Gotta Caught Them All

Announcement: PET COLLECTION COMPLETE

The last time I got to make this declaration was back in 2009, the first and only other time I had ALL* THE PETS IN THE GAME. Back then, my total count was 105. (But that's when every pet took up a bag slot, so it seemed like A TON.) Now it's 717. o.o

The toughest pet to acquire was the Stunted Direhorn, a reward from Brutal Pet Brawler, which requires you to win 250 PvP pet battles through the random "find battle" feature, using level 25 pets. Ugh. Even with a 50% win rate, which is really hard to achieve when you're usually up against people who really know what they're doing to destroy opponents, this would take dozens of hours. I had to grind up Graves, a pet that I normally wouldn't bother to include in my collection, by leveling up to 20 in Heroes of the Storm, just to be competitive enough to retain my sanity while grinding out this truly brutal achievement. So I had to grind a pet in order to grind a pet. FUN TIMES.

The last pet to finish the collection was Deathwatch Hatchling, for which I needed to join a guild that had it unlocked and rep up to Revered. Super thanks to Pet Peeves on Zul'jin for hosting me and the husband. We had a blast running around in our heirloom gear, zooming through Durotar and the Barrens, cracking jokes and battling over the fate of all the critters that crossed our path. If I got there first, they'd get charmed with the Panflute, but if my flute was on cooldown or Jerft saw them first, the poor dears got vaporized with Arcane Explosion.

So now I can, as a guildie so eloquently put it, "enjoy the next few months with no digital carrots on sticks." Until the next patch. And THANK YOU to the friends that helped feed my addiction by sending me pets and murderating Shadow Lord Iskar over and over again. Love you guys.

(*for my collection I don't include pets that originate outside of WoW US servers / requiring $ or promo code, such as BlizzCon/TCG/BlizzStore/other games.)

Celestial Family

Awhile back I told Thul I was leveling some pets to 25 for the Celestial Tournament. And he was like, "Don't you already have a bunch of level 25 pets?" and I was like, "I have 57" and he was like, "WTF?! How is 57 pets not enough?" and I was like, "I need specific ones to beat certain tamers," and he was like, "WTF," and I was like, "One does not simply walk into the Celestial Tournament..."

In the last few weeks before the expansion I finally managed to kill Garrosh, but that pales in comparison to finally defeating the Celestial Tournament for the 10th time and getting my last celestial pet. Now I can move on to Warlords knowing that I beat the endgame in Mists.

Get Off My Lawn

I didn't blog during Mists of Pandaria. For much of the expansion, I wasn't actively playing.

So much has changed.

My go-to in-game title is "Crazy Cat Lady," and sometimes I feel like shaking my cane and yelling "GET OFF MY LAWN" at everyone who's gotten into pet collecting since the introduction of WoW-Pokemon. I collected pets long before it was the cool thing to do! There was a time I prided myself on having every pet in the game and being on warcraftpets.com's Top 50 Collections (not for the server, for the whole game) list.

With the introduction of pet battling, it became too impossible to keep my collection complete. The sheer volume of new pets added to the game has been staggering. Many of them are incredibly difficult for a casual player like me to acquire. I didn't belong to a guild that could access the elite raid or challenge mode pets. I'm allergic to pugs (pick-up-groups, not cute wrinkly dogs), so running LFR was out of the question. And the large number of rare-drop pets with massive time-consuming eye-bleeding grinds required was just depressing.

Hunter pets haven't been too exciting either. The only spirit beasts they added this expansion were glowing porcupines. And despite how un-cool porcupines are, I probably still would've camped them if they had actually been rare spawns, but after all the time and adrenaline invested in my old-school pack of 18+-hour-spawn-time beasts I just couldn't muster up any enthusiasm for these readily available ones.

