Like the eye of the storm.

I was sitting here in a quiet office in the middle of the night thinking.

Yes, I know i seem to do that a lot. Sue me, it’s better than bringing a soccer ball named Wilson to the shop just so I have someone to chat with.

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Actually, right now I could probably go get a nice resin skull in the clearance Halloween decorations bin at Wal-Mart. That might get my fellow employees thinking I am a bit off my rocker.

Ok, more off my rocker than they already think I am.

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Anyhow, I am sitting here pondering where I want to be and what I want to be doing on the day Cataclysm goes live.

I can think right off the top of my head of several places I don’t want to be. Most notably the starting zones for Goblins or Worgen and whatever the first zone or two is for the level 80+ content.

The day the Burning Crusade launched I rolled a Blood Elf. The experience was so bad in the overcrowded starting zone that I simply deleted the character and went to Outlands on my Hunter.

Hellfire was worse… much worse.

Lets just say people get cranky when fighting over limited resources and leave it at that.

I still hate Hellfire Peninsula, mostly because of how much asshattedness I experienced there.

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Fast forward a few years and it’s time for Wrath to go live.

Blizzard had learned from their experiences and had two paths of entry for Northrend. They figured that the players would be spread across two zones and so the congestion would be much less.

Well, they were right about that. There was less congestion, but there were still asshats aplenty. Quest mob camping was so common people were quite literally standing in line waiting for to spawn so they could take their turn killing it.

I found that annoying, even when the folks were being polite. Since it was irritating me I decided to give that new Death Knight class a whirl. After all, I had heard great things about the starting zone.

Lets just say that ended badly.

There were so many DK’s that the poor overloaded zone was like watching a slide show.

You know what I ended up doing?

I sat at the water’s edge in Borean Tundra and leveled my fishing to 450 on release day, then I slowly leveled up as the asshats outleveled me.

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Blizzard has learned from the past.

So have I.

I have no intention of trying to roll my shiny new Goblin or Worgen on release day.

I have no intention of taking any of my current level 80’s and trying to steamroll my way to 85 as fast as possible.

Neither do the two of my kids that play.

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The three of us sat in the living room chatting about WoW last week while watching the Mythbusters guys blow something up. We hatched a little plot.

We are going to hide from the masses. We will be playing without being bothered, and without getting in anyone elses way.

Where would we find that veritable Nirvana of peace and tranquility? That wonderful place like the eye of a storm?

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Outlands.

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Yep you heard me right. Hellfire Peninsula of all places.

Last week we rolled a trio of shiny new toons to level up together on the server where they have their Heirlooms.

The three of us together are going to do our level best to have those three toons to 58 before the Cataclysm hits, though we are all still in our teens now.  We are putting ourselves ahead of the rolling wave of brand new level ones and behind the free for all that I fear the 80 – 85 run will be.

Like the eye of the storm, we will find our peace in Outland.

Once the storm has passed we will go back and see all the shiny newness the way it’s ment to be seen.

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Trying to find my place

In case you hadn’t noticed Hallows End has, well, ended.

I have not been back on any of my level 80’s since.

Actually, writing this reminds me I need to log into them and finish The Great Wrath of the Litch King Bank Purge. Thats not the point though.

The point is I have given up on my Hunters, at least for now. 

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I have written before about how the transition to focus has not gone well for me. It may be because I have played a mana based Hunter for so long that I have a paradigm already set of “what it should be”.

I’m old, and us old folks tend to get set in our ways. *waves cane and talks about taming The Rake to get a faster attack speed for his cat*

At any rate, the reasons why don’t matter in the big scheme of things. When Hunters changed to focus I tried, really tried to like it. After giving it a month or so to try to adapt I found I simply was not having fun playing them.

I could sit here and drop a three thousand word manifesto in your lap about my thoughts on the Hunter changes. It would be pointless though. 

Like screaming into a vacuum.

You would either agree, disagree, or really not give a crap, but in the end I would just be getting myself worked up over something I have no control over. 

