Reincarnation: I Have Returned! - Announcements Involving Streaming, Blogging and More!

So you may have noticed that I haven't been around... anywhere in the last several months.

Long story short I stopped playing World of Warcraft for about five months or more for a multitude of reasons. I decided to take a break when my raid group broke up due to poor attendance because of burn out at the end of the expansion and ended up playing Wildstar. There, I met a guy and we ended up dating for four months and we spent pretty much 100% of our time together. So I didn't raid in anything, I didn't stream, I didn't really take any time to do any of the things that I wanted to do because I felt like I needed to spend all of my time with him. I also started school in August and wanted to take it super seriously (didn't happen as much as I wanted it too but it is still going well).

I initially wasn't very interested in World of Warcraft because he hadn't played in many many years and there was no way that he was going to be able to get into any really competitive raid group and I wasn't very interested in raiding casually or below my skill level just to play with him. Now that I'm back on my lonesome I kind of got my fire back for WoW.

I'm currently raiding with a guild called <Crossfire> on US-Thrall Horde side and am very happy since they have a long history of end game progression that ends with the final boss dying. That is a problem I generally have with guilds is that I get up to the final bosses of the tier, usually the last 3 and never actually clear them on Heroic.

You may have noticed that I have been super active on Youtube distributing SWTOR content. As people might know, 2 years ago when I made this super beast computer it was for two primary reasons. For streaming and to put all of the class story lines for SWTOR on Youtube as I was super in SWTOR at the time that I made the computer and was into the stories a lot. Recently, SWTOR released the announcement of their third expansion pack and if you preordered and remained a subscriber you would get 12x experience on class quests, making it possible to level completely through class story quests and nothing else.

Last WoW expansion, I did nothing but play WoW for the longest time and burned myself out so for the month or so before WoW's new expansion I haven't been touching it at all so that I don't get burned out again. So this month I'm pretty much playing SWTOR exclusively, doing one Act of a class a day and uploading the previous class to Youtube. That has pretty much been taking up 100% of my time after I finish school work for the day. So for the coming month there will be tons of SWTOR content on my Youtube channel.

As for the stream, I'm not going to be streaming until Warlords of Draenor is released since I pretty much spend my entire day recording SWTOR and by the time I finish it's so late at night I'm exhausted and ready to bed or just chill out.

So the streaming will return 11/14/2014 with a 24 hour stream during the launch of Warlords of Draenor. I will then try to stream at least 4 hours a day (probably 8pm-12am) everyday. I will be streaming guaranteed WoW Mythic raiding Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday from 9pm-12am EST. The plan is to also find a casual guild in Star Wars and raid one or two days a week on off days once the new expansion drops in December. Streaming has always been a strong passion of mine and I wish I had been more consistent with it over the past two years but I've been super discouraged lately since I've been away for so long.

Thank you so much to everyone who has continued to read this blog. I, once again, did not get into the Warlords of Draenor beta so it was difficult to get any information that wasn't released on MMO Champion and that I couldn't get any hands on experience with it which is really annoying as someone who has been playing every Blizzard game since Vanilla religiously that I still can't get into a beta to create content for myself. Sorry, rant over. And since I've been away from the game for so long I haven't kept up to date with everything so jumping headfirst into the launch will be an experience. I am, however, going to get one of my friends to let me log into his beta account just so that I can make a blog post about what blue gear we'll be going for in Warlords and where to get it so keep a look out for that!

Thank you so much to everyone who has kept reading this blog, or messaged me on various games and Twitter and kept and touch during the last several months it has really meant a lot to me and I am glad to be back!

How the Leaves Are Changing? - Week of 04/20/2014 - I'm So Behind!

So this article was supposed to be out on Saturday of last week and it's coming out on Wednesday... yeah... I'm super behind! So let's get started!

World of Warcraft

Good Raid Week!

Had a good raid week this week. We've been looking for a tank for the longest time with our top dps needing to change to tank pretty much every week since I joined. This week we were really lucky to find a pug DK tank who was really good and was looking for a guild so I'm super optimistic about next week and getting some progression. We also full cleared for the first time in a while. We probably wouldn't have if we didn't have to pug spots and could have worked on Heroic Malkorok but it was worth it since I finally got my four piece. I know, I'm 8/14HM and have raided through all of Siege of Orgrimmar and have managed to not be able to snag a 4 piece until now. The 4pc for RDruids is really good and am really excited for next week where my HPS is sure to increase. Our Disc/Shadow Priest also finally got the Trinket off of Blackfuse and replaced a Timeless trinket.

Double Orgrimmars All the Way!

I also got my Holy Paladin into a 6/14HM 25M guild that wanted my Druid. I was originally supposed to go on my Shaman but their old Holy Paladin took a bunch of gear and then bailed. The first week was kind of rough but it was to be expected as they decided to raid on Sunday. They were able to get a full raid but it was pretty obvious that people weren't completely focused. And I also only got one drop of the 7 Heroic Bosses that we killed so that was also pretty unfortunate. 

Do I Need Another Druid?

Decided to start working on another baby Druid. One thing I really miss about my main Druid is that she can't be a Worgen anymore. Alliance is still my favorite faction and they do have the best races for Druids. The top of my Druids career was back in Heroic Dragon Soul in terms of gear and progression and I really miss the Worgen. My friend, @Kittlore, and I are leveling baby Worgens on an RP server off the grid. The plan is to get her to max level before the end of the expansion but we shall see!

League of Legends

Back in the Leagues

So the story is that last season me and a friend grinded for weeks for get me out of Bronze 5 to Silver or better. I finally got to Silver before the cut off time and my duo partner got to Gold after the cut off time so we both got our Silver rewards. After the soft reset I did my placement matches and went 6-4 and ended up in Bronze 1. I was so demoralized and frustrated (finally fighting to Silver, going positive in my placements and yet going lower than I started) that I ended up