So I took a lot of time off. I got married and we bought a house. I've been getting established in my career. I adopted a cattle dog puppy to be my partner in the fun sport of canine agility. I quit the game and gave away a ton of my minipets to a friend, hoping that if I decimated my collection I wouldn't be tempted to come back. But then some friends from my beloved guild got excited about Warlords of Draenor, and several who'd quit during Cata or Mists returned, and now I'm getting jazzed about raiding again, and my friend insisted on returning my menagerie, and so I'm back!

And for all my griping, I actually do love the pet battle system. I love storing my pets in a journal rather than having bags and bags stuffed full of them. I love how they're account-wide. I especially love being able to name them! Pet battling is pretty fun (except when it gets grindy or frustrating). And it's neat having so many cute critters to collect, even though it's a pain trying to "catch 'em all." Tonight there are 23 in-game pets I don't have. That number is about to go through the roof when Warlords drops tomorrow. I'm trying to let go of my completionist urges and just be okay with that and learn to enjoy pet collecting as a side hobby to the extent that I'm reasonably able.

So um... who wants to give me a Viscous Horror? ;)

We're moving soon, so I decided this would be a good day to sort through my overstuffed file box and see if I could find some papers to discard. Ancient utility statements from past addresses, that sort of thing... Well my file box also has several folders of "nostalgia," relics from my childhood, and soon I found myself thoroughly distracted and browsing through memories, really old artwork, cards, and letters --

Yeah, letters. Handwritten ones, even. And I found a set of letters written in pen, on lined paper, mailed from Australia and addressed to my mother, because I was in high school at the time and not allowed to tell my name to "people from the internet." They were from one of my oldest AOL friends, who'd temporarily lost his internet connection when he moved overseas, so for a while we kept in touch in traditional pen-pal fashion. Crazy, the things we'd chat about when we were kids, yet also not so crazy at all...

Even back then, the characters I chose to roleplay were typically of the animal variety. So I bust up laughing when I got to the paragraph in one of his letters that read, "If I were to make you a humanoid character, you'd be something like this: You'd be an elf, for they are very environmental. Your profession would have to be a ranger, for they are ten times more environmental than any normal elf even. Your profession would be a 'guardian of the earth' so to speak. You'd also probably have an animal familiar, perhaps a large black panther?"

Well Jax, just in case you're reading this, I'm happy to introduce you to my elf "ranger," after all these years:

Good call, my friend.

Till the next,

Nightglare

Pixel therapy

I am very arachnophobic. So when I learned that five of the new rares were spiders, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. That means five pets I do not need to camp. That could add up to days, even weeks worth of spared sanity!

Spiders freak me out, even in WoW. The first time I ever tanked Azjol-Nerub on my druid, I didn't know what to expect, and suddenly Hadronox was hitting me in the face... I think I screamed loud enough to alarm the neighbors, and then I was crying with my eyes squeezed shut and desperately mashing my tanking buttons and praying that I was at least facing the right direction because there was no way I was opening my eyes until it was dead, or the party was dead, or somebody polymorphed it into a kitten. That's how much spiders, even pixel spiders, scare me.

Well I'm getting married next July, and my arachnophobia annoys my fiance. He's very chivalrous, and he always comes to save me if I'm cowering fearfully in a corner and pointing all panicked at a spider on the wall, but he does find the situation irksome. I jokingly told him that I might consider taming a spider in WoW, to become friends, and maybe desensitize myself a little bit and face my fears. If I can befriend a pixel spider, and learn to think it's cute, maybe I won't flail around helplessly making high-pitched shrieking sounds when I encounter one in real life? Okay, it's a long shot, but at least I'm making an effort?

Right, but mostly I was joking. Ew, spiders. My hunter is a mammal person. She likes kitties and spirit beasts, and pretty much anything cute and furry. No spiders, no ty.

