will be able to stop using everyone elses ;)
PPS. Image at the bottom of the post is mine and at my house, and I am going to eat all of them, muahahaaaa!  Ahem.

Noblegarden Egg Hunt: How to Hunt Eggs

Noblegarden is almost here, and that means it's nearly time to start hunting for eggs both in Azeroth and in the Blogosphere!

So far we have over 40 sites participating.  I know I said I wouldn't accept new people after midnight Saturday, but if you sneaky one in sometime today I'll add you to the list ;)

On Sunday (tomorrow!), I'm going to post a list of the participating blogs, then everyone can start hunting for the eggs!

Guidelines for Egg Hunting
Look for eggs all over the participating sites!  They won't be on posts older than a week, but they could be in secondary pages linked from sidebars and so on.

When you have found all the eggs, or as many as you can find, email your list to me at wowegghunt at gmail dot com by Wednesday, April 7th.

To win, you need to have the locations clearly described for each blog.  For example, the egg on my site is in my sidebar, under the blogroll.  Your list might include an entry like this:

Revive & Rejuvenate: http://reviveandrejuvenate.blogspot.com/ Sidebar, under the blogroll.

If the egg is in a post, please post with the specific post URL.  For example, if my egg was in my post from Tuesday, the list entry might be:

Revive & Rejuvenate: http://reviveandrejuvenate.blogspot.com/2010/03/shared-topic-starting-over.html at the end of the post

I will accept spreadsheets :)

Bloggers
Please make sure your egg is up by Sunday, and if you'd be so kind as to email me or DM me on twitter the location of your egg, I'd appreciate it.

What will I win again?
We have two prizes up for grabs, both from the talented artist, Mason Cole.  First will be a commission piece sketch of your character, and second will be a montage of classes from either Alliance or Horde. The first two people to send me a complete list will win!

The winners will be announced on Wednesday, April 7th.

Thanks to @_anea, @pikestaff, @storiesofwow, @tartdarling and @LightandLeafy for the bunny ears images!

Get Ready to Hide Your Eggs

It's only a few days until the start of Noblegarden, and that means it's time to think about where you're going to hide your egg on your blog!

We already have, at last count... 35 Blogs taking part in the Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt! 

There's still a couple of days to sign up if you're interested - it's really very easy, all you have to do is hide an egg on your site on or before this Sunday, April 4th.

I've had a few questions about linking the egg.  You can either link to my confirmation page at http://reviveandrejuvenate.blogspot.com/p/great-success.html, make up your own confirmation, or you can use the page kindly provided by Gameldar at Wow in An Hour!  If you link your egg to http://gameldar.fdns.net/egg.php it will mention your site on the page - go check this link out to see it in action: http://gameldar.fdns.net/eggtest.html.

Don't forget, it is an egg hunt so do try to hide your egg a little bit.  I've just put mine in plain sight in the sidebar so that I can point it out to everyone.

If you could then email me with the location of your egg, that would make my job a lot easier come Sunday when I have to start checking people's entries!

Thank you to everyone who has signed up so far!  There's plenty of room for more blogs to take part so email me or twitter me and let me know if you want in!

Oh, and I'm sorry about the lolcats post earlier - I'm rubbish at coming up with April Fools ideas so I thought I'd go down the silly path instead ;)

Ps. Thanks to @storiesofjen and @tartdarling for supplying the bunny ears images! <3

The Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt

The festival of Noblegarden starts on Sunday April 4 and runs until the 10th.  It involves players hunting for Brightly Coloured Eggs throughout Azerothian cities and the surrounding areas.

In the spirit of the Secret Admirer Project and the Elder Blogging Event, I'd like to invite you to participate in the

Great Blog Noblegarden Egg Hunt!

Bloggers and non-bloggers alike are welcome to take part in this event!

PLEASE NOTE: THE HUNT HAS BEGUN!
Go to http://reviveandrejuvenate.blogspot.com/2010/04/let-egg-hunt-begin.html to see the list of blogs taking part and start hunting for eggs!

Here's what to do:

1. Bloggers, register your name and blog either by sending an email to wowegghunt at gmail dot com, Twitter me @angelya_au or comment on this post by Midnight GMT, Saturday April 3rd.
   
   
2. Somewhere on your site, on or before Sunday, April 4, hide an egg. That's a whole week to register and hide an egg. More information below...
   
   
3. On Easter Sunday, April 4, I will post a list on R&R of all the blogs and sites taking part.
   
   
4. After Easter Sunday, go hunting!  The first two people (!!) to email wowegghunt at gmail dot com a complete list of the exact locations of the eggs, are the winners!  If no-one has located all the eggs by midnight GMT, Wednesday April 7th, the winners will be the two people who found the most eggs.  The winners will be announced on Wednesday April 7th.

Prizes

I'm very pleased to be able to offer not one, but TWO fabulous prizes for the first two people to email me the list. Mason Cole, an artist who draws amazing fan art for Warcraft and other comic characters, has offered to draw a character portrait for the winner, plus a montage of classes for either Horde or Alliance for the person who comes in second. You can check out some of Mason's work at his DeviantArt gallery!


Guidelines for Egg Hiding

The egg on your site could be in an image, a link to an in-game egg, some reference to an egg... basically you need to be creative so it's not too easy for people to just google "egg" and find it, but obvious enough so that people looking for an egg will recognise it!

For example, in my side bar, under the Blogroll of Doom, there is an egg.  Congratulations, you found your first one.  Click it, then come back here. Go on!

There will be a lot of eggy posts around at that time as people post guides for Noblegarden achievements, so in order to not confuse it with those posts, you could have it link to another page that confirms that they've found an egg.  You can use the link to my confirmation page, or save and host the image yourself, or make a different confirmation message, or if you think your egg is obvious enough, leave it without a link. The image is my dreadful handiwork by the way, not Mason's ;)

Please don't hide your egg in a post that's over a week old. People shouldn't have to hunt through weeks of archives (unless they really want to of course).

You could hide your egg on your front page, in your about page, your blogroll, an image in your latest post, your blog header...

There will be more guidelines for Egg Hunters closer to the time.

How to Register your Blog

You can either email me at wowegghunt at gmail dot com, Twitter me @angelya_au or comment on this post with your blog name and address. If you don't get a direct confirmation reply from me in a few days, I may have missed your message and you may not be on the list.  If that happens, ping me again and I'll make sure you're in.

Happy Hunting!

PS. Thanks to Anea and Jen for the images at the top! There are more to come ;)