As I do every year the week that NaNoWriMo finishes up, I took a week off and decided to do nothing but relax and game, and a LOT of gaming was done. It was basically my ‘calm before the storm’ as December gets under way with the hustle and bustle of Christmas holidays and everything that entails. I had a lot of time to spend working through the finer points of 4.3 which released last Tuesday, and this weekend was spent doing as much as I could with guild mates (a huge thank you to Toargo and Detch who put up with more PUG dungeons than anyone deserves to see in a single weekend).

I enjoy the latest WoW patch but there’s one small issue I have with one of the new features that was added. This probably comes as no surprise to those who are playing, but for those who are not, it’s void storage. See, void storage is supposed to be considered ‘long term’ storage. The problem I currently have with it is that you pay 100g to unlock the void storage slots – and then you pay 25g for every item you put into storage, whether or not you’ve put it there before or not. Also unique items can not be placed there (such as some tabards that you may actually wish to store long term). I’ve come to the conclusion that this is nothing more than an annoying money sink for those who have too much coin. Thankfully I don’t suffer from such an affliction.

The three new dungeons are fun but a little quick and quite simple. You need to do them in order the first time to unlock the next, and out of the three the first one is probably the hardest. ilevel 378 gear drops in abundance and I managed to boost all three of my 85 characters to raid-capable (ilevel 372 using the LFRaid tool) in short time. My favorite encounter is the hourglass fight on the first dungeon where one person in the group gets to re-set time (and you can do this up to five times in the encounter) and you watch everything roll back at hyper speed. It’s a great fight because you get to blow all of your cool downs at once and you don’t take any durability hits for dying because sooner or later someone is bound to die and time will be re-set. I also love the second dungeon, where you stealth around the zone avoiding demons and then eventually fight masses of them all at once while being protected by NPC. The third dungeon is also quite a lot of fun, you escort Thrall and he helps your group. In fact he managed to defeat encounters that my groups have some times wiped on. I think he should just solo the entire zone.

Thanks to all of these amazing dungeon runs the little guild of three managed to ding level 5! This was a huge accomplishment for us, it means we start earning cash for completing dungeon runs and we also earn a little for each mob that we kill and loot (5% goes to the guild bank). It has taken us quite a lot of work to get there, but I’m pleased.

I hope everyone had an amazing weekend, no matter where you found yourself! As always, happy gaming!

O.K so maybe I didn’t exactly kiss a girl, but I did decide it was time to try the Looking for Raid tool that came out with the 4.3 patch – and I have to say, I didn’t hate it. Even though I was in a raid with 24 random strangers, for the first time in a long time I saw communication going on. People were discussing the encounters and what tactics players would need to use in order to survive and win. The first LFRaid dungeon involves four bosses. Players receive 250 valor for defeating the first ‘wing’ and each time you see loot from a mob it locks you from rolling until re-sets on Tuesday – whether or not you actually WIN a piece of loot. I didn’t win any, but the 250 valor was really nice, and I’m looking forward to going again next week. You can continue to run the raid and earn a little coin each time if you’re interested in just learning mechanics or have some sort of raid-craving that doesn’t get fulfilled by your small friendly guild. The encounters are not THAT difficult, but it does require people to know what they’re doing, especially the third boss which involves some slime that needs to be killed in a specific order. If someone calls out the wrong slime that can be a recipe for disaster (as I found out).

I also managed to clear my way through the three new twilight dungeons, which were a lot of fun and quite simple. The first zone is by far the worst of the three, the two that followed were much more simple. The first zone involves some random named and depending on which one you get it can be a bit of a pain. The finally fight in that zone is one of my favorites though and I’ll get into more detail about it in another post this weekend.

For now, it’s time to play! Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

NaNoWriMo is done for another year, and I’m incredibly happy to report that I managed to make my 50,000 words happen on time. I’m even happier to announce that after some editing and a few other process that need to take place, this book will be available in the amazon store as an e-book. I’ll make future announcements about it in early January for those who are interested, and I have to admit, I am incredibly excited. It’s the first of three books I have scheduled to release, and while I don’t necessarily think they’re for everyone, hopefully someone out there enjoys reading the books as much as I did writing them.