But today I ran into Kirix. I keep an eye out for all the new rares, because even though I'm done camping my own, I like to watch. It's fun to see clueless, armor-wearing non-hunters get pwned by Magria or Ankha. And if I'm in a position to help someone tame, by sharing my knowledge of the strategies, I love to help other hunters catch their pets. So I stopped and observed Kirix for a while, thinking yay, this will be a good show!

Only nobody came. I alerted some friends, who asked around for hunters who might be interested... Nada. Then Ramu, my shammy friend, logs on. I don't own a corehound, but suddenly I'm thinking, hmm... If I can make it to the Stable Master and back (I was carrying 5 beloved pets already), and get my shammy buddy out here, and Kirix is still there... Maybe I'll go ahead and give it a shot...

So about 10 minutes later, Ramu and I are staring at Kirix and I'm telling him to Bloodlust when I start the tame and yadda yadda. Well, like I said, I have only half an idea what I'm doing. I know Kirix is deadly, and I know I need as much haste as possible. I know there's a Disengage method that involves flying through the air, but I've always been terrible at executing such maneuvers so I don't want to risk it. We try, we die. We try again, die again.

By now, other players have finally arrived on the scene, but they're not hunters--they're random other classes trying to kill Kirix. My heart is pounding a bit, just cause I'm trying to get the tame right, but I still have to giggle each time I watch the awesome green spider totally pwn someone. Corpses begin to litter the hillside. I chat with a friend, and she recommends the floating rock method, which I'd also been avoiding because I happen to suck at jumping on rocks, too. But I decide to try it. I really focus, I take my time, I get to the upper ledge without falling to my death. Yay. Only now a rock elemental is beating my face, so I quickly summon my Ankha to save me (...do you see where this is going?). Last jump onto the correct floating rock, where Kirix pats by within tame range.

Kirix is still one-shotting people who try to mess with him. Ramu's Bloodlust is off cooldown. I tell him to hit it, and I pull Kirix. After that, everything got fuzzy. The first moment of panic happened when I'm mashing Tame Beast and getting the message, "You already have an active summon." OH, right, Ankha is still standing right next to me on the floating rock. I Dismiss. Bloodlust is going, my haste pot and Lifeblood are going... I keep mashing Tame Beast. It doesn't seem to be doing anything at all, I'm not getting a cast bar. Something must be wrong, but I don't know what. Maybe Kirix is evading, like I read he can do with the rock method.

And then suddenly the spider shrinks. I squint at the ledge, thinking omg, someone else appeared out of nowhere and managed to get him somehow. But no, it says "Jagwyr's pet" - victory!

And the winning quote of the night, right after the tame went off... one of the players who'd been trying to kill Kirix whispers my shammy friend and asks, "How did you make him so small?"

I named him Skeerd, because I have a lolcats naming theme, and skeerd is how I feel about him. But he's already growing on me. The epic effort of getting the successful tame makes me feel quite attached. I ran around and took screenshots of the corpse piles that Skeerd left in his wake. Let this be a lesson to anyone who dares challenge us in PvP... ^.^

Best of all, though, he matches my eyes.

I am excite

So this was me on Facebook the other day:

 Patch 4.2 is coming, and I'm spazzing out because Hunters and Druids are getting some serious graphical love. My kitty is going to set the world aflame by waving her tail around, and my hunter will be on the prowl for shiny new beasties. We're finally getting an ability that I have wanted forever--pets will run alongside our mounts. And Kibler's Bits snacks will make our animals bigger! I'll also be adding several minipets to the great collection.

This is truly the stuff for which I play WoW. New raid bosses are cool, gear upgrades are cool, but nothing holds a candle to being a kitty on fire. Thul pointed out that I'll be sad when 4.3 rolls around and I get a weapon upgrade and can't be a firecat anymore. But I'm not worried; that will never happen. I won't ever need a weapon upgrade because raid bosses will gaze upon my fierce, fiery feline of destruction, and they will simply roll over in terror and hand us all their loot.

In other news, I've started a Facebook page for Aspect of the Wild where I'll be posting more regular updates about my WoW adventures, with screenshots.

