A wild blog post appears!

I'll be honest with you I completely forgot I even had a blog until someone mentioned it the other day. I decided to log in and saw several new comments and discovered I still have several hundred visitors every week despite having not updated since July (Seriously? July, are you for real?) and that made me feel pretty bad! While I really only use my blog for myself it still makes me sad that people would visit and not find anything new. Sorry guise!

The Pre-Warlords patch (6.0.2) The Iron Tide came out last week so I've been busy collecting BoA weapons from Heroic Garry for all of my characters. Although I have been having a lot of connection issues since the patch which has left a bit of a bitter taste. I really hope things are fixed for next week. Still, I can't believe WoD is almost finally here and I'm really excited!

Back in March I wrote a post containing a list of things I'd like to do in game before or during WoD. Lets take a look back and see what I managed to get done and what I completely forgot to do!

Challenge Modes - I completed these on both my Priest and Shaman! Which were the only two sets I really liked. I was mega late to the CM party this time around but plan on doing them much sooner in WoD.

Learn how to play and Re-roll Horde fit perfectly into each other. A friend on Twitter joked about me moving to his server and re-rolling Horde to join his raid team. Several months down the line and I've done exactly that! I transferred my Priest (main) to join my already ninety Paladin on his server and used my WoD boost on a Hunter. I transferred my namesake DK (Soco) and an old abandoned Shaman over to join them. These will be my five characters throughout WoD. I'm going to try my absolute best not to level or play any other characters. My altaholism had gotten beyond a joke in MoP. I finished Vanilla with 2 x 60's. BC with 6 x 70's. Wrath with 9 x 80's. Cataclysm with 12 x 85's and MoP? I've honestly lost count. I think around 17. I recently deleted six level 90's from an old Server. I'll allow myself to level one more alt from 1-100 in WoD but only if I really really have to. In theory I should be much better at my chosen classes. I'm already a much better Ret Paladin than I was a year ago although I'm still Baddy Mc Badderson as melee.

Clearly not everyone's happy about the Belf army I've accidentally created.

Loremaster - I completely forgot I wanted to finish the last three achievements. I completed the old version and had tasked myself with doing over all of the new zones since the cataclysm. Desolace, Stonetalon and Feralas remain uncompleted.Oops!

Achievements - I've gotten a lot more raiding achievements done over the past few weeks. I had stopped raiding during heroic DS so only did LFR throughout MoP meaning I missed out on all of the raiding achievements. I did Heroic Terrace of Endless Spring a few weeks ago with @pixieburst from Twitter as well as Siege of Orgrimmar. I only have to finish off getting the Klaxxi buffs to get my mount! This weekend we plan on going to Throne of Thunder so hopefully I'll get a few from there and be a bit closer to the getting the mount from the meta.

Brawlers Guild - I completed Brawlers as well as Deck your collection and the previous achievements! I plan on doing the updated version at 100.
 

Giant Dinosaur Bone - These are now BoE but I'm at 4000. Part of me wants to continue to grind the rest but a bigger part of me wants to just buy them and be done with it because I'm lazy. I'm not sure which side will win out yet.  

Domination Point Commission - I finished this and got my pet :3
 

So we had some wins and some losses. All in all I've been having a pretty good time in WoW recently. This week I've been leveling pets for the Celestial Tournament something which I've been putting off for ages. I finally hit 200 mounts. I'm finally back on the Horde where I belong and I've joined a guild and intend on returning to Mythic raiding in WoD with a great group of people and my fiance <3.

What's everyone else been upto? Did you complete things you wanted to do before WoD?

To Do list.

This is gigantic if you read all of this congratulations and thanks! 

Zerohour recently wrote a post on his blog Locked, loaded, so why unsub? (he comes across as a total dickwomble but that man has a point.) While I agree with the sentiment of his post. I am one of those people who will likely unsub for a while until WoD but mostly because I want to try out WildStar. Given that I no longer raid the lack of new content doesn't really bother me, I am a bit disappointed as I was expecting WoD to be a lot closer than December ("or before").

Zero's post did spur me on to get my ass in gear though! There's a bunch of things I've had on a mental check list for a while. Some I want (or need) to get done before Warlords, some I can continue working on throughout Warlords.

Challenge Modes

The minute I heard about Challenge Modes I knew I would want to do them. However when MoP launched I somehow got it into my head that they couldn't be done cross server. I wasn't prepared to try and pug them because I'm both pretty shy and not entirely confident in my own ability as a player. My Fiance, ex raid team and the majority of my friends all play on other servers. So I resigned to the fact that I was never going to get a chance to do them nor get the awesome Priest challenge mode armor. However thanks to a comment left on my blog (<3) I found out that they could in fact be done cross realm! Since then they've been on my to do list but kept being put off until now.

We started doing them last week with the intention of doing one each week on a Wednesday night and spending no more than two and a half hours on them. We're running with a Prot Warrior who has no mic, Ret Paladin, Warlock, Hunter and me healing on my Priest. On the first week we got Temple of the Jade Serpent and Gate of the Setting Sun. This week we got Shado-Pan Monastery and Stormstout Brewery. We're only going for Gold as neither of us see any point in going for less. On our first night we were a few seconds away from getting Gold on Temple of the Jade Serpent due to a miss timed heroism. We stopped mid way though the last boss and reset the instance, porting us back to the beginning to start over.