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The bottom line is I pay my $15 a month to have fun.  I always said if it quits being fun I would simply quit playing. 

While I am still enjoying the game overall I wish Blizzard had not made the changes.

 Perhaps it was in the best interest of the game overall, I don’t know. What I do know is that Huntering is no longer fun for me so I am done with it.

Moving on.

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I then took my Druid for a spin.

Actually several spins, in all four specs.

Playing as a cat was fun, especially in battlegrounds. I enjoyed it and will keep playing that way in the future.

The whole creeping around was a blast, as was dashing ahead to pop out and drop heals on a flag carrier.

Lets just say Feral has earned itself a spot amongst my two permanent specs.

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Playing as a bear though, that was a different story. I might have simply gotten a series of bad groups, but most likely I simply suck at bear tanking. I found myself rage starved and cooldown locked while Dps routinely pulled off of me.

Then again maybe it was just a blue geared Bear trying to find his way in the wild world of the LFD. Most folks are so used to pull it all and AoE it down that it may not have occurred to them that I can’t handle that yet. I have neither the gear nor the skill.

Bear tanking is definitely still on my plate, and is currently planned to be my second spec, along with my PvP kitty. One thing I have learned though, I will not go playing in the LFD as a max level tank again. Not till I have run with guildies many times, and maybe not even then.

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Well, then I grabbed my spell power gear out of the bank and went Boomkin / Resto for a while. It was, shall we say, interesting. 

Boomkin was kinda fun I guess. The spec seems to be built around casting one spell like five times to get eclipse, then switching to another for about ten times to get another eclipse going the other way. There was the occasional other spell to work in there as well.

I found that having everything I was regularly casting on a fairly long cast timer just kind of annoyed me.

I might be doing it wrong, in fact I likely am.

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Popping over to resto had the advantage of short queue times, which was nice.

Running a few heroics I found that I miss my tree form far more than I had realized. Healing was far less fun for me when I had to stare at the Night Elf form that I have always not cared for.

That and it felt a lot like I was healing on my Priest, just with different shinies appearing around my targets.

Oddly if I had wanted to heal on a Night Elf Priest I would have rolled one.

Go figure.

I am putting him on the shelf for a while. If I find I like the feel of a Worgen Druid I will race change him and get him to 85. If not, i guess I could use another profession bot.

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I sat and pondered my next move.

My first thought was to go take my Death Knight for a spin. I know there had been many changes to the class since I last really tried playing it, and thought maybe I would like to try it out.

I ran a few heroics as Dps, and found it a relatively fun playstyle. I am definitely planning on leveling my DK through Cataclysm and give it an honest go at 85.

One thing my recent Bear tank (why do I keep trying to write “Beer tank”?) experience taught me was that the LFD is not  where I want to try to learn to tank. The only exception being normal instances, tanking for those who are still leveling. Possibly even throwing out a macro something like:

Hello, I will be you tank for the run. Please don’t see an 80 next to my name and assume I am Superman. Kill target will be skull, kindly focus on it. I am here learning how to tank, so if anything I may go a bit slower than most. If thats a problem please let me know now and I will leave so you can find a more suitable tank.

I gave it a good amount of thought, but decided against it, although I did write the macro.

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I thought about rolling a new character, starting over as it were.

A new character to see all the newness Blizzard is about to throw our way.

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Now this is something I already planned to do. I have names picked out for races and classes I want to try. 

I took a look at my list and one by one came up with reasons I could not yet create them.

Some, obviously, are planned to be Goblin and Worgen. A Goblin Shaman and a Worgen Druid to be precise.

Those are not happening till next month.

Then came the others. Dwarven Shaman, Gnome Priest, Tauren Paladin, Undead Hunter (since scratched from my list). All of them are in limbo awaiting the next patch.

Might be next week, might, but probably not. Since Blizz has said that the world will get its new maps and be redesigned when that patch goes live, I assume it will be more towards the end of the world event.  My guess is 25% Nov 23rd / 75% Nov 30th.

There was one on my list though, one that I could make now.

A Human Paladin.

So I did.

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A few days and seventeen levels later I am having an absolute blast.

I had no idea that playing a melee class could be this much fun. It’s like I am running around with a giant S on my chest and nothing can stop me.

Accidentally pull a 20 elite at 15? No problem, I don’t even think I used a potion. 

Grab three 19 elites at 17? even when one is a runner and brings back friends? Done and done.

There might be something to be said for all that talk of Pallies being cockroaches that some famous blogger guy has said over the years.

I started tanking low level instances and I am having a blast doing it.

I think I might just have found my place.

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Tonight I think I will jump online, strap that giant S on my chest again, and go try to solo Deadmines at level 17, just to see if I can.

I think I can pull it off, how about you?

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It’s worth your time

Good morning folks.

I am not here today to talk to you about my feelings on the most recent changes to World of Warcraft.

I am not going to go into how I have fallen out of love with the Hunter class, since it was changed so drastically, or what class my new Worgen will be come Cataclysm time. (Looking hard at a Druid at the moment.)

I am here to talk about something you can do to kill some time tomorrow during server maintenance.

I am here today to talk about politics.

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Now before you fast forward down to the comments section to flame-spray me for not talking about games hear me out.

I am not going to try to tell you how to vote.

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Ok, that’s not true. Actually I will tell you how to vote, or at least how I do it.

The machines that record the votes at my local polling place call for me to close a curtain, insert a card I was given, flip a toggle switch next to each candidate I am voting for, and then pull a lever.

Depending on which poll workers are on staff that day the next step may or may not be receiving an “I Voted” sticker, or possibly a cookie.

If your polling place uses those same style machines, I just told you how to vote, just not who to vote for. 

If they use something else you are on your own.

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And now for storytime.

Many moons ago, when I was taking civics in school, an interesting debate happened.

The professor was teaching what the book said. According to the text there were three branches of government. The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches to be exact.

One of my classmates proceeded to argue that this was incorrect. This student was both an accomplished member of the debate team, and quite an intelligent fellow. On the occasions that he would get a debate session going with either the civics or world history teachers we knew we were in for a good day in class. 

On this particular day he argued that there was in fact a fourth branch of the government. He made the case that not only was this fourth branch a part of the government it was in fact the largest branch as well as the final check in the system of checks and balances.

The Electorate, those who vote.

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That day of sitting in class going back and forth about whether the Electorate is actually a part of the government or not has stayed with me for well over 20 years now. To this day I firmly believe that the student was right.

I am a part of the government, I am part of the Electorate.

In all seriousness I believe voting in every election from the President of my country to the neighborhood Alderman is not just my right, it’s my duty.

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Originally this part of the post was where I plugged in links to virtually every site I could find that compared the various candidates for office in tomorrows elections. Then I realized that some of those sites may be viewed as somewhat biased in the topics they chose to contrast.

To avoid any hard feelings, accusations of bias, or misunderstandings of my intent I pulled the entire section.

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Instead of a wall of links you can follow I am going to simply ask this of you.

Look up the parties and candidates you will be asked to choose from. 

Compare them, contrast them. Look at what they plan to do in the future, and at what they have done in the past.

There are quite a few websites, including most major news outlets, that have side by side comparisons of many of these candidates. In fact, those are what I considered linking.

As you read try to treat the whole process like it is an interview, and you are trying to pick the best person for the job based on their resume and work history.

Oddly enough, that is exactly what you are doing. Picking those that most closely match your vision of how things should be. We, as a group, are essentially hiring those that the majority of us  think will do the best job.

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One thing to make clear before I sign off.

I don’t care whether you choose to vote a straight party ticket, or even which one you choose.

I don’t care if you pick and choose individual candidates in each race.

I don’t even care if you do a write in vote for Mickey Mouse.

Just please, stop by the polls and cast your vote.

It’s your voice, your choice, and your duty.

It’s worth your time.

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