One day my Rare will spawn

Karoma. Spirit Beast. My first Rare tame of Cataclysm, found in Twilight Highlands the morning after I hit level 85. Named Koda, after my RL dog.

Things have been a bit quiet here at Aspect of the Wild because I've been leveling to 85. And camping fantastic new pets. Every time Blizz releases a new Spirit Beast into the wild, I know I'm about to spend several days in a kind of sleep-deprived zombie state. Cataclysm brought not one, not two, but three new Rare spawn animals for me to tame.

Spirit Beasts (and other Rare creatures) spawn once every 6-24 hours. Probably. They’re highly desirable Hunter pets, the ones from WotLK also dropped gold and blue items, and some gave Achievement credit upon death. This means that many players compete to tame/kill these Rares. I’m usually not the only person circling or camping their spawn points, waiting to swoop in.

When I camp a Rare, my obsessive superpowers activate, and I’m forced to eat-sleep-breathe the Rare until my tame is accomplished.

I begin the hunt cheerful and optimistic, thinking luck will shine on me. I’ll make a few loops and there she’ll be, just waiting for me! When that doesn’t happen, I pass the early hours gathering herbs and goofing around in guild chat. As the hours drag by, I begin to feel discouraged. No sign of the beast. What if I missed it while I was afk grabbing a mocha? What if someone tamed/killed it right before I got here, and it won’t spawn again for 10 more hours? Should I give up for now and check back later? That would be the sane thing to do...

But no, my obsessive brain whispers. You can’t give up now...

You’ve been here 5 hours. That means it should spawn any minute.

If you leave now, it will spawn, and you’ll miss it.

If you leave now, you’ll have no idea when it spawned, and you’ll just have to waste 5 more hours tomorrow.

Three hours later, all my friends have logged for the night. I’m alone in guild chat. I’ve quit picking herbs because I’m worried that if I pause my patrol even for a second, another Hunter will ninja my beast at a different spawn point. Morose and exhausted, I stare at the screen and ride around and around the spawn points, obsessive brain insisting, Just one more lap. Check one more time. Five more minutes. Okay, maybe fifteen more minutes. You can’t give up now...

You’ve been here 8 hours. That means it should spawn any minute now. Really. ANY MINUTE. If you leave, you’ll miss it. You’ll have to surrender 8 more hours of your life, and your sanity, tomorrow.

Also, now it’s 3:00 in the morning. That means that most sane people are asleep. Even on the east coast, it’s only 6:00, which means that most sane people are still asleep. Your odds of catching it in the middle of the night are better. Less competition.

An hour later, and still nothing. It kills me to give up, because the longer I wait, the more likely it will spawn, and the more time I’ve wasted on a wild goose chase. But eventually I can’t take it anymore. I’m slumping in the chair, nearly dozing off at the keyboard. I’m freezing cold, because the garage where I play WoW has no heat. The idea of a warm bed and blissful unconsciousness wins out, and reluctantly I shut down the computer and collapse into bed.

But blissful unconsciousness denies me. I toss and turn restlessly, haunted by images of my character flying from spawn point to spawn point, ceaselessly searching. Waiting. Hunting. Seeking. Finally, I drift into a fitful sleep, where I dream about the beast. In my first dream, I spot the animal and swoop down to tame, only to find that somehow I’m PvP flagged and another Hunter pwns me dead and then tames my Rare. In the second dream, I log in and NPCScan blares that my Rare is found, but I quickly discover that it’s just a corpse—I was a few minutes too late. I wake up every hour or so, groggily turn over, and I think... Maybe you should get out of bed and log on, just for a minute. Just to check. Maybe it’s waiting there, right now, and if you go back to sleep you'll miss it.