On the first night I ran as Holy but I've switched to Disc and I'll probably continue to do the rest as Disc. They're incredibly fun, if you've not tried Challenge modes yet I urge you to do so. We're already planning a second set of characters to do Challenge modes on. Same group of people just different classes. I think I'm going to go with my Mage as the set is gorgeous. It does mean however that I'm going to have to grind some gear for my Mage to get myself some more gem stlots.

Which brings me to the second and third thing on my list. Also 2b on Zero's list.

Learn how to play

Ok so for me this isn't quite as extreme as the examples Zero points out in his post. I can comfortably do over 100k dps on the majority of my alts. However I'm not entirely confident in my ability on most of them.

I'm a good healer. With the exception of Druid I'm fucking terrible at Druid healing I think because I don't enjoy it.
I'm an OK tank.
I'm an OK ranged DPS
I'm a fucking awful melee DPS. I hate the play style.

My fiance and friends are always telling me I'm better than I think I am. Regardless I could be better at all of them.

Going forward into WoD I've decided that I'm only going to play five classes. I don't need 17 level 90's or the other 14 between 85-90. This ties into gold making. Ever since I started making gold I've always focused on having way too many max level characters to churn out daily profession cooldowns. I just don't enjoy that anymore. Cycling though each character doing their farm and daily CD + crafting for so long has taken it's toll and I've become completely bored of the entire thing. Throughout WoD I'd like to at least try to limit myself to five characters. Sure I'll still make gold but by only using those five. I've not decided on which five yet. Only two so far. My Priest and a Hunter. This will also give me an ample excuse to play these classes better.

One thing in this vein that I'd really like to do is the Warlock green fire quests. I'm not a particularly bad Warlock but I'm certainly not very skilled either! 

Re-roll Horde

I started out life in Vanilla as Alliance but the second they brought out the faction change option on the Blizzard store I was off. I loved being Horde it just felt right but I was convinced to return to the Alliance to raid with friends. We later as a group all returned to the Horde but during Cataclysm I went back to the Alliance in favor of better raid progression. Now that I don't raid except for the occasional casual run and with everything being cross realm, I can be whatever the fuck faction I want. And I want to be Horde! Lok'Tar Ogar!

The Godmother has welcomed everyone to join her in leveling a character from scratch without boosting it to 90. You can find information here if You'd like to join in.

I've decided to level a Hunter on my chosen realm destination once I faction change my Priest. I'll happily pay to faction change and server transfer my Priest as she's my main however I refuse to pay for any other characters as none of them are as important as Korla. I don't have the same bond with my alts as I do with her. They're really just classes to me, as apposed to actual characters. If that makes sense? I've decided to level my little Horde Hunter with only the BoA weapon as I felt the xp gain was far too fast. I'm probably going to level mostly though Kalimdor as I haven't done so in a while but I want to complete any zones tied to the Undead first as they're my favorite Horde race. I've done the Blood Elf quests far too many times.

Loremaster

I completed the original Loremaster which was a giant PITA but when they revamped the entire thing in Cataclysm I also went though and completed the new achievements for completing each zone.
I only have Desolace, Stonetalon and Feralas left to complete. My new little Hunter may be tasked with this.

Achievements

I went balls to the wall when achievements were introduced, I had a little bit of a competition going with a friend. But recently I've not really been chasing them. I got exalted with all of the Pandaria factions via dailies, I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed doing them at the beginning of MoP but never stopped to do the achievements tied to them Yak Attack, Getting around with the Shado-Pan for example. I've been working on some of these this week and it's been fun.

The hardest part is actually waiting for the exact daily you need to become available. At the moment I'm working my way though the Quest section of achievements. As I have almost everything in the General section complete. Missing 11 mounts for Mount Parade (200 mounts) and about 50k short from Got My Mind on my Money (loot 200,000 gold).

Within the topic of Achievments I have a bunch of things I need to get finished. I'm missing a load of Pet Battle achievements. I go though phases with Pet Battles where I get really into it then burn myself out on it similarly to archeology. I don't have many more to collect and level but I do have a few. I've also still not tried the Celestial Tournament so that's on the list.

The only thing I'm missing from Reputation is Emperor Shaohao. This is something I'm going to have to devote some serious time to as I don't do the weekly quests. So my reputation is so far behind.

I'm hoping to get a group together later this week or next week to finish off the Pandaria Heroic Dungeon achievements along with the Scenario achievements.

Brawlers Guild 

I've almost completely avoided Brawlers Guild since it's introduction. I think my Priest might be rank four. I'm terrified of being called bad from onlookers. The run back is also a pain if you do die. I'll admit that I'm a terrible Shadow Priest. I have a Shadow spec sometimes for doing dailies and such but for the most part I do them as Holy or Disc. Despite my Priest being my main since BC I've never raided as Shadow only doing the odd Heroic after well out gearing them. I'd really like to learn how to play Shadow and be able to do more than 150k dps. I could complete Brawlers Guild on another character, one I'm more comfortable DPSing on but I want to complete it on Korla. 

Stupid grindy shit

Giant Dinosaur Bone - One of the mounts I still need is from handing in 9999 Giant Dinosaur Bones. Currently at 2000. I've been doing this on my Hunter but not nearly as often as I should be.  

Domination Point Commission - After handing in 2000 of these Proveditor Grantley gives you a Rodent Crate which lets you summon and capture the Sumprush rodent battle pet. Currently at 1.3k.