I was going to write a post about why healing really is fun now, and how you shouldn’t despair, just wait to get more gear and better groups, why pugs aren’t always horrible… then I decided that everyone else wrote about that already. Instead, here’s a couple of likes and dislikes from my first month of Cataclysm.

Favorite spell: Lifebloom
I’m a Wrath druid, so until a month ago, I only used Lifebloom with Clearcasting for the mana regen. I fully expected to hate the spell, because keeping 3 stacks up on a tank sounded like a pain in the ass. I couldn’t have been more wrong: I love it! The huge bloom is a (literal) life-saver when the tank gets knocked out of range.

Least favorite spell: Regrowth
Get out of here, mana drain with a shitty HoT. If the patch notes are really saying what people believe they’re saying about Empowered Touch, Regrowth will lose its only use: a heal that allows controlled blooms.

Favorite instance(s): Throne of the Tides and Deadmines
Throne of the Tides is so. so. pretty. I love the look of Vashj’ir, even though the underwater mechanics make me cry. While I don’t particularly like the bosses in Throne of the Tides, the graphics more than make up for that.

In contrast, Deadmines is pure fun (especially since Blizzard spared us the long corpse run!). The encounters are well-designed and I absolutely love the “dodge the lines of deadly lightning” game. It surprised me a lot, since I used to suck at stuff like Halion’s beams… turns out, doing it while not having to focus on healing is great!
(Bonus: The first time we went there my guildies bet that I was going to die. I did it perfectly on the first try. They failed. Hah!)

Least favorite instance(s): Grim Batol and Blackrock Caverns
I hate Blackrock Mountain. I’ve always hated Blackrock Mountain. I learned the corpse run pretty fast and I haven’t fallen in the lava yet, but the color scheme is annoying, Karsh is a bitch to do and Beauty is not fun in a group with little to no CC. (They’re taking away some puppies though!)

Grim Batol is just plain depressing, the bosses are nigh-impossible with a bad (or even mediocre) group, and the first few times I wiped there for ages, even with the guild. I did have good experiences lately (a pug that cleared it in less than an hour!), but I’ll never like the place.

Favorite quest (Cataclysm): Saving baby squirrels and deer! (Hyjal)
I’m a sucker for cute things. Even when the cute things are trying their best to run away from me.

Favorite quest (old world): The baby raptor quest line (Stranglethorn).
Still a sucker for the cute. I will be a very angry druid if we don’t get to hear the end of the raptor story.

Least favorite quest(s): The naga battlemaiden quest line (Vashj’ir).
The quests themselves were interesting, the zone looks amazing, but oh my God trying to navigate the levels in that temple. If I have to look for a quest starting point for 15 minutes I get very, very annoyed.

Best racial ever: Shadowmeld
I ninja pull. A lot. Shadowmeld has saved me and my group from death countless times. I really, really miss it when I play my draenei…

Least favorite raid boss: Al’Akir
I haven’t started raiding (hence the lack of favorite boss), but I read about Al’Akir and I just know it’s going to be a nightmare. In Wrath I mostly managed to stay out of Valithria’s portals, but it seems like this won’t be an option now. I might be dumb or out of practice, but navigating in 3D is not my thing. If I couldn’t hit a couple of floaty clouds, dodging them while trying to heal can’t be good.

Least favorite gearing option: trinkets and wrists
Why in the world are there tons of drops for all slots except wrists? It’s not even a druid problem, everyone is complaining about this.
And why did you put an amazing trinket at the end of a rep grind that doesn’t come with a tabard? I’m sorry, Baradin’s Wardens, but I can’t. Dailies are my least favorite part of WoW and I’d rather do Al’Akir until my eyes bleed rather than going to Tol Barad.

I wasn’t excited for Cataclysm. I was really (really) enjoying my raiding break after 6 months of feeling I had to make every raid (due to a lack of healers in the guild). I was really (really) enjoying leveling my hunter in the new world and taking it easy. I was even reading quest text! That hadn’t happened since my first char killed her first 10 kobolds! (Sorry Gerald.)