As such, I have decided to take the next week off and relax. Aside from the occasional blog post here  and finishing the details on the 2011 Gamers Secret Santa, I am not doing any writing or even looking at anything I’ve written. December is a busy month no matter where you are, and I know that before too long the days will be filled with frantic shoppers trying to force their way through stores, and tempers will grow short over this and that. I think some times we all just need to remind ourselves that we are not in the great rush that we all think we are. Just take a moment and slow down.

This is exactly the attitude I’ve adapted with my gaming. While everyone is rushing out to explore the three new dungeons added in 4.3 I headed to old Burning Crusade raid zones with my guild mates in order to hunt for appearance gear. Our first stop was not a B.C. raid at all, but Molten Core, where we all snagged a handful of neat gear for appearance purposes. Then we headed to two other smaller raids and found ourselves with armfuls of appearance gear. My little shaman has a batman theme going on and I think it looks incredibly cute on her.

“Age of Discovery” was finally announced for December 6th, so if you’re eager to be playing a beastlord the wait is not that much longer. I have been popping in on the Antonia Bayle server to decorate but not much more then that these days. I’m just having too much fun in World of Warcraft (I know, that sounds incredibly wrong, but it’s the truth). As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself, and remember to take a minute or two, and just relax.

Despite the lack of posts, I am indeed still here! I have been busy completing my NaNoWriMo story for this year, I’m 4,500 words away from the goal of 50,000 and considering I wrote 5,600 today I’m not too worried about meeting that number. It’s been a very quick month, November always seems to go by way too fast. As such I’ve barely played Skyrim at all, I just haven’t had the free time. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, a lot of knitting, and I’ve been having a blast in WoW. I know, why am I playing that crummy game, eh?

Well, my little guild is level 4, almost level 5. We’ve been inching our way along doing weekly dungeons since the guild consists of three members. I also managed to get my shaman to 85, which makes her my third 85 character. I really enjoy playing the shaman as both a melee dps and a healer. I’m finally able to enter the ZG and ZA (Zul’Aman, Zul’Gurub) dungeons, and she’s parsing quite well. I started doing firelands quests on her (groans) because the gear would be a significant upgrade, and I’m anxious to see how she performs in PvP since I have never attempted it on the shaman before.

Aside from that I’m gathering the last bits of information to get my 2011 Gamers Secret Santa off the ground, this year has fewer participants than last year but still a nice steady number (75+ people at the time of this post). Then there’s also Christmas shopping for my family which is going a bit slower than I would have hoped, but I’m sure will come together closer to the 25th.

It’s hard to believe that November is almost over. I can’t believe how fast it’s gone. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Hard to believe there is only a week left of November, which means only a week left for NaNoWriMo. I have been trucking along, but due to a series of events beyond my control (ok, if I were less of a klutz they would be in my control I suppose) I’m still two days behind in my writing. I hope to make that up between today and tomorrow, but we’ll have to see how it goes. I’m sitting on 36,000 words to my NaNoWriMo novel so far, and I’m closing in on the last bit of writing a lot quicker than I would have expected, even taking weekends off. The story is one I’m quite happy with and while it does need some work, that’s what December is for. I will hopefully have exciting news regarding this whole adventure some time around the end of December / beginning of January. We’ll just have to see.

When I’m not writing I’m still trying to sneak in some time here and there for gaming, but that time has been less and less these days. I FINALLY finished doing all of the Fireland quest chains, and today obtained my mount. It’s fire-filled, and great. I’ve also been playing Glitch here and there when I can, and I wish I could say that I’ve been playing Skyrim but I just haven’t had the time.

I hope all of my friends who are celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow have a great time of it! I celebrated mine already here in Canada, but that doesn’t mean I can’t live vicariously through all those people enjoying turkey this week! Many hugs.

Remember, if you want to participate in the 2011 Gamers Secret Santa, you only have until DECEMBER 1st to register!