Then, after all this, comes the heartbreak of camping another 5 hours the next day, only to approach a spawn point and see that indeed, another Hunter has just finished taming my Rare. Another Hunter that just happened to stop by at the right place, and the right second, and get really lucky. It’s hard not to cry. Maybe I do cry. Just a tiny little bit.

But at least now I have a timer. 6-24 hours. I’ve heard tales of people getting really lucky at the 12 hour mark, so I go to bed at a reasonable hour and set my alarm for 5:27 in the morning, exactly 12 hours after I witnessed the tame. When my alarm buzzes, I swat it groggily and think... This is ridiculous. You’re exhausted. Just go back to sleep. It’s a stupid pixel animal. It’s not worth torturing yourself. You’ll catch it someday if you’re patient. Just forget it and go back to sleep.

But I don’t. Wearily, I drag myself out of bed and heat a cup of coffee. As the coffee is heating, I remember my dream where I logged on moments too late, and start to fret. I hurry to the computer, log in, and NPSCAN BLOWS MY EARS OUT. RED ALERT. Yeah, I’ve logged in directly on top of my Rare. It’s still alive. Nobody else around (did I mention it’s 5:00 in the morning?). I panic. I tame. I win.

And then I bask in the glow of sweet, pixilated victory. Until the next patch. Until the next Spirit Beast.

Sambas. Cat. My second Rare tame, luckily spotted mere hours after I found Karoma. Named Ceilingcat because he looks like Aslan.

Ghostcrawler. Spirit Beast. This is the one that tortured me. Appropriate, rite? Took several days to catch him, at 5:27 in the morning, at the Abandoned Reef. I named him QQ because it fits my lolcats theme, fits Ghostcrawler, and fits the suffering I endured to tame him.

There can be only one

One of my alts is a Blood Elf Priest named Kyttyn. So yesterday I was standing around Dalaran, and this random chick walks up to me. She stands there looking at me for a minute, and then says in /say:

"there is only room for one kitten on this server and it aintt you slut." (Typo replicated for historical accuracy.)

While laughing so hard that I was struggling to breathe, I related the story in our chat channel. A few minutes later, Thul goes, "I found the other kitten. Her name is Kytyn."

Suddenly, it all makes sense. This poor person must be stark raving mad with jealousy over my name, which is about eleventy-jillion times better than hers. She's harboring a vendetta against me for having stolen her extra 't.'

Thul and I watched an episode of Deep Space Nine tonight, "Accession," in which an elderly Bajoran pops through the wormhole and claims that the Prophets have appointed him as their Emissary. As everyone knows, The Sisco is the one true Emissary. But seriously, this was all I could think:

My guild deserves many cupcakes

November 4th was my guild's 3-year anniversary, so I decided this would be an appropriate time to gush about just how special we are.

On Tuesday, we went back to Ulduar and killed Yogg-Saron for the first time. Big deal, right? That content is three tiers old news. But Yogg was the last bossed we needed; now we've cleared all the 10-man normal raid content for WotLK.

What, no hard modes? No 25-man content? And you just now got around to slaying a raid boss that most guilds downed a year ago? Why are you celebrating?

I'm celebrating because we achieved this on one night of raiding, a grand total of four hours each week. I'm celebrating because we killed the Lich King in pure 10-man raid gear, meeting the qualifications for "10-man Strict," since we don't run 25s. Most of all, I'm celebrating because we had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

My guild is not a raiding guild--we're a guild of friends that raid together. We're adults with busy lives: jobs, families (even new babies!), and other hobbies. We started playing WoW together three years ago, and we're still having fun. I've never had anyone ragequit from my guild. When we raid, it's a team effort; everybody comes prepared and does his or her personal best to help the group succeed. When we wipe, we laugh at our mistakes and we learn from them, without throwing around blame or pointing fingers. And we sing on vent.

Deathwing had better be trembling in his armor right now. Because WOW Cave is coming for him.

New Blog - Aspect of the Wild

I have moved to a new blog! Please visit me at Aspect of the Wild, where I will continue to obsess over kitties, minipets, and anything that sparkles.

