My happy WoW life will soon be disrupted by the real world: I start a new job next week. While it’s obviously a good thing, it will also bring something not-so-good – less sleep if I want to continue raiding and much less play time in general. With that in mind, I’ve taken advantage of my last days of freedom to accomplish as much as possible, and it’s been going well. Although I couldn’t finish 2009 with a ding, Shiny hit 80 in the evening of January 1st 2010, making her my 4th level 80 character. Not a bad start for a WoW year, I’d say.

Shinyhooves

A day and a bit later, she’s on the right track: I had a lot of emblems of triumph on my druid, so I invested them in a Breastplate of the White Knight, then I got boosted through the new ICC normals and picked up a cool shield and a pair of pants. Add some ToC normal loot and a pair of T9 gloves to that and Shiny isn’t in bad shape. There’s a lot of work to do, but I have 2 more free days and I plan to get her ready for T8+ raiding at least.

A fresh 80 tanking Onyxia? Yes, completely possible, but as they say at the Oscar speeches, I couldn’t have done it alone. I was lucky to have a boyfriend who let me raid his bank and steal his hard-earned epic gems, a friend with a pally tank main, who told me what gear to get, gave me tanking tips (and led the way and tanked on the drake in Oculus!) and lent me mats, and a bunch of guildies who tagged along to get my ass boosted. Special thanks to Blizzard – catering to the casuals my ass, their approach to emblems and the introduction of the ilvl 219 instances is an awesome thing for the non-casuals too.