But Blizzard doesn’t care about my excitement or lack thereof, so launch day came and went, with its login server instability and giddiness in the guild. I’ve been panicking about the guild for months (too many healers, not enough tanks, a pregnancy – not mine -, not knowing who is coming back and in what roles, hoping some people don’t come back at all) and I kept doing it. But after disagreeing with Kurn about guild prepardeness, I did start making some plans, scaled to our 10-man pretty casual level (no spreadsheets :P).

One of the points is that the first raid is scheduled for sometime in January. I’m a slow leveler and it’s somewhat of a running joke in the guild, with people urging me on whenever I’m playing a new alt. This time, I decided to hell with it all. I had enough time until January to get to 85, I was expecting it to be slow, and I wanted to enjoy the ride. So I took it easy, I cleared zones even when I was supposed to start new ones, I barely dungeoned and… I still managed to ding 85 Sunday night. The only concession I made was moving to Twilight Highlands before I finished Uldum, since it was getting late and I had set a goal to be 85 before the new week.

And now it’s time to panic again. After basically running with 2 healers in Wrath, now we have a ton. Inactive and social members came back and they all want to heal… which meant I boomkined a lot. The good part is that the new eclipse is really, really cool. My damage is still shit (my boomkin-main boyfriend facepalmed when he saw my numbers), but I am finally enjoying the spec. The bad part is that I am a healer and the future doesn’t look bright.

On the short term, I have to relearn healing and it looks scary as hell. I started playing my druid mid-Wrath, so I never ever used Lifebloom. I’ll probably need to make a big flashing Power Aura to remind me it exists. I don’t yet understand how all the spells work together. I feel my heals are horribly underpowered. And, since we only have 2-3 tanks in the guild (to 4-5 healers), it means I’ll get to pug a lot. I’m excited at getting to heal again, but judging by the tanks I’ve seen so far… it probably won’t be very fun. (Then again, I can’t wait to troll some idiots again! It gets my blood boiling when someone thinks s/he can boss me around and I love bitching back.) Right now, the one thing that makes me hopeful is the amazing blogosphere. There are so many good druid bloggers who can show me the light, thank Elune!

On the long term, we’ve got some raid balancing to think about. While I don’t hate moonkin anymore, DPS is not what I do, but with the amount of people wanting to heal this expansion… I might have to do it more than usual. We’ll see when we get there, but I really hope some of the would-be raiders will realize they don’t have enough time to dedicate to it… then we can split the healers between main and alt runs and everyone will be happy!

Jen is not a very happy druid at the moment and the most annoying thing is that I can’t put my finger on the reason. But, since it’s Monday and I really, really don’t feel like working, I will try the solution that always works to cheer me up: planning gear upgrades! While she was a baby druid I had immense fun thinking of her future level 80 gear, and I hope this will work again for level 85. First thing: buy that goddamn Therazane rep and stop being stupid about my reps!

P.S. Blizzard, I am not Very Manly!

Holidays are fun and exhausting. Fun because we saw a lot of great places (and great beaches!), exhausting because after the first 3 days I fell dead asleep at 10 (and because a loud 3-year old – not mine – can be hell).

Beach. I has it.

However, I did have my laptop with me and I did manage to find a good wifi connection, so my latest project, no. 4 in my quest to get all healers to 80, Aushra the shaman almost hit 60 while I was in Turkey.

This means two things:
1. I’m having fun! I like shammy healing and I think she will be my new main alt when she gets to 80. Also, OMG RaF is the best thing EVER, totally worth buying a second account.

2. Since my priest on Defias is 66, I am basically doing Outland twice, at the same time. This is not fun. I hope Deathwing sits on Auchindoun because the place is a shithole filled with tanks who don’t understand that if I’m being mana drained I need more fucking breaks than usual (yes, even though 2 hours ago they ran with a priest who could heal blind and one handed and was always on 110% mana).