Like I'm some kind of raccoon.

You can even follow me on Twitter.

Frostbite me

I've been working on Frostbitten for many months. This achievement has soaked up dozens of hours of my life, which I've spent hovering or circling around the spawn points of rare elites, hoping to spot and tag them before the competition does. This endeavor has required mountains of patience and caused me oceans of frustration. To say that I've worked hard for this is an understatement.

Three of the rares on the Frostbitten list are tamable beasts often prized as pets by Hunters. All three live in Sholazar Basin--Loque'nahak, Aotona, and King Krush. That makes these rares some of the most difficult to kill, because you're not just competing with other Frostbitten seekers--you're also competing with Hunters who want to tame them, and the area is heavily trafficked by miners and herbalists who are likely to spot a silver dragon and kill it for its loot.

Before the patch, there was no question of whether I would kill Aotona or King Krush when I eventually spotted them. My stable slots were full, and I sure wasn't going to trade one of my lovely Spirit Beasts or my dear Roflz for a green t-rex or a purple parrot. But suddenly I have 20 stable slots, plenty of room to take home Aotona or King Krush should I choose to spare their lives and love them and squish them and call them Fluffy, instead. So yesterday when I was circling the Basin and I spotted Aotona, I flew to the ground not knowing whether I was about to tame her or kill her.

Well, my compulsion to collect new pets won over my desire to finish my achievement, and much to my surprise, I found myself dismissing my current pet and mashing Tame Beast frantically. But it wasn't working! The angry parrot kept trying to gouge my eyes out with her talons while, in my panic (finding/taming/killing rares is always an adrenaline spiking experience), I repeated this process--Call, Dismiss, Tame Beast--about eight times before I finally realized the problem. "You have too many active summons." Translated: I was running around with 4 pets in my active slots, which meant that in order to tame a new one, I'd need to go dump one of my pets at the stables. Or abandon it.

I wasn't willing to abandon one of my pets, and I knew that if I fled from combat and ran to the nearest stables, chances were high that Aotona would be gone when I returned. Someone else in this heavily trafficked area would spot her and either tame or kill her before I could get back. I sure didn't want to let the rare opportunity to snag a new pet or get credit for my achievement pass me by, so, with mixed feelings, I called my wolf and we killed the bird.

I shared this story on one of my favorite Hunter pet forums. Oops, bad idea. Turns out I may as well have painted a big red target on my back and run around shouting, "I kill tamable rares for the lulz!" based on the load of hate that I  found myself receiving in comments to my post.**

Pardon me, have you seen my cat?

My first hunter pet ever was a Ghostclaw Lynx named Lolz. Thus began my lolcats theme of naming pets. Lolz is the reason that I now have Roflz, Ohai, Kitteh, and Goggie. Being a lynx native to the Blood Elf starting zone, she was an appropriate and beloved companion throughout Jag's early levels. Even after I tamed Roflz, who became my official sidekick for the remainder of my journey to 80 and beyond, I would often bring Lolz out of the stables to play.

Jag, being a cat person, used to keep a stable of five cats. Then Spirit Beasts came along, and the allure of their rarity and sparkle-shiny-moonfire-prettiness necessitated that I make some tough decisions. With each new patch, and each new Spirit Beast added to the game, I reluctantly released one of my kitty friends into the wild, until only Roflz and Lolz remained. Then came Arcturis, and after much deliberation, I sadly set Lolz free. I like to imagine that she returned to her home in the Ghostlands, welcomed with purrs and pounces by her lynx family and friends.

