Hellooooo...

I'm kinda back.

The last few months have been hectic: Ulduar, a guild break-up and a new guild, followed by Ulduar, Ulduar, Ulduar... and a bit of Alliance killing, daily questing and shuddering at the prospect of a raid with Argent Tournament mechanics.

My new guild is awesome: a mostly Czech crowd, I find myself puzzling at words that make no sense to me in Guild Chat, and am able to tune out of Vent until I hear the raid leader shouting "Mithriliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina!". We own, however. Clearing Ulduar up to Yogg-Saron, and additionally we chase down hard mode achievements like it's nobody's business. We recently did Orbit-uary, the first on the server to achieve the Flame Leviathan kill with all 4 defense towers active.

I have respecced to Marksmanship as my primary spec, and am having a ton of fun with Chimera Shot. Elitist Jerks posters reckon that MM now has a higher theoretical DPS capability than Survival in top-end Ulduar gear, but that's not my main motivation. I just love being a Marksmanship hunter again and not having to trouble my brain with Lock and Load procs.

My secondary spec is Bestmastery, which is experimental for the Genral Vezax fight (no mana, no fun... except if you're not a mana user). It looks promising, with Pyjamas enjoying the whole "big and red" mode thing... but I am not sure that maintaining BM as a secondary spec for one fairly easy - if annoying - Ulduar boss fight is a wise investment of 1000 gold. I think I may look into a Marksmanship-based PvP spec for when I am out doing dailies and the Alliance break the peace.

One thing: if Blizzard introduce a raid that is based on the mechanics of those stupid mounts and lances used in the Argent Tournament, I am totally certain that I will refuse to take part in those. I used to think that the Malygos fight was dumb, but the Argent Tournament is even dumber. By far. By very, very, very far.

Catch my drift?

Waiting for Ulduar

Hmmm...

Naxxramas Heroic mode is a walk in the park, with 2 groups from my guild completing full runs every week; all that remain for me there are a few achievements, including an Undying run. Malygos Heroic mode is a bit more of a wipe-fest, but my guild has that down to 3 wipes before we kill him; next up, we need to down him in under 6 minutes. Archavon the Stone Watcher is so easy I forget that it's a boss. And Sartharion is a sissy; we just have a few problems when all three Twilight Drakes enter the fray.

We're clearly not Fusion, but we're a fairly decent raiding guild and will probably clear the achievements in due course.

Since Kel'Thuzad dropped an Envoy of Mortality for me last week there are only two items I would really like to get my grubby little paws on, and those are currently held by Malygos in Normal mode (a polearm) and Sartharion in Heroic mode (a trinket). For the rest I have just about everything I could desire gear-wise, and it shows when I raid. The first line of Recount belongs to me and Pyjamas almost without fail.

Heroic 5-person runs are things I do for guildies or random whisperers when I am bored and need to kill something bigger than a fish lest I go insane - sometimes I can almost see myself and Pyjamas soloing heroics, but that would be a bit too cocky. Still, I often do Heroics with recently-dinged Level 80 players and end up doing over 50% of the damage in individual boss fights as well as over the run of the instance... it's ridiculous what a difference a full Valorous Tier 7 set and accessories make.

Blizzard's decision to release tier raiding content in stages makes some sense, but for those of us who rush into content and clear it relatively quickly, the wait for Ulduar seems almost interminable.

In the meantime, I fish, raid Naxxramas, Malygos and Sartharion, then fish some more... something tells me that a large number of fish feasts will be consumed in Ulduar.

Quick Update from a Slacker

Wow, I've been slack of late.

Not in-game though... my guild reformed after some senior members decided to leave WoW for another MMO, and then we merged with another guild. Cue tons of work, including lots of heroic runs to get to know some of the new members.

On the other hand, we now have two groups running Naxxramas-25 at the same time every week, and that is cool... if we were to put together a "dream team " from the two groups and run the instance with that I am sure we could gather ourselves quite a few achievements.

We also downed Malygos-25, twice now by the time I am writing this. If I were Malygos I would complain about the gear I drop in Heroic mode though; for iLevel 226 it's rather weak stuff.

I have tuned my shot rotations a bit, and will put some effort into posting the new rotations in the near future. An important lesson for me: while a semi-staccato rotation may annoy the senses (especially if you are used to BM's silky-smooth rotations), it really makes sense to WAIT a bit so that you can fire your higher-priority shots rather than fill in a 1-second gap with a lower-priority shot like Steady Shot.