It also seems like I’m a lucky charm. [That, or actually having main spec healers helps.] The guild is struggling through summer holidays and class balance, so with one healer gone things get pretty tough. Raids weren’t very happy while I was gone, but everything seems to be back on track. Class balance is still not ideal and we’re using a lot of offspecs/alts on occasion, but we are 6/12 in ICC heroic and we also managed to do a bunch of frostwyrm achievements. I’m constantly impressed by how well we’re doing considering we almost never get 10 main spec, main char, 100% sure sign ups… last night we ran with 1 offspec healer, 1 alt tank, and 1 guy who can’t follow instructions or do basic things, and we still got 3 or 4 achievements (mostly 1 shots) and a heroic. We might really get those pretty skeletons after all…

Here’s another beach to end with. Yes, you should envy me because I had a great holiday :D

There is one problem with my guild (aside from the “will we get 10 people tonight or not?”). The problem has caused me a lot of sleepless nights in the past week. We’re too bloody chatty.

Soulbound raids (in theory, at least) from 8 to 11 pm server time. I chose those times because 11 ST is midnight for me, which meant an hour earlier than my previous guild, which meant I could go to sleep earlier and not be a zombie at work.

Easier said than done. All my guildies are so nice that I end up spending 2 more hours on Vent after the raid. Or instead of the raid. Or before and after the raid. It gets worse when leveling alts. We’re RAFing and want to get to 60 before I leave on holiday tomorrow, so me and Valli have been spending every free moment on our alts, and on Vent of course. Apparently our bitching at PUGs is entertaining, because we keep getting company, sometimes Vent-only, sometimes for leveling/boosting. And it’s so goddamn fun that I can’t quit.

Two days ago, it was “boost your friends day”, so Valli’s boyfriend grabbed his mage and took us plus a guildie to a leisurely walk in Uldaman. The place is a shithole as usual, but being led like a pack of hyper sheep was much more fun than an actual PuG. (Fact: men really are better at directions.) After 2 hours of picking up quests, turning in quests, waiting for the dead dwarf to come back to life, I actually started to find “That’s what she said” jokes funny. Went to bed at 1.30, braaaainz at work.

Yesterday, it was “raid called early so let’s get to 50 day”. We helped a druid get her quests in ST done (I have such a soft spot for baby trees), which meant a long, LONG dungeon, with a bunch of uncooperative players who didn’t know what to do and didn’t know how to follow instructions. By the time we were done, I realized it was 2 am and us girls and our shammy had been chatting for 3 hours. Went to bed at 2.00, braaainz at work.

They’re mean, evil people and they’re making me lose sleep. But how can I resist it? We really are girls in WoW too, so we do squee over pretty dresses, grumpy boyfriend was laughing his ass off in the background, the crude jokes were flying, I was being bitched at regularly… a perfect day of WoW-life.

Tomorrow I’m leaving for Turkey, hopefully on a good note: we seem to have enough sign-ups, of the appropriate classes, for the raid tonight, so we’re going to try Deathwhisper and finish our Storming the Citadel heroic.

See you on the other side, with more tan!

This week’s BA Shared Topic is simple: starting over in WoW. Pieces wanted to know what class/race/faction we’d choose if we could start at 80 (or level 1 for those who like leveling).

I don’t know if this is sad or not… but I’d still be a resto druid. Still Alliance.

First off, the idea of having a random class at insta-level 80 is bad – which is probably why Blizzard chose 55 for DKs. All classes have a lot of spells; while it is certainly possible to learn how to use them all in one go, it’s by no means easy. I leveled my paladin as prot/ret, and now that I’m going prot/holy on her I’m finding it hard to figure out all the healing spells and when to use them… and this is the class that can only spam HL and FoL, I can’t imagine trying something like a priest straight at level 80. So, if for some reason I’d have to start on a new account, I’d make a level 80 druid and work my way to getting a viable raiding set again. I might change my offspec… but even though I’m not crazy about moonkin, kitty seems insanely difficult, and tanking really isn’t my thing, so I don’t know.

