BlizzCon 2011! Day 2

So apparently I never got around to finishing this post and putting it up on the interwebz. Since there is going to be quite a commotion around here in the next few days (you should have all the details by next week, if not sooner) I should probably get this post out of the way.

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Day 1 was full of announcements and day 2 was more follow up with Q&A.

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The morning opened with a live raid challenge in which members of Blood Legion (Horde) and Vodka (Alliance) were pitted against each other in a race to Ragnaros’ death. All the trash was removed from Firelands and a special teleportation NPC was added to allow the 2 25-man teams to move directly from boss to boss in an attempt to kill Rag first. Oh, did I mention it was all on heroic?

Remember when we started in FL with our little 10-man groups and we had 3 healers and were struggling to keep some people alive? And then the gear got a little better (and a nerf happened) and we thought we were hot shit for going to 2 healers?

BlizzCon 2011! Day 1

Or… I’m in the Mists of Panderia beta; are you?

More on that in a bit, and as always please head over to either the official Blizzard site for official information or to MMO Champ for more information.

Warning: Long post is long! I’ve tried to highlight keywords, so skim if you like.

The kittens are not helping by sitting on my notes, but these are the WoW highlights that stuck with me:

WoW Annual Pass

The big announcement from the morning ceremony (other than the whole, “oh yeah, the new WoW expansion will be Mists of Panderia”) is the introduction of the WoW Annual Pass. You basically sign up and say that you will continue your WoW sub for a year. You will still be charged monthly, but your sub cannot be cancelled. Any time you currently have in your sub bank counts towards the year.

This feature gives you the following:

These are the people I work with

BlizzCon is this weekend so I will be sure to have Con-goodies to share next Monday, but I wanted to share this little tangent with you all.

And there is a possibility of an event that may or may not be happening in my WoW life. There is so much speculation that I don’t even want to put any of it down “on paper” for fear that it does or does not happen and I will or will not look like an idiot. Yes, it is all clear as mud and a definite maybe. I should know more or less in about 2 weeks, but it’s sort of hanging over my head and coloring things I do and do not do.

So without getting in to what may or may not be, I can say that work has been kicking my ass again.

I work in a department with other Technical Writers. I am currently assigned to the Large, Nasty Project.

I am the only one on the team assigned to the LNP and all I do is work on the LNP. For the LNP I do technical writing, business analysis, process modeling, Quality Assurance, website trending, basically whatever they think would be a fun hoop for me to jump through. For the most part it isn’t bad, just a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo to wade through and even more “hurry up and wait” trying to get schedules and deadlines and deliverables to line up with people giving a rat’s ass about their responsibilities. (Yes, “deliverables” is a word in my job.)

The other technical writers on my team are each assigned a portion of the rest of the business that they support. (Think Customer Service, Production, etc.)

Not dead yet!

Just took an unexpected mini-WoWcation.

More ramblings to appear when I have things to ramble about.

Macro PSA

I like macros.

I am by no means an expert at their creation, but with enough time and puttering about on outdated forums, I can usually get a string of text that performs what I’m looking for.

However, sometimes the game conspires against me.

Case in point:

I’m working on my bizzarro druid. Now I don’t plan on tanking any time soon with her, but I would like to have a taunt available should the need ever arise for me to play the hero and save the healer or something exciting like that.

It’s a taunt so I’ll put it on the T button.

Not Helping: Yarn and Security

The kittens strike again!

I am a crafty sort of person, and will often make gifts for family members.

My father is big on pirates and plans on turning a room in his house into his personal pirate cove.

I came across a piratey sort of craft (of which I will not divulge the details on the off chance that he reads this post before I can give it to him) that involves yarn.

More specifically, it involves small piles of yarn pre-cut into 2 inch lengths.

So I would sit on the couch, crafting away, not noticing a stealthy shape slinking up along the back of the couch.

Raid in Review: Memory loss or Too big for our britches?

Tuesday opened up with a 6/7 clear, three-healed to try and get a new healer some gear.

(The shaman we brought last time has been asked to switch to his paladin so that the paladin can switch to his rogue. No, I don’t try to keep it all straight any more.)

Per our normal strategy, we spent the last few pulls of the evening lulling Ragnaros into a false sense of security.

It was stupid time, so we called it for the evening with plans on returning the next evening.

Of course, half the raid didn’t show up on Wednesday.

Thursday!

Bizzarro WoW: The Young Druid

I finally broke down and made a real bank alt character and am in the process of shifting the bank duties from my night elf druid to the new sucker.

Since my leveling pattern was already screwed over by my leveling-by-cooking/fishing, I’ve decided that dungeons will be the main method for leveling the druid. I’ll quest while in queue, but this is not the character that I will thoroughly experience the Alliance side of the post-Cataclysm world.

I plan on dual speccing balance – resto at 30, and am leveling as balance until I get there.

Druidic issues at level 21: