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Okay, it is Novemeber. Lots of shit happens in November. Personally, the most important (or fun, I forget which), is NaNoWriMo. However, there are also people around the community that are participating in the most manly of November pursuits, Movember.

(While I am not really participating in Movember this year, Gnomeageddon from Armageddon’s Coming is, and you can learn more about it in this post of his.)

Anyway, getting back to the very vague point I have here, NaNoWriMo. It stands for “National Novel Writing Month”, but it’s been a fairly international event for… longer than I know exactly.

The idea is simple. Write 50,000 words, in 30 days. That comes out to 1,667 words a day. That’s a number that I’m /very/ familiar with. Anyway, this is another excuse (also the general lack of things to talk about WoW-wise ’till the 7th of December) not to write anything much for a month (also see EXAMS FFFFF-).

I have got a post on information organization or something planned for sometime late next week, but no promises. Because you know, obligations suck.

As I am now incredibly aware, there are new quests (well, a new quest) in 4.0.1, that are not a part of the main cataclysm chain. So, today, I take you to Southern Durotar, to do the new quest, [Cleanup on Isle E.]

Yes, I am aware that I am a pirate. Yay for Hallow’s End Candy.

So, this is the guy that has the quest that you are looking for. Ignore my horrible UI, it’s currently in-between implementations, and I haven’t removed the Blizzard bars yet.

So, then, you go here, the main island of the Echo Isles. Once you are there…

It takes a while, because swim speed is painfully slow, and I’m not wasting a water walking potion on doing this (they are for sea fishin’).

You’re looking for these masks. The observant of you might notice that they are the masks from those funky dudes that were summoned in the Echo Isles event pre-4.x. There aren’t many hostile enemies on the islands anymore, due to the fact that the dancing trolls from dancing troll village have moved in and are totally having a rave party or something.

Then you go hand it in. From memory (I did it on a lowbie toon before going back to get some screen shots) it gave ~1k XP, and was easy to do (there were the level 8 tigers and raptors on the isles, not anything else).

Now, with 4.0.3 about a month away, it’s really time to break out the last hurrah for (Pre-Searing, as amusing Guild Wars Reference is amusing) Azeroth, and time to do as much shit as physically possible.

So now, I bring you…

TwilliK’s List of Bad-Ass Shit to Do Before December.

1. Go to the Q’D Lighthouse. This is fairly easy to do, like most of the other ‘hidden’ areas.
   Take your DK, as you should probably have one that has finished the starter area. Level it to Level 61. Obtain [Path of Frost].
   Follow the coast around from Tirisfal or the DK area in EPL.
2. Go to some of the other hidden areas around Azeroth. As somebody who really ‘earned’ the Explorer title, these are/were my favorite things about old world.
3. Do the [Green Hills of Stranglethorn] achievement. I mean, sure, the Green Hills is a PitA of a quest, but still, it’s a quest that (technically) belongs to the greatest questgiver in all of Azeroth (or at least his son, I guess).
4. Class Quests. They are going the way of the Dodo come Cataclysm, to be replaced by lame ass dungeon quests.
5. Speaking of Dungeons, get the [Classic Dungeonmaster] achievement (I personally just call it the [Dungeonman] achievement, but whatever). All of these 5mans are easy at 80, even for a shitty geared mage (I did it in 4.1, from memory).
   You’ll get to go to awesome places that are getting changed for the worse come Cataclysm.
   Better yet, do what Bind On Equip (a WoW podcast) did, and level new characters as a group (5 of you), and level through every dungeon (at least the old world ones) in the game. Awesomesauce.
6. Rep Grinds. Due to several world changes, it’s best to do those old world grinds now. Especially the Argent Dawn (my personal favorite), considering that they are now the Argent Crusade. Go run Stratholm or Scholomance a few dozen times. It’s easy enough.
7. Log out for the final time somewhere ‘spechul’. Just in case they don’t send everyone back to a specific spawn. (Note: I mean somewhere where you will get “pwnt” upon login. Alternately, in Badlands for one of the new ‘best quests’.)

Okay, I’m sure I had a really good idea yesterday, too, but now I have forgotten it. Oh well, this list should probably keep you occupied long enough.

Personally, I’m going to hammer out the remainder of my Cenarion Circle rep, and play exams/NaNoWriMo/Rock Band 3. Woooooo.

Written as newspaper headlines.

DIABLO 3 GETS LAME ASS ARENAS, NEW CLASS THAT NOBODY REALLY CARES ABOUT.

LORE SPOILERS, FUCK YEAH. (The Quests & Lore panel was the greatest thing, and worth the price of the stream by itself – consolidated Metz awesomeness, made me aware of Alex Afrasabi (sp? Way too lazy to look up exact spelling, or even check if I’m talking about the right guy) being a big force in the awesomness of the WoW quest team.)

SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS SO SPOILERY, YOU’LL HATE YOURSELF FOR HEARING THEM. (Especially if you are a creepy Thrall/Jaina baby shipper, because that was debunked forever)

MAGES GETTING STICK LEGENDARY AS NEXT LEGENDARY – WILL “LET WARLOCKS USE IT TOO, WE GUESS, BUT NOT THOSE FUCKING CHICKEN-DUDES”

AIUR CHEF, COMING SOON TO MAKE YOU WANT TO WATCH IRON CHEF RERUNS.

Okay, enough caps, because I think I am beginning to hate myself a little bit.

Only other thing that really came to mind as “fuck yeah” was the news that Blizz are apparantly recreating a large amount of WC3 assets for SC2′s engine, which means we can finally remove that boring ass bullshit that they call “starcraft” and replace it with all of the missions from WC3, so you can play them in a more pretty engine. I don’t know, jeez.

I’ve spent much of the last week or so playing around with Iriai (Iraia, she has a new name to go with her fancy new server), healing things, DCing on Headless Horseman, 2 HH because everyone DCed, etc.

New healing is actually quite fun. First things first, Holy Power. It’s an alright system, and while it is basically a combo-point thing, it makes there be a few more varing paths on ‘what to do’ instead of HLing whoever is taking damage.

Yes, you do cast Holy Shock every, single, fucking, cooldown, but hey, whatever. But there are TACTICS. Lets say I am healing a 5 man, and let’s say that it is Forge of Souls (mainly because this more or less did happen). Now, sure, mana isn’t really a huge issue, despite my total lack of spirit (my paladin gear – it has none) but lets pretend it was (and it was by the end of the dungeon).

I can cast any heal on my Beacon (who only takes 50% of my healing now, so sometimes it is necessary) to gain 1 Holy Power. (Please note that, I am fairly sure that [Holy Shock] will only give 1 Holy Power, even when cast on your bacon)

Considering that one of my goals is to get 3 Holy Power, and cast a free, instant, and kinda good heal from [Word of Glory], that basically means that when I have nobody to heal, I’m going to be casting [Holy Light] (our ‘midrange’ heal, basically use it like you did pre-4.x, or all the fucking time) on by beacon. This also heals me for 5k-6k thanks to PotI, which means that I’m really not going to have to worry about myself (then again, I am under-geared and only have ~20k health, so these are -big- heals coming in on me, relative to my maximum health pool).

That being said, it is still a really confronting experience being responsible for keeping everyone alive. I mean, if a tank fucks up, a good healer can probably save the group from wiping (in a 5 man, at least), if some DPS fuck up, nobody really cares, but if a healer fucks up, that can make it hard to save the pull (unless you have somebody who can off-heal).

Note that I don’t mean that last bit in a demeaning way, tanks are important, and so is good DPSers (a good dps doesn’t need to do great damage, but they do need to give me a run for my money on “Thaddius tango” where you go as long as you can without fucking up. Apparently it’s really hard, but I was always really good at it (because I was always so fucking nervous, despite the fact that my 2-3k DPS was hardly helping the raid).

The following is a ‘letter’ to Blizzard that I expect they’ll never see, because like they read this bunch of incoherent ramblings. I don’t even talk about WoW half the time. Anyway, this is just my opinion, as mainly an outsider. Feel free to tell me how I am wrong / a total pansy, just keep it relatively civil, okay?

Uhh, hey, Blizzard. Not that I want to sound too complain-y (or expect to change the dev team’s mind, because it’s not actually bad change) but the new healing style that you seem to be pushing seems a little bit scary as a non-healer (that could just be the nerdrage vibe I’m hearing from some Holy Pallies though, not entirely sure).

That being said, I’d probably say the same thing about CC being important again if I wasn’t too busy celebrating. (Then I remembered that I am not the king of anything (CC/AoE/Fire Festival) anymore apart from being the most fragile, and I got sadface).

Getting back to the point, as somebody who has been interesting in healing for a while (including dipping my toe in and healing Ahune & Coren on some alts), healing is intimidating enough (which, to be fair, is mainly because of those certain other players who will either rage or /kick you if you so much as take a step wrong).

Is it your intention for all new healers to level from 1-85 again through the Dungeon Finder to learn their craft, or is this just me being really irrationally afraid about the opinions of total strangers?

I guess the other solution is to do things the old fashioned way and use the wonders of knowing people on my server that I can convince to get huge repair bills in the name of learning to play good, but that is just a little bit crazy.

So, yeah, am I just completely crazy, or do I actually make some sort of point in there? What do you guys think?

This, is what I’ve been playing since Thursday (also Minecraft). I’m not entirlely sure what to say my opinion on it is yet. But damn is it pretty.