If I had to level something from scratch (which could actually happen, say I got perma-banned for something), it would still be a druid. Out of my 4 level 80s, she’s by far my favorite. Choosing a class is tricky, you see. I got a mage to 80 and realized it’s not as fun (or as easy to play) as it seemed. I got a paladin to 80 and realized I really don’t like tanking that much, even on an easier class. I got my warrior to 80 and played her a lot, then I realized melee is too much running and I really cba. What if I struggled to level a hunter and realized at 80 that I don’t like the play style? Too risky for me, I’ll stay with the familiar… except maybe I’d try leveling kitty, learning all the abilities on the way might be easier, and at least I’d have gear to choose from before level 60.

As for the faction… while I do think my cow is adorable… Jen the night elf is much, much better. I haven’t seen the worgen female models, but I doubt they’re better than a night elf. Just look at her!

This got me thinking. Angelya really had to start over, due to moving from Europe to Australia, but she RAFed with her husband. If I had to start over, but still live in Romania… tough luck, I’d have to level the hard way, without heirlooms or triple XP. Judging by this blue reply and other similar threads, it looks like we have some sort of anti-gambling/pyramid schemes law that prevents Blizzard from allowing RAF in Romania. I can understand why it’s happening, they’re not going to risk their business just to let me level faster, but it still sucks big time. I’ve never been a fast leveler, and this could be gold for me. I could even play with my friend in Austria and our alts would not be stuck at level 7 for eternity… but noo. Thank you, Romanian law.

On the bright side – I don’t have to start over.. I have alts I’m having fun on, even with the slow-as-hell leveling. I’ve got 4 level 80s and they’re different enough to allow me to play all four styles – healer, tank, ranged and melee. Now I just need more time to actually enjoy them all.

(On the very bright side, I have a 1-2 weeks break from job no. 2, so all my home-time is dedicated to WoW, yay!)

Tuesday was a big day for me: deadline day at job no. 2, which means that the book was delivered and I was free as a bird. Or free as a lazer-cow, at least.

The Moodles are mostly a weekend project, but since it was a non-raiding night, we went out in the world to slaughter some more.

I didn’t mention this before, but in the meantime our guild grew. A couple of our main chars’ guildies remembered they had horde-side alts, and it just so happens that they are in our level range. Naturally, this can only mean one thing: guild run!

We queued on LFG, crossed our fingers and got lucky: SFK, not WC! Since our priest was specced Discipline (when you have a Disc priest main, what alt do you roll?), I went lazerspewpew and we started killing puppies. Ok, blood hungry ghost wolves or something.

As an aside, I usually ninja pull. If there’s a bad place to be, I’m there. Now I managed to run ahead of the tank, but I was safe… safe in the perfect spot to see a pink parrot running down the stairs being chased by half the instance. NOT my fault for once, and revenge for all the times Baloon’s main stealthed in front just to see me run into bosses.

The parrot in all its glory, while not pulling whole rooms.

Because we’re pro, we survived without a scratch, while happily playing the angry pugs:
FFS TANK!
OMG NINJA PULL!
healer wtf u doin???
omg guys u suck!!!

I’m actually surprised we managed to kill the mobs, we were laughing so hard.

Archmage Arugal was no more.

Next up: Deadmines! Our little killing squard pressed on, mooing, laughing, going “FFS HEALS” and discussing English slang. We came prepared with BiS gear and proper enchants and gems (heirlooms and +1 stamina on wrists, plus some Malachite in our bags), we’d all read the strats, we were ready.

…or maybe not. Mr. Smite is srs bsns.

We somehow managed not to pull all the pirates on the boat, we didn’t get an epic parrot, but VanCleef ended up staring at the floor in record time. We’re not progression raiders for nothing…

The evening ended on a high note – literally. Thunderbluff is a dangerous place. Turns out that if you’re on the bridge, trying to get to the shaman trainer… you need to be very careful.