So the very best thing about Patch 4.0.1: with twenty stable slots, I can have all my kitties back! The first thing I did was go looking for Lolz. I found her waiting for me just across the bridge, on the banks of the Elrendar River, playing in the water by the lily pads. Yes, this is the exact, specific mob spawn of the original Lolz. First lynx on the left, when you cross the bridge into Ghostlands. I always remembered. When she saw me, my old lynx friend pounced on me joyfully. To an outside observer, it might have appeared as though she was quite angry and attempting to rip my face off, but I know it was all in the spirit of affection. She had a very nice visit with her wild cat friends in the forest, but she's delighted to come home.

So, it is to be war between us

See that dog in the screenshot? I’m shunning it. The hunter is Sola, my guild leader. She’s a traitor. She used to raid with her beloved brown lynx, Caliban. As a fellow attack-cat, Caliban is one of my posse. We look awesome paired up together on a raid boss’ butt, clawing and mangling our way to victory. Sometimes we’re even joined by a third cat, usually Seishou, a pretty ghost saber who owns one of the guild’s other hunters. We have kitty power. JOHN F^#*ING MADDEN.

That dog puts a serious crimp in my style. When Sola began bringing it to raid for the dps boost, I made my disapproval abundantly clear. I gacked up an epic hairball in one of her favorite +120 Agility boots. I clawed up both sides of the guild sofa. I practiced the above-pictured shunning ritual each time she summoned the mongrel. When she betrayed Caliban, she betrayed one of my own. Caliban deserves to be Caliban the Kingslayer. The dog deserves a flea dip.

I do have to confess, though, that part of my vehement Caliban defense is motivated by guilt.

Cast of Characters

I feel it might be useful to introduce some of the names I'm likely to mention frequently in this blog.

My Characters:

Lynxr – My first character, and my main until WotLK. She’s been a feral kitty spec since day one, or at least since day one of level 20. She’s my primary pet collector, keeper of 127 of my 132 vanity pets.

Jagwyr – My co-main, a beastmaster at heart who runs as marksman for raids. Her companions are Roflz the lion, and four Spirit Beasts: Ohai, Kitteh, Goggie, and Lynxr.

My alts – Phasers (Draenei elemental shaman), Raevynn (Blood Elf frost/blood death knight), Kyttyn (Blood Elf discipline priest)

My Boyfriend:

Thulgasta – Usually I’ll just call him “Thul.” He’s an enhance shammy. We’ve been a couple for five years, and playing WoW together for three. We co-lead my guild’s 10 man raids. He’s a lot wittier than I am, so I will frequently demand that he provide me with humorous one-liners which I will shamelessly publish here and claim as my own.

My Pets:

Koda – My dog. Main spec is goober, off spec is booger. Leet solo raider of The Trash, known loot ninja of empty Starbucks cups.

Gwyn – My cat. His name means “white.” He got lucky, cause my previous cats were named Fido, Spot, and Rover.

My Guilds:

WOW Cave – I lead this guild with Jagwyr, on Malfurion. The name is pretty literal… we started as a group of six real-life friends squishing into one room to play WoW together. Three years later, we’ve grown a little bit, but we’re still a tiny close-knit bunch. We raid 10 mans, one night a week, and recently we downed the Lich King.

Sheep Nova – Lynxr’s guild on Farstriders, the other bunch of lunatics I play with. This is where I take a vacation from guild leading. Although my responsibilities in Sheep Nova are limited, I do take my role as “guild cat” very srsly.

I like kittens. And also WoW.



Hi, I'm Christie--more commonly known on the internet as Jagwyr or Jag. I’m twenty-six years old, college educated, and mostly unemployed. I live in my mom’s garage, which I share with my dog, cat, and many stacks of cardboard boxes. Half the garage is my domain; the other half is storage space. It was never my intention to become a basement-dwelling nerd, but here I am, so I may as well fess up to it.

This blog will be (mostly, most of the time) about WoW, from my perspective. That is to say, the perspective of somebody who loves the game for its plethora of digital animals, pretty fantasy outfits, and because it’s an interactive social hobby to share with friends.