I am following the PTR blogs with some interest - it looks like we are in for a few interesting treats, Survival nerf notwithstanding. If you'd like to see how two hunters are taking to PTR, check the right-hand column and head on to BRK's and Lienna's blogs.

Survival Snipering Shot Rotations

So... it's been the better part of a week. My cats no longer fear a random kick or Scare Beast from me (in-game and in real life), and I have stopped sulking. Eventually.

I am now a Survival Spec hunter, and if you are a hunter playing around with the intricacies of that spec, go over to Lienna's Log right now and read this post until you can recite it from memory. There are a number of ways to craft a raiding Survival hunter build, but there are also many ways to get it dead wrong.

You may like the notion of "trap dancing" - I don't. I far prefer sniping at my target from a billion yards away (but 40 will do), and it works very nicely for me.

A key to successful snipering, however, is having a great shot rotation and smooth transitions between your main rotation and the Lock and Load rotation you switch to whenever that procs.

I have found some that work for me in my current gear, and would like to share that so that others looking for a rotation can give them a whirl to see whether it works for them.

Notes:

• These macros work for me in my gear as it is at the moment, and are the product of hours of refinement and about 1000g worth of respeccing and boss target dummy practice.
• Your mileage will very likely vary, so feel free to use these macros as a basis for your own experimentation.
• Timing is important here to ensure that shots are fired as soon as possible after they are off their cooldown: I have enough haste in my gear that my Steady Shot is casting at 1.6 seconds, close to the GCD. I also have Glyph of Serpent Sting, which causes Serpent Sting to stay up 6 seconds longer - hence LONG sequences in the macros below. This is also a reason why these macros cannot simply be copied and pasted - if you want to use them, take the time to count the durations between shots based on your haste rating.
  
• These are not trap-dancing friendly rotations - they work best with sniping.

"Heavy", CC-breaking Rotation: hard-hitting, but not kind on your mana consumption. Not good around sheep, shackles or other forms of crowd control. This rotation is why my ages-long disdain for paladins is temporarily suspended towards retridins who spam Judgment of Wisdom, because that saves me time in Aspect of the Mana.

#showtooltip
/cast Kill Shot
/castsequence [harm] reset=7 !Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Multi-Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Multi-Shot, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot
/cast Kill Command

"Light", CC-compatible Rotation: not as much dps (for me) and kinder on your mana consumption, but feel free to copy the above one and add in Aimed Shot for your CC-friendly rotation if you have a point in that skill. :-)

#showtooltip
/cast Kill Shot
/castsequence [harm] reset=7 !Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot
/cast Kill Command

Note: The WoW interface may moan if you spam the macro button between the first and second shots in the sequences above, since both are instants. This sounds ugly and causes a warning on your screen, but for now I am solely interested in getting as much of my old, pre-nerf dps back as I can. If the sounds and warnings annoy you, move the Steady Shot at the end of the sequence so that it sits between the first two shots currently in the sequence.

Lock and Load Rotation: Break out of your current rotation and spam this until both free Explosive Shots are flying as soon as LnL procs AND Explosive Shot is almost off its CD, otherwise you may find yourself waiting for up to 6 seconds with only auto shots firing.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=20 Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot, null

Note: the Steady Shot is a placeholder - if your main rotation is using Aimed, use Multi or any other shot (except Arcane) that triggers a GCD here since you only need one extra GCD between the two free shots - as mentioned before, my normal SS cast time is close to the GCD.

Aspect Quick-Switch: Nice to have this one keybound so that you can switch quickly between Aspect of the DPS and Aspect of the Mana.

#showtooltip
/castsequence !Aspect of the Dragonhawk, Aspect of the Viper

Misdirection: This macro will misdirect to your focus, and if you have no focus it will misdirect to your pet (I am trying to write one that will default to the nearest healer, but to no avail).

#showtooltip
/use [target=focus, exists] Misdirection
/use [target=pet] Misdirection

I hope these help, or at least are of some interest! If you have any suggestions for improvements, let me know; we all learn when knowledge and suggestions are shared.

Ouch

The nerf bat hurts.

Even speccing Survival - the "new DPS spec" - and working like a demon in Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff to get the hang of Lock and Load procs, it hurts. Badly.