It was a long way down and it ended painfully, with a squashed cow and her kodo. The rest of the group was amazingly supportive: they rofled for 10 minutes and gave detailed descriptions of how much fun they were having IRL. Comic relief, that’s me.

The best part? I was 1 bar from level 22 so I didn’t have any spells to train.

[Picture editing by Pat. Click for big version. Jokes too subtle for me, I'm told, but I hope the rest of you get them.]

Computer problems and lack of time have delayed this post for a while, but rest assured: the cows are doing their thing and rocking Azeroth.

We’re going to be dungeon-leveling, so the first and foremost goal was hitting level 15. But our hunter was late, so me and Truffles starting playing the “Make Lurky dance” game.

We waited. Nothing.

Truffles tried to dance with him, maybe he gets the hint.

Nothing.

She tried intimidation.

It didn’t look impressed.

We both tried to dance… how can you not love two sexy cows?

Didn’t work.

We gave up, got our tardy hunter and went our merry way, slaughtering the fauna of the Barrens and wondering what the hell were the developers thinking when they created the damn quests. Luckily, we’re three terror machines so the only problem we had was boredom and trying to keep track of what everyone needed. (Seriously, did they really have to ask us to bring 3 pieces of each mob on the map?)

(Of course, when Lucky finally decided to dance, I missed the screenshot.)

After the most boring walk in history, escorting a slow-ass elf to Ratchet, we hit 15 and went headfirst into RFC. Taragaman was vanquished and there was much rejoicing. We even convinced a pug to pose for our kill shot.

(Click for bigger version)

A couple of dungeon runs and a handful of quests do wonders, so before long we were hitting more milestones.

Sadly, it was getting late for our little cows, so we just posed for the camera, waved and went to sleep.

P.S. This is what happens when someone a 10-year old* rolls a tauren.

Truffles has a /moo macro. I think she tried to moo bosses to death a few times.
*We could try explaining to people that we’re not actually 10, but they wouldn’t believe us.

P.P.S. My convincing worked, so from now on the boyfriend is in charge with making our boss kills pretty. He refused to play with us, so at least he can make himself useful outside the game.

I don’t care much about the Lunar Festival (visited all the elders once, never again!), but Khi had a good idea: we bloggers can act like elders for a few days and bestow our knowledge on the noobs. (I use noob as an endearing term, not as in “OMFG u noob GTFO”).

My first brilliant idea was to write about general stuff for new players, but that’s been done already and I don’t think I have anything particularly interesting to say. I died a lot in my low levels, so I’m probably not the best example.

Then I wanted to write about acronyms… but it was pointed out to me that it’s been done, and much better than I could ever manage. See wowwiki and this WoW forums thread for a long, long list.

So I settled for a specific topic of the starter experience: money. Unless you’ve got a friend to help you out, you’ll soon realize that money is important, especially when you don’t have it.

Making money from drops/quest rewards
A few basics about item quality or color:
- grey items (poor quality) are mostly useless and can/should be sold to vendors. If you’re low-level (under level 10, let’s say), equip any grey item that’s better than what you’re currently wearing.
- white (common quality) items are either used in professions or can be worn/equipped at low levels. If you’re low level, use white items, they’ll generally be better than greys. Don’t buy white items from armor vendors, they’re not worth it.
- green items (uncommon quality) are usually useful for something; green armor has stats, for example. You’ll find them as mob drops or quest rewards.
- blue items (rare quality) are better than greens and they’re generally your best option gear-wise until you get high in level.
- purple items (epic quality) are rare and very good; most of them drop in level 60, 70 or 80 heroics and raids, and a select few are world drops (they can drop from any mob, anywhere).

You can read all about it in way, way more detail here.

Anyway, we’re not talking about gear, we’re talking about money. The golden rule is: Never throw anything away. Ever. Seriously. Sell everything you get, even grey items, every spider leg and bear bone.

In order to do that… you need to use golden rule 2: Get bigger bags.

