Woot, Kitty!

Wow... writing up a BRK event has it's perks. (Besides participating in it. Running of Da' Bulls was totally fun!) Lock and Roll got linked in BRK's most recent blog link list. Thanks BRK, we read you all the time. We're working on a Hunter-Lock post to put up at some point... you know, something along the lines of Warlocks are like hunters that instead of shooting devour your souls. It'll be uplifting and fill you with optimism, I promise.

QuestQQ

Go check out this CriticalQQ rant on quest depth. Spot on. Talks about class defining quests which of course made me think of the epic mount quest for locks... What a fantastic quest and final event that was. You really feel like you've earned something great by the end of it.

Wrath of the information sharing

Evidently, Gamespy, (which I only remember from back in my days of CS), got the serious dish on WLK before most other sites. Alpha testing seems to be fun and exciting, and thanks to firewalls, I'm not reading any of their coverage. EXCEPT, thanks WoWinsider for not being part of my jobs firewall settings. Boo, Panda Gate Defender. In any event, here's a few tidbits that I've pulled off of their various articles and my thoughts on these:

"Flying Mounts are gone until level 77, at which point you will either complete a quest or a visit a trainer to be able to use them again. You will still not be able to use the mounts in the old world, so even though Naxxramas is on Azeroth, your flying mount will not be able to cross back over the sea to visit the old stomping grounds. The Old World was designed using too many graphical shortcuts in places people were not meant to access to allow flying mounts."

Interesting! Now, my question is... "Will you need epic flying before you can upgrade at 77?" Because I sure don't have epic flying skill on either of my toons at 70. If so... I better get grinding that money.

"The 5-man news really was expected, but the raid info is much more exciting:
*All raid dungeons will have both 10-man and 25-man versions
*The 10 and 25-man progressions will not depend on each other
*There will be no attunements or keys necessary for any raid
*The 25-man loot will be a tier higher than the 10-man loot
*The 10 and 25-man versions of the same raid will be on different timers so that each can be attempted on the same day by the same people"

Now this is crazy! No attunements, all raids can be played as 10-man. I think what this could do is really allow more access to raid content then has previously happened. I know that I've never really entered the raiding scene, mainly because of the attunements initially, but also the size of our guild. I couldn't see us ever getting up to 25 man, and so, we really didn't push hard to get to 10-man content either. But, with all raids being accessable, it might be interesting to push through into this raid content in the expansion.

"There are "vehicle" quests, where players drive a vehicle (planes, trucks, or even dragons) around to accomplish tasks"

Oooh, that sounds interesting. I always enjoyed the pilot the fel reaver quest in shadowmoon, so, this could be great! Also, the flying planes that battle each other and such... that sounds really neat!

Of course, there's a lot more info now about the death knight and how that will actually work. I'm definitely digging the NO quest to unlock. Seems like the only requirement is that you already have a level 55 or greater character. (check!) So... looks like even fewer people might not roll a DK.

So... are you excited about Wrath?!?! You bet I am. Let's get that beta going!

Medium Black Kitty!

So, I really want to heal too. I mean, I've got two ranged, DPS, caster classes up at the level cap with my mage and my lock, so I need to try something different. I just have found that I love grouping, but am not such a fan of doing dailies... well, daily. Now I'm leveling a new character, and while my original plan had been to level my hunter next, I feel that it's too similar to the role I'm already playing in groups that I wanted to find something new and different to bring to the party... or raid, as the case might be.

I'm leveling a druid. I've dinged 25, and am bars away from 26, and I plan on going resto endgame because I really want to be a tree. It seems like the cliche acting exercise, so how could I not want to actually be a tree? Of course, as my guild has pointed out many times, who in their right mind would actually level resto?

I'm sure some people would, but wouldn't you be sad about how horrible it is and how you can't seem to do anything all the time? Therefore, I'm taking the feral approach as espoused in BBB's guide: (here). Thanks Big Bear Butt. Now of course, he says Feral FTW... all the way. But of course, I want to heal. So I'm going to claw and stealth my way up to the high levels and then respec at the end.

Of course, gathering gear as I go along is important, and I'm enjoying collecting two sets so that I CAN actually heal in a group when I have that opportunity.

Since I do like PUGing, (for the most part), I think the druid is a good choice, because it allows me to fill any role they need. Ranged caster, healer, melee DPS or tank. I've been elated at the flexibility and can't wait to continue to progress. So, there may be a few more updates on how rahranan is doing in her progression towards the end of levels. Now if I can just ding her at 70 before WLK hits, we'll be all good.

And that ain't no Bull

I, like around 400-600 other faithful readers of BigRedKitty ran in the Running of 'Da Bulls for Sharvan, a memorial event for a friend of Kitty which was ridiculously fun and successful. It's gotten tons of press. (That's from Wired... wow! Big deal Kitty!) And lots of bloggers have already written about it: (see here).

Unfortunately I wasn't able to complete the race, but I hung out for quite a while at the beginning, talking to people, cheering for kitty, mooing, etc. I was able to run to the Zep outside of Ogrim. but because I had disconnected my mouse from my laptop and was using my trackpad and the command key to move, I fell off when I tried to board, and then our company showed up anyway, so I had to abandon the event. I'm really bumed I missed the hogger raid though. Nothing like getting toasted by a few hundred cows!

Here's a pic I'm actually in!

I'm in the B, at the very top, first one starting the curve. (So not part of the straight line, but one out!) I'm pretty stoked that I finally found this pic! Thanks ratshag!

In any event, I'm proud to have finally participated in something that shows how massive the M in MMORPG can be. Now of course, there are two M's there, but who's counting.

/moo