Damage output is down with the clothies, and leading the damage meters is no longer a certain thing, even in fights that should totally belong to hunters, and would have in Burning Crusade days. Warlocks and mages are back in the picture, and Death Knights who know their stuff totally own the meters now. And our raid utility? Still as close as dammit to zero as it ever was... no CC to speak of, a less-than-mediocre mana replenishment capability, and to get the "better" raid buffs one needs to go back to Marksmanship (now even weaker than in early WotLK days) or Beastmastery - the spec Blizzard had in their sights for the nerf in the first place.

Now we're mediocre-to-good damage dealers in fights that totally suit us, and totally underperforming in fights that don't. Raiding is suddenly not fun anymore.

And let's not talk about PvP... our "insane" damage output used to be just about enough to make up for our inability to deal with any of the melee classes - but now that it's been nerfed to hell and back even battlegrounds hold no pleasure anymore. Without Bestial Wrath and Intimidation to save our sorry, scrawny little butts even the clothies are having a field day against hunters on the battlefield - and the melee classes attack as at will with even more complete impunity than before. (The only melee class that seems to respect hunters at all is rogues, a class whose pupularity seems to have taken a serious nosedive since the expansion, and for good reason. I do pity them, honestly.)

When Blizzard blue-posted on the forums announcing the planned changes, there was an outcry in the hunter community. We knew that the nerf was going to hurt, and we also knew that the scale of the imbalance was nowhere near as large as some had made it out to be. Some people responded very rationally and eloquently among the numerous semi-literate probably-on-drugs posts that followed the original blue post, describing that a minor scaling down would be enough to retain hunters' positions in the fights that were "made for us" - especially as more and more Death Knights, warlocks and warriors were getting the hang of the ways in which WotLK had changed their classes. These well-reasoned posts were clearly ignored by Blizzard (including incredulous cries in response to the new way in which deterrence works - I mean, really... when was the last time a melee class attacked anything from the front without an immediate plan to get behind them?), and now the status quo reigns. /clap {sarcastically}

I suddenly find myself no longer looking forward to the boss encounters I once used to relish, and deriving no pleasure from my PvP breaks in the battlegrounds.

It is probably fair to say that I am hardly even enjoying huntering anymore.

And that makes me sad.

On the Survi Wave...

Walking around Monkey City* it feels odd to see all the old "BM 4 Evah" hunters I used to argue with regarding the raid viability of MM huntering, all comparing SV shot rotation notes and spending tons of cash respeccing again and again to find the magical "Survival Cookie-Cutter Build" that they can spec to from a talent sheet without having to actually do any thinking.

For a moment, I felt as I once had when BM huntering became the "only" raid spec and I adamantly refused to follow the crowds into that talent tree... but this time the mass exodus was from BM and into SV... very strange indeed, and I believe that some Elitist Jerks have a lot to do with it.

Not to be left out, I decided to give it a try - who knows, I might actually enjoy it... Explosive Shot certainly does make for entertaining sniping.

More later, but watching some people having to deal with having something other than Steady Shot in their rotation macros is quite funny... ;-)


* Orgrimmar

Changes... and a RESULT!

I dinged 80 on 20 December last year, and immediately blew about 5000 gold on new gear, enchants and gems at the Auction House in Undercity (fewer gold beggars and spammers there than in Orgrimmar!). Saving up during the last few weeks of Burning Crusade paid off well... I was broke, but my gear was semi-decent.

I joined my first Naxxramas 25-person raid on 23 December and had a great time, although we only cleared the Arachnid and Plague Quarters that evening. I also received my very first piece of Tier 7 gear - lovely T7.5 shoulders! I went on to my first Heroic with some guild mates two days later, and we had a good laugh when the achievement "Emblem of Heroism" was announced for a hunter sporting Tier 7.5 shoulders.

Well before then, I'd had a haircut (well, a colour treatment, really...) and am now a brunette. My natural hair colour suits me so much better, I think. :-) I will update some of the graphics on this blog at some point to reflect the changes, but am currently too lazy.

Pyjamas also received a facelift, and now inhabits the body of one of Har'koa's offspring tamed in Zul'Drak. He looks beautiful in his new skin, and is a nonsense in raids - often out-doing me on the damage meters... and regularly making it into the top 10 list when his contribution is counted separately to mine.