Sadly, this won’t be very easy as a low-level, because even the cheapest vendor-sold bags have a quite steep price. I would suggest to gather the cloth that drops (linen, wool, silk etc) then find a tailor to craft bags for you. They won’t be very big to start with, but any addition to the 16-slot backpack is good. Also check quests: some of them reward bags – Digging Through the Ooze for example.

Tips:
* If your bags fill up, go back to a vendor and sell everything before you continue with your quest.
* If you’re one of us lazies, use an addon to automatically sell all your grey items. I have Reagent Restocker which (in addition to restocking reagents, obviously) makes it easy to get rid of all the junk in my bags.

* Before entering a dungeon, make sure your bags are as empty as possible.
* Whenever you change a piece of gear, sell the one that’s being replaced, don’t destroy it.

Making money on the Auction House
The Auction House or AH is, like the name says, a virtual marketplace where players buy and sell items they have or they need. There are many, many sites dedicated to playing the AH, but my advice stays basic: search for your item on the AH; if someone else is selling the same thing, post yours a little bit cheaper. If no one is… deciding how much to ask can be tricky. I sell low-level armor (up to level 30-40) for 1-2.5 gold or just wait until someone posts the same items, then undercut him.

Things you can easily sell and make a nice profit:
* Cloth – sells almost instantly regardless of type; depending on your server economy, a stack (=20 pieces) of Linen Cloth will go from 50 silver to 1 gold, with other types of cloth selling even better. Cloth drops from all humanoids in the game.

* Bind on Equip drops – up to a level (40 or so), green armor sells very well on the AH. People buy it to disenchant it or for their alts. Blue armor sells well (a couple of dozen gold), but might take more time until someone buys it. If you get one of the rare low-level epics, you’ll be rich, they sell for hundred(s) of gold.
* Cooking materials – this is more vague, but some types of meat sell pretty well. You won’t make a big profit, but if you have time check the AH for the prices on the cooking mats you have and try to sell them.

Making money from professions
If all you’re interested in is making money as fast as possible, get skinning/herbalism or skinning/mining (but not herbalism/mining, as you can’t track both types of nodes at the same time on the minimap). To track nodes/herbs, click on the magnifier icon to the left of the minimap and select the corresponding tracking type.

If you want to get professions that directly benefit your character, pick a different combination, but matching them up the right way can save you money. The way to go is pairing up a crafting profession with a gathering profession that provides the materials needed for crafting. Good choices are: a. skinning and leatherworking; b. mining and blacksmithing, jewelcrafting or engineering; c. herbalism and alchemy or inscription; d. tailoring and enchanting (you can disenchant the gear you make).

Things you can sell on the AH:
* Leather – sells instantly and for good prices. You can get it by skinning mobs or (not as common) from drops. Hides, however, don’t sell very well.
* Herbs – sell instantly and for good prices. You get them from, obviously, herbalism.
* Ores – sell instantly and for good prices. From mining, obviously. Make sure to also check the price of smelted ore – more often than not, bars sell better than ores.
* Low-level crafted green armor – probably any item you craft before reaching 150 skill in your professions will sell on the AH. Rings and necklaces are popular because they don’t drop from quests or bosses in the beginner levels, but robes, cloaks, shoes and everything in between will also sell.

* Enchanting materials – the low-level ones don’t sell that well, but at some point in the game (around level 40) disenchanting greens and selling the mats becomes more profitable than selling the items themselves on the AH. Enchanting materials don’t have a listing cost, while green items do, and it gets quite high. My theory is that if listing the green item costs more than 1 gold, it’s not worth it.

* Vanity items – this works better on RP realms, but even on PvE/PvP realms people want to dress up their bank alts. Winter clothes, tuxedos, dresses, the Indiana Jones hat… they will all sell for a fair price.

I’m sure there’s many, many more ways of making money, but the ones I’ve listed don’t require a lot of time or effort. My baby cow’s already got 60 gold she made by herself, and the effort was minimal. These strategies won’t help you buy a vendor mammoth at level 40, but even selling just one stack of linen cloth can ensure you’ll afford to train all your abilities for a few levels.