In this blog, you are likely to find many screenshots of pets, mounts, and RP outfits. You’re likely to read my opinions about the facts that Worgen do not have tails, and that the Alliance guild mount is a majestic golden lion, while the Horde's is a disgusting bug with pincers.

You are unlikely to find any discussion of class mechanics, raid strategies, or damage meters, unless they happen to relate directly to something theme-appropriate—like the fact that I am so excited about the Worgen Running Wild ability that allows them to drop to all fours and sprint at mounted speed.

By way of introduction, I will share the story of how I became a WoW player.

Sparkle, sparkle!

Spectral Tiger Cub, gift from Thulgasta. And Celestial Steed, gift from Zeiseit. <3

OMGWTFProto-Drake

Yesterday, the Blue Proto-Drake dropped off Skadi during Phasers' heroic UP pug. I won it with a roll of 97.

Last night, I decided to cruise around Storm Peaks for a few minutes and do some herbing with Jagwyr, since I hear they increased the drop rate of Frost Lotus. Picked four herbs, no Frost Lotus... suddenly there he is in front of me, the Time-Lost Proto-Drake.

Two uber-rare Proto-Drake mounts in one day. Wowhead has the blue one listed as a 1.2% drop rate. I know I've never seen it before, and I've never heard of any of my friends seeing it drop, either. The Time-Lost Proto-Drake... quite possibly the rarest mob in the game. Odds of catching them both in the same day... ?????? Holy proto-drakes, Batman.

I will say that I've been keeping an eye out for the Time-Lost for over a year. I've never actively camped the thing... that seemed like it would be insanity... not to mention that honestly, it's not that pretty, being kinda poo-colored, and it doesn't even go 310%. Nevertheless, I like rare beasts, so I have been prepared...

I kept a single Snowfall Lager in Jag's bags, and on my action bar in a handy location. When I saw the drake, I sprung into action, just like I'd always imagined... I flew above it, chugged my Snowfall Lager, and dismounted. As I was falling past, I shot it once with Arcane Shot to tag it... or at least I think I did. I also saw Ohai's Spirit Strike (kitty moonfire!) hit the drake, just before my pet despawned due to plummeting through space. So now I'm floating downward with this pissed off dragon chomping at me. But I'm giddy because I have successfully tagged him... as long as I don't die, he's mine. So now I'm just praying that I land somewhere "safe" before the slow fall wears off. I touch down on a ledge of the frozen waterfall at Bor's Breath, and the drake lands with me. Call pet, pop Bestial Wrath, hit Intimidate, Rapid Fire... drake is dead very quickly. Woah. Of course I'm shaking and my heart is pounding about a million miles a minute.

So suddenly I have this unexpected Proto-Drake collection. I got my Violet drake for What Long, Strange Trip It's Been on Jagwyr last month upon completing Lunar Festival. About a week later, I finished my last achievement for Glory of the Hero and picked up the Red drake. And yesterday I added both Blue and Time-Lost (still... again... wtf?!). From zero to four in about three weeks. Guess I'll have to start picking up Mysterious Unhatched Eggs from the Oracles again to try for Green.

Pride Rock

I finally got the right pet for this screenshot. Pride Rock, Nagrand. The Wind Rider Cub is a Valentine's Day gift from Thul.

Goggie

This is the location in Storm Peaks where Jag tamed Goggie, her third Spirit Beast. The blue lightning wolf was the first non-feline to join the family, but the lolcat clan accepted him anyway as one of their own. "Goggie" is lolcat speech for "doggie."

Roflz

I took Roflz back to the Barrens to visit the place where I tamed him, years ago. He's been Jag's companion since level 23, by her side all the way to 80. He'll always be her favorite, no matter how many shiny Spirit Beasts join the family. A faithful member of the raid team, Roflz has sunk his claws and teeth into countless bosses. When he's not wreaking destruction upon our enemies, Roflz enjoys dozing in the sun, sprawling and shedding on expensive furniture, and hot Earl Grey tea.