That should provide a clue to more changes that have occurred in my raiding life: I have respecced to Beasmastery, after having seen BM hunters in similar gear to mine seriously outperform me time and again in instance runs. I miss the thrill off MM's high burst damage, but more than one MM hunter in a raid seems unjustified and my current guild has a raiding MM hunter whose status is beyond question.

I am enjoying BM huntering at the moment, even though it is not (and never will be) my first love. I look forward to the rumoured dual-speccing ability that should be an option in the near future so that I can play as MM in battlegrounds and BM in raids.

Tonight my guild achieved a great result: we cleared Naxxramas-25! We had only Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad left after two nights' raiding during the week, and both of them fell to us - naughtily, Kel'Thuzad doggedly refused to be one-shotted, but we downed him on our third try. That was immediately followed by two raid groups clearing Naxxramas-10, and this time Kel'Thuzad was kind enough to drop me my final piece of Tier 7 gear, breaking a head slot item curse I have endured ever since earning my very first piece of Tier 4 from Karazhan such a long time ago. I am now the proud owner of a full set of T7 gear, 3 pieces of which are T7.5.

Hmmm... a Beastmaster hunter running around with over 4000 Attack Power before food and group buffs... oh dear, that is going to open up a whole world of hurt for some of the mobs and bosses in Northrend. I was already doing over 4000dps during relatively hunter-friendly single-target 25-person boss fights (like Patchwerk), and over 5000dps during fights with damage buffs (like Loatheb) before the gear improvements this week, so seeing how my damage output grows is going to be great fun.

Still, I can't help wondering how my current gear (still AP-heavy the way a typical MM hunter would like it... and AP is the new Agi for WotLK BM hunters, didn't you hear?) would work in MM spec... dang, those bursts would be pretty to behold!

But for now, I am a BM hunter dutifully serving my guild's desire to progress - I can always return to MM when we have Naxxramas-25 properly on farm; who knows, my favourite spec may yet spring a few surprises.

Now for Malygos... that stupid darn dragon needs a solid spanking, and I am of a mind to provide it with one that it will never forget.

Fun and Games in Northrend

Wow, it's beautiful... and BIG.

I recently started playing WoW again after taking a break from raiding shortly before WotLK was released. 

(Some break... I ended up raiding end-game content in Age of Conan on my Ranger there. It's not the same... ALL the end-game content in AoC can be completed in 3 nights by skilled crews who aren't even all decked out in purple gear. My Ranger has 2 Tier 2 purples, 2 Tier 1 purples and the rest is all L80 blues.)

To be quite frank, I am gob-smacked at the scale of the expansion. It is massive, and full of interesting places to explore, stuff to kill and new factions to pucker up to. I am having a great time, weird as it is to find myself constantly watching an experience bar again.

I dinged 77 last night and proceeded to purchase my "cold weather" flying license. Spending a few hours just flying around and "testing" new mobs got me halfway to 78, and I plan to finish up the leveling grind this week in time for some serious reputation and instance grinding over the festive break so that I can get some proper raiding going in the new year. Mobs and bosses are NOT going to have a merry festive break, that is for certain.

One thing bugs me though... I found Outland to be a bit of a challenge once I had dinged 58 and crossed through the Dark Portal. The Orcs and demons I was confronted with in Hellfire Peninsula were much tougher than similar-level mobs in pre-BC WoW, and the gear was awesome compared to even some of the pre-BC purple items people had been wearing before.  In WotLK, however, everything just seems to die so easily and the quest gear is just so weak... to the point that I have so far only upgraded a small number of items, mostly only those that add some attack power over what my BC purples used to.

I spent a few hours around L73-74 killing L80 mobs around Dalaran just for the fun of it, and Pyjamas was nearly killing them on his lonesome without any help from me! That is somewhat disappointing - I was expecting enough of a challenge that I would be forced to review my huntering skills, perhaps honing a few skills that tend to get forgotten when you're geared and specced for raiding and don't spend a lot of time killing non-elite mobs unless you're farming.

I have even been soloing 3-player elite group quests without much hassle, with the exception of a small number of boss types that refuse to be trapped and hit hard enough to kill my pets twice (Heart of the Phoenix, of course...) before I get to burn them down. As another hunter with a big red cat might say, foshizzle!

Speaking of pets... Pyjamas is on vacation for a bit, and I have been running around with a beautiful cat called Brighteyes and an odd doggie called Crayon of late. The new pet talent trees work well for me, but I do find that DPS (Ferocity) pets do better at holding aggro off me than Tank (Tenacity) pets. It's wrong, but that's how I find it... with the tanking pet I tried for about half a level I found that it simply couldn't hold aggro once my new shot rotations started kicking in.

And speaking of shot rotations... yum! My current rotations consist of a mana-saving routine starting with a manual sting followed by a /cast Steady - /castrandom Chimera rotation macro and a mana-burning, hard-hitting rotation that includes everything but the kitchen sink: Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Chimera Shot... those practice dummies in Orgrimmar have been earning their keep of late, and Northrend's mobs have been feeling the effects. "Death by Hunter" is a rather swift affair, and I am looking forward to more of those nifty quick bows and guns that seem to be popping up all over the place, now that Auto Shot does not have to be considered in shot rotation macros anymore.

Anyway, that's me for now... I will be posting my new shot rotations once I have dinged 80 and feel that they are nearing raid quality. Keep checking back, I promise to post again soon.

Oh... have a great holiday season, whatever silliness takes hold of you this time of year. And if you find yourself as a Hordie on Ahn'Qiraj, do say hi!

(And if you're Alliance, duck... huntering Alliance types has never been more fun!)

It's all broken!

I normally love patches to WoW - they bring in new content, change the dynamics of a number of classes of character, and generally add some "freshness" to the game on a periodic basis.

But this latest patch went too far: IT BROKE MY MACROS!

Auto Shot is no longer clipped by Steady Shot. That's just wrong! Well, it's a good thing, but now my shot rotations make no sense anymore. Added to that, Aimed Shot is now an instant-cast shot that costs only a little more mana than Arcane, does a lot more damage, and shares a cooldown with Multi-Shot. That means that it could be considered as an alternative for Multi-Shot when doing single-mob damage (when you have to be careful not to break CC, for example).

Dang.

I am going to spend a whole day playing with the new practice dummies in Orgrimmar (haven't checked to see whether there are dummies in Undercity or any other capitals yet) to hone new shot rotation macros, so watch this spot.

Also, the way mounting has been changed, I am going to have to figure a way to get the auto-flying-or-running-mount-depending-on-where-you-are macro fixed.

Actually I love this last patch; it's brought in the WotLK talent tree, and broken stuff so far that I am going to have to get really deepm and techie with my class dynamics again in order to fix things.

Yay!

Pyjamas also loves the latest patch: he gets his very own talent tree! :-D

An Enforced Break

Almost two weeks ago, I was busy losing in Alterac Valley (again!) while waiting for an invitation to wipe on Gurtogg Bloodboil when half my neighbourhood suddenly lost power. All gone, for about an hour, then it suddenly came back again.

When the power returned, however, I realized that the resulting spike had eaten my broadband router as well as a peripheral that I had temporarily connected to my PC without using one of the line conditioners I use for all permanent connections.

You guessed it: the spike jumped from that peripheral to my PC and ate a few cards as well as a hard drive.

The last 10 days have basically been spent awaiting replacement components while I have had to resort to playing Age of Conan on my boyfriend's PC. (I had to promise him all kinds of delights in order to achieve that, some of which he is beginning to enquire about... eeeeew).

What a strange game that is... I know that it is hot off the presses and needs to settle in a bit before it will be all that it can be, but it is so riddled with bugs and memory leaks that I can barely believe that it's not an open Alpha release. It's definitely not stable or polished enough to be a Beta, far less production code.

Still, the story is rather compelling, and when the graphics work (sometimes the rendering is bugged) the story world is really beautiful. I made up a few characters and started messing about in the game, and soon found myself enjoying the whole process of levelling (with new quests that I haven't done before, yay!).

It really is more adult-oriented than WoW is, what with female characters being able to dress down to a paint-on G-string with bouncy bits bouncing when they run (someone has been forbidden to create female characters from now on, the perv!), scantily clad courtesans and half-rotten corpses all over the place and rather gory finishing moves when you score a "fatality" kill.

The fatalities kinda bug me, not for their gory details (limbs flying, heads rolling, blood splattering onto the screen) as much as for the amusement that they cause. There is an especially evil one that my Herald of Xotli character has where she sticks a sword into an opponent's chest, puts her face up against his/hers/its, flexes her muscles and laughs hysterically - it is disturbing in so many ways, and more so because I hope for that sequence (it is one of many "fatality" sequences) everytime I kill a mob.

I was just about to check myself in for some serious counseling when my boyfriend triumphantly announced that all the broken pieces in my PC were now nicely replaced and all my data back the way it should be... so I guess I won't be seeing the world of Conan again too soon.

Logging back into WoW was weird after 10 days of AoC: the gameplay is so much smoother in WoW, the interface far more mature and logical, and even Shattrath City felt like smooth velvet compared to the lag-ridden jerkiness of the world of Conan, even though the rig AoC is running on is pretty much top-of-the-range with more memory and processing power (CPU as well as graphics cards) than you can shake a blood-stained sword at... compared to my WoW rig that was pretty top-grade two years ago but is now looking a bit sad compared to Alienware's latest and greatest ALX models.

Anyway, I am glad to be back in the World of Warcraft, and have a new-found appreciation for the game after spending some time with its latest and loudest competitor.  Still, being a Level 70 feels boring after all the stuff I had to do in AoC to level my characters up and get to know the game world... when the most fun thing about the game is raiding, and you can't raid every night due to work constraints (and the only content you have not yet seen is the kind that requires you to bring 24 friends along), it does become a bit of a drag logging in and doing... well, AV.

Oh well...

(Re. Alterac Valley: I love playing that battleground in PvE gear because it's basically competitive PvE rather than PvP, which means that I get to top the damage list regardless of whether my side wins or loses. My formula is basically: kill Balinda, kill the archers on top of the bunker just north of her, kill the archers in Dun Baldar, misdirect onto a tank (or anyone else nearby... ;-) then nuke the fat Dwarf and hope that Drek can hold out for as long as it takes to finish him off.)

Girls in Games

It's weird being a girl who plays an MMORPG, sometimes.

The world of computer gaming is one that is traditionally dominated by nerdy teenage boys, with a light spattering of "old-timers": men who discovered computer gaming in the 1980's or 1990's and who still play - more often than not somehow employed in the broadest sense of the Information Technology industry or closet IT geeks whose hobbies entail messing about with computers.

Girls of all ages though are relatively rare. It is interesting therefore to see how we are treated when the menfolk realize that they have a creature whose squishy bits are in her shirt rather than in her pants, in their midst.

I seldom announce my gender to people I game or group with, and as a result I escape much of the reaction that some womenfolk receive. I also do not speak on Ventrilo or Teamspeak due to a vocal chord issue.

In my guild, however, we have a rather brave young person of the female persuasion who is less careful about announcing her gender and often speaks on Ventrilo (she has little choice - she is one of our few Tankadins).

The first time she spoke up on Ventrilo, her shrill voice sounded like music to my ears. It was lovely to hear a female voice during a Hyjal raid. I should have noticed that something was amiss though, when the entire channel went silent for a few seconds.

And then it came: 20-odd male voices yelling into their microphones, demanding to know who the squeaky voice belonged to, aghast to realize that they had a real, live girl in their midst, and playing the role of tank, at that.

"What!?! A chick on Vent?!? In THIS RAID?!?"

"What's that squeaking?!?"

"Who's the chick?"

"We are doomed!!!"

"I'm in love, marry me!"

The initial excitement took some time to die down, and the raid eventually got underway. But our female tank was in for a surprise if she expected the raid to accept her as one of them... every mistake she made was ascribed to gender. A "girls can't play" attitude was frequently vocalized, despite male raid members also making mistakes, often more crucial to the wipes we endured than hers. No allowances were made for the fact that it was her first Hyjal raid as a tank.

Moreover, every time she spoke in Ventrilo she was mocked for sounding different.

The raid was not a great success, although we did manage to kill Rage Winterchill - and she did a fine job as an AoE tank.

But the cat was out of the bag, and her life in guild chat and on Ventrilo would never be an easy one after that raid. Sexism was the order of the day whenever she was online.

(Do men/boys who play computer games never actually meet women in real life? Have they no respect for others, or does the relative anonymity of having a keyboard, a microphone and a long piece of copper or fibre optic cable between themselves and others allow them to manifest their social shortcomings more freely than society trains us to?)

And then a nastier trend developed: sexual innuendo, not initially checked by guild leadership, became more overt and in some cases disgusting. And now, guild chat and Ventrilo often degenerate into what can most accurately be described as sexual harassment, guild leadership's efforts notwithstanding.