P.S. If you’ve got anything to add, don’t be shy! My x-realmed baby priest needs to make money for her epic flying :)

Cows are not everything I leveled lately. Thanks to Love is in the Air, Khrista got a bunch of free levels (well, I paid good gold for the bracelets, actually). Level 40 was in sight – epic mount, dual spec, all the goodies!

I went a-pugging again. I ran SM Cathedral over and over and over (boring, but lots of XP and flowers to pick). Most groups were fine, except for when I ran into a bunch of idiots on my realm. I don’t care to remember the details, but it ended with me leaving and an exchange of whispers and ignores.

Uldaman, on the other hand, was suprisingly easy. I was dreading it a bit, since it’s a dungeon I haven’t run very much on any char, and I manage to get lost even with maps. To my surprise, I got a group of nice, talkative people, who knew the way, didn’t mind the occasional wipes (they even said “It happens, don’t worry”… but they didn’t know we wiped because I was taking screenshots instead of healing, oops) and made the whole experience very enjoyable.

Bouncy tank!

Things seem to have changed since the last alts I leveled in LFG – there’s way more characters with BoA and most players seem to know what they’re doing. I can only be happy about that.

Totally slacking

In the end, all was well. We had…
- the ding…

- …the dual-spec…

- …and the tiger. A white tiger this time, not the dirty pink one in the screenie.

I had a moment of panic at level 39-40, because my only choices were SM Cathedral (/yawn), Uldaman (not hoping I’ll get as lucky the second time) and Maraudon (I’m not touching that place with a long pole), but now I got ZF in the Dungeon Finder, so yay!

Next up, Khrista learn to shadow and hopefully gets to level 50. On my brand new computer I built myself and almost broke but which should be working in a few days OMGPRETTYPIXELS.

So, I made a cow.

I stayed away from the dark side for the longest time. So far, my highest horde is a level 21 paladin abandoned on some server I don’t even remember the name of. And yet, yesterday I spent an afternoon giggling at my cute cow and her two companions, and had an absolute blast.

The trouble with me and horde is… aesthetics. Belfs are hot, but they can’t be any of the classes that interest me. Undead seemed ok, until I rolled one and hated her walk. My troll lasted 3 levels before I decided I can’t play something that hideous, and I haven’t even touched orcs. And then… I saw a couple of drawings of tauren and they suddenly looked very cute. Shaman was one of the classes I hadn’t tried, and my boyfriend’s fresh 80 elemental is pumping out crazy DPS. And since Blizzard gave us cross-faction heirloom mailing and my druid’s spellpower chest was just gathering dust in my bank… Muffin was born.

I wasn’t exactly expecting to play her more than a few hours; my horde alts tend to have that fate. And then there was a herd – my friend Laura and Barry rolled their own taurens, Truffles and Baloon, so now we’re a happy group of hunter, future bear/kitty and future elemental/resto. Leveling is srs bsns, so we already have a guild (Moodles!), big bags, lots of BoA and a burning desire to pwn RFC and DM. I even invested in a new heirloom weapon, because hey, my abandoned alts have emblems they’re not using.

We’re proud level 10s and so far our exploits have included:
* dancing in the happy fields.

* lazying around while bugging friends for charter signatures and deciding which set of BoA gear to use.

* enjoying the view (Mulgore is PRETTY! I never knew!) while yelling “aaaa a level 6!!” (Mulgore has wolves that want to nom level 1 cows on their way to the mailbox).

* obliterating every mob in sight (mobs not pictured because they were dead/about to be dead).

* made friends with an Alliance raid who eventually killed Cairne and left us unable to turn in quests (oops).

The first day was a success, with me getting my earth totem, Truffles getting her bear form and Baloon his first pet, so we look forward to the future!

P.S. Yes, /moo as a cow is hilarious.
P.P.S. Yes, we are very excited. This is what we were doing while at work today:
Jen: i want to go home and moo
Laura: me too!!