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.