She is more than capable of holding her own though, and has managed to silence her critics and would-be abusers with quick, clever comebacks on many occasions. Yet the onslaught is utterly relentless.

It is sad to behold, although I am grateful that I am being spared from being thus targeted. Only a few members of my current guild know that I am female in real life, and they have been sworn to silence on the issue.

Online gameplay should be about people transcending traditional boundaries of race, nationality, religion, sexuality and gender - and yet people still get so focused on the differences between themselves and others whenever these are made apparent.

I wonder when we will ever get over our natural response to "the outsider" and learn to judge people by their words and actions rather than by their attributes.

Annoyances

Another one bites the summer slump dust: the guild I joined just over a month ago recently disbanded due to yet another major exodus of members. I guess that's what happens on a PvP server where the Horde population is small and the majority of server denizens spend their time losing Battlegrounds and Arena matches.

To say that I found the disbanding of a guild that I'd really started to enjoy being a member and an officer of seriously annoying would be an understatement... I was angry and sad, and after helping some guildies create a new guild I quit and spent some time on my own with Pyjamas and a crowd of snakes on The Twilight Ridge.

That gets boring after a while though, even when Cobra Scales are dropping like mad. So boring that I actually took the time to fly out to the most annoying zone in The Burning Crusade and do some of the most annoying quests ever conceived of in any game of any kind: the Netherwing dailies.

I am astounded at how annoying those quests are: collection quests where you have to farm stupidly large numbers of items that take you all over the zone, but with drop rates that would test the patience of a saint.

In addition, you have to take out a crowd of transport flyers who have an unbelievably annoying tendency to "evade" after you have shot at them a few times, but are still able to shoot at you and hurt you while they are essentially invulnerable to attack.

Add to that the fact that I turn into a male Orc with a serious dental issue everytime I am in the area, and my annoyance is nearly complete.

The cash rewards may be tempting for those unlucky enough to have chosen professions that are bad money generators, but one would expect the eventual reputation rewards, after having suffered all that annoyance, to be supremely gratifying.

Oh, no. What do people get in return for displaying such tenacity in the face of terrible adversity? A stupid-looking, oversized, annoying 4x4 flying donkey. And along the way you have the opportunity to buy a trinket that gets you some stupid Netherwing Ally to "fight by your side" but does little more than - you guessed it - annoy your opponent.

The people responsible for Shadowmoon Valley and its quests should be locked away and never be allowed to contribute to any form of digital entertainment, except perhaps if a market develops for masochistic games with high annoyance factors.

I completed a round of quests there, but not without taking numerous breaks to temper my growing annoyance and prevent damage to my keyboard and computer screen. Then it was back to The Twilight Ridge to calm down by killing snakes, birds and any Allies stupid enough to hunt in my yard when I am annoyed.

I will not be visiting there again anytime soon.

Oh, and I got accepted into another guild after applying to them, reunited once more with some of my old guildmates, but still wondering why it is that Purple Haze had to disband.

Summer Slump

It is a beautiful summer in London this year - and in most of Western Europe, by all accounts I have heard. The sun has been shining, the days have been warm and bright and it's generally been a great time to be outdoors, walking in the park, chasing the cat up a tree and stuff like that.

No wonder then that people's hearts and minds are not fully into raiding at the moment... especially when they're in the South of France soaking up the sun and getting drunk on piña coladas at raid time.

It is weird having to raid Karazhan and Zul'Aman with a crowd of Tier 5 geared players because we have too few people online some nights to even take on the trash in Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern, but it still is fun, and there have been a few unexpected side benefits to the summer slump despite my being frustrated at not raiding quite as much (or quite the content) I would have liked to.

For starters, I have spent a lot of time farming on The Twilight Ridge, enjoying the weird, scaredy birdies and stripey snakes - and making a killing on the auction house selling Cobra Scales and items crafted using them.

But I have also been able to spend a lot more time actually interacting with people. Some of my guildies come farming cobra scales (or just killing stripey snakes for the heck of it) with me out of boredom, and we have done many heroic runs just for something to do (great fun with Tier 5 tanks, healers and DPS), spending time messing about with mobs we have, in many ways, outgrown gear-wise. Chatting all the while, I have managed to cement quite a few relationships with guildies and other WoW acquaintances of late.

So, while the sun shines and everyone is slacking by the poolside rather than raiding, it's a good time to use the situation to farm up some cash for the expansion (guaranteed that WotLK will provide many gold sinks for us to throw our money down!) and get to know the people you play with a bit better.

