Weekend Update: Video games and Drive through Sweeties!

[autographedcat]

I had a relatively relaxing weekend, which is good because that was just the sort of weekend I wanted.

Friday night, catalana and I met up for our usual night of WoW questing. We spent a good deal of time killing giants and water elementals in Feralas -- the giants were dutifully dropping stuff for us, and the water elementals not so much, so we dropped that quest and went to collect Yeti hides instead. On the way to the yeti cave, catalana spotted a sprite darter and said "Those are so pretty! I wish you could get a non-combat pet version of one of those!" I whispered one of my friends who is a rabid non-combat pet collector and asked if there was one. It turns out, there is! It just involves doing a very long quest chain that starts with an NPC hidden in a spot that one would be fairly unlikely to notice. We dropped our plans for mega XP and decided to chase this chain down instead. It mostly involved razing a village of Tauren and freeing a bunch of the little dragons, then flying all the way to Darnassus to turn in the quest, then flying all the way back to Feralas to pick up the second part of the chain, then down to Shimmering Flats, and then The Hinterlands. Those of you familiar with the geography of Azeroth will note that we earned our frequent flyer miles on this one! It was late when we finally wrapped up for the night, but we were both the proud new parents of tiny little faerie dragons!

I split most of Saturday between WoW and Warhammer Online. WH Online is a new MMO that just came out, and a large number of my guildies are playing it, so I figured I'd at least see what the fuss was about. I'm really horribly underwhelmed by it, unfortunately. I'll keep dabbling with it, but as soon as Wrath of the Lich King comes out, I expect it to start gathering dust. I'll go on more about my impressions of the game in another post.

Currently exciting in WoW land is Brewfest! World of Warcraft has a number of little holiday festival events through the year, and Brewfest is essentially the dwarven (and Orcish) Okotberfest. There's a fair, and kegs of beer, and ram races, and a cool boss mob to go and kill for shiny trinkets. We spent a good deal of time on Saturday and Sunday repeatedly running the special boss -- hes' not hard to kill, but you can only run the event once per person, so even swapping people in and out of the party, there's a limit to how many times a day you can get his loot. But it's fun to do stuff as a guild again.

Sunday night, my darling sweetmusic_27 and her old roommate Patty dropped in on their way down to Walt Disney World! This made me quite happy as I have not seen my darling Amy since January, and there was much cuddling to be had. We went out to Famous Dave's for a Giant Helping of Protein, then came home and watched a Jeff Dunham DVD. A good time having been had by all, we went to bed at a reasonable hour, as kitanzi and I had to be at work and Patty and Amy had a long drive to Orlando ahead of them. But it was fantastic to get to meet Patty, and of course I'm always happy to see Amy. (We'll get to see them both again in a week or so, when they're on their way back north. We made sure they'd have to stop...we loaned them graphic novels! *grin*)

Comments

[selenite.livejournal.com]

The sprite dart quest chain is a fun one, I'm glad we did it. Laura loves her darter but mine stays in the bank. The turtle is a better fit for my tank's personality. :)

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I *adore* the sprite darter. My main mage Ellemir has one, and my fast-up-and-coming warlock Zayna has hers.

Ellemir has LOTS of pets. She got three more last weekend.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

See my above reply to selenite.

I love non-combat pets, but I don't think I can manage to be a serious collector until Wrath comes out and they go from being objects to being spells. My bank is *forever* full.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hear you on that. My problem is that my bank is full of alternate gear - stuff my guildies tell me "Oh, roll on that!" but if I use it I lose spell hit or something - so it all gets shoved in my bank. selenite is setting up a big excel spreadsheet to try to figure out the optimal configuration, but it's a really ugly problem.

I'm SO looking forward to the patch switching pets to spells, yes. Ellemir is a discerning pet collector, she doesn't want ALL pets. Still - let's see, she has the Siamese cat, and the blue dragonhawk, Whiskers the rat, the captured Summer flame, the Spirit of Competition, the sprite darter, Jubjub the frog, Miniwing, the wolpertinger, the worg pup, the smolderweb hatchling - I'm trying to remember if there are any others. I'd like some whelplings.

My priest has the pig and a bunny. My horde hunter has the pig too. My rogue has the rat. My druid has a hawk owl. Zayna has the sprite darter, and I really want to get her the wolpertinger too. I love the sounds it makes.

I don't bring my pets out nearly enough. I wish you didn't lose them every time you fly or portal. I keep forgetting to bring them back out. There's an add-on that will remind you and can choose a random pet - but right now that would mean carrying them all in my bags, and I can't.

But I'm looking forward to the patch.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

My 70 Hunter's usually companion is an Azure Whelpling, which was a birthday gift from someone dear to me. For a long time, I had a Small White Kitten, which I would joke was in training to eventually replace Cathwylit, my loyal nightsaber.

The only pet the priest had was the pig from the Children's Week event, so this one is a nice addition. I'll eventually do the chain on my hunter too, just because I can, but right now I'm spending most of my time on Brewfest and grinding rep for Gnomeregan to finish my "Exalted with all five capitals" geis.

[mihrimah.livejournal.com]

I love Brewfest; just barely missed it last year, alas. I'm not 100% happy with some of the changes-- the wolpertinger and pink elekk quests sounded like tons of fun-- but I'm still having fun with it. The ram racing took me a while to get the hang of but it seems like sometimes even if I run right into the apple barrel I don't get the fatigue removed, and I really have to do it on the desktop to make it worthwhile. I love throwing the mugs at the Dark Irons, though. We did a run at Direbrew late last night; wanted to kill him a few more times, but some folks had reboot and disconnect problems, so we only got in five kills.

I like the festivals, overall. Winter Veil annoyed me because it made the two cities I hang out in most (IF and SW) lag like crazy, but I had a lot of fun collecting bonfires for Midsummer. I hope the scorchling pet comes back next year, though-- I wanted it, but never even managed to kill the big boss in Slave Pens. Too much lag made me die to the spikes a lot. :(

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

The wolptinger is gone, but you can still get the pet from the Brewfest vendor. It doesn't even cost tokens, just a small amount of silver.

I put the reins on an action bar for the ram racing and run it sort of like a slalom, hitting both barrels on my way to and fro. My personal best is 10 passes before the timer ran out.

I've been mixed on the festivals, depending on my moods, but I'm really enjoying Brewfest this year. I ran the Summer Festival boss about 3 times, and got a nice neckpiece out of it (which was identical, amusingly, to the one I was wearing, but I like it because it's less common -- same reason I picked up the DPS trinket from Direbrew, even though it's basically the Bloodlust Broach I already have.)