In many ways, this summer's slump has been surprisingly rewarding.

Feel It...

I don't know why, but I just really, really needed to share this with everyone who reads this blog:

I LOVE THIS GAME! :-)

Perhaps it's because my individual dps in a boss fight dinged past 1200 yesterday against Morogrim Tidewalker; perhaps it's because I'm finally seeing content that once seemed way beyond my reach; perhaps it's because people in my new guild have started asking me for advice on shot rotations and gear choices; perhaps it's a post like Loronar's... or perhaps it's a combination of all of that and more.

I sometimes feel that I spend more time playing than is good for me, but think about it: as long as it doesn't interfere with the success of your real life there are far, far worse forms of entertainment out there, many of which are expensive, short-lived or even harmful.

I love the guild community I am a part of, and count some of my online acquaintances as really good friends. Sometimes we do a "fun run" of lower-level instances and sit chatting about life, the universe and everything on the final boss' perch for hours after clearing the place.

There is absolutely no sense or purpose to this post. I just felt like sharing the love, and sometimes that needs to be done.

Change...

Gosh, a lot has changed in a week!

As the leader of a relatively early-stage raiding guild, I used to get excited by the prospect of getting ready for a Karazhan run... but always found it disheartening when raid times would come up with only half of the signees online, and most of the people whispering "inv me, inv me" hardly even able to clear a Heroic instance.

It was even more disheartening to watch be.imba.hu become more and more complimentary about my gear... it really annoys when you are told that you and about 5-8 of your guildmates are ready to roll on into the Black Temple, but you are unable to get groups ready for Karazhan and count yourself lucky to witness the demise of Nalorakk in Zul'Aman once every 2-3 weeks.

Despite multiple pep talks in Guild Chat, always being up for a Heroic run to help guildies improve their gear with badge items, passing on loot in Karazhan because it would provide a bigger improvement to someone else than it would for me and countless hours of studying and providing tips on members' gear, play style and talent choices, it became clear that, for the most part, I was leading the wrong kind of guild.

They wanted to have fun being a social guild that sometimes runs Karazhan. I wanted to raid higher-level content and kill new stuff. Trying to turn casual players into raiders was annoying me so much that I lost most of the enjoyment I used to get from the game, often spending hours farming in my favourite spot in Nagrand just to calm down, wishing that I could cast Scare Beast on Pyjamas for brief moment of guilty entertainment.

In addition, a few of the members who shared my raiding appetite remained in the guild solely out of loyalty to me and each other, and were experiencing the same annoyances that I was. I started feeling guilty for not releasing them to join a proper raiding guild knowing that, nice people that they are, it would take much for them to quit and leave me all alone.

Eventually, I had to make the call: stay for the sake of a dream that would never realize, or take the eager raiders in the guild to a place where they could raid.

I knew some members of a well-progressed raiding guild on our server, and had always had good experiences when grouped with their members for whatever reason. I decided to apply to them, and was accepted into that guild on Sunday, with a few members from my old guild following shortly thereafter.

It was sad to leave Heal Me for F Sake - 6 months of great memories and a lot of effort can be much harder to walk away from than one might imagine. I still need to find a decent new leader for that guild, having left my alt character (a warlock, relegated to admin duties due to slacking at L67) in charge there for now.

But I know I made the right call. Purple Haze is a lovely crowd, and they invited me to be an officer in the guild on Monday - needless to say, I accepted.

The members who followed me over have been raiding content that they would never have seen otherwise. I've been into the Black Temple, Mount Hyjal and Tempest Keep, performing well on par with the far more experienced crew there.

And I've been having fun again. Real fun.

I feel out of my depth at times (Black Temple is scary indeed!) but am comforted by the encouragement of my new guild friends and the fact that the skills I have learnt over the months playing with this little hunter translate well into the higher-level content.

It hasn't all been rosy though - Purple Haze is experiencing a tough time, having had a huge slice of its best raiders pinched by a more advanced guild on the server (it started on the very day I joined!). But the guildies who remain are resolute in their determination to regain what has been lost, and I am proud to be a part of that now.

And I've been working on my macros... soon I'll be posting a few nice ones that I have been tweaking of late, having recently discovered the beauty of the oft-misunderstood "focus" feature.

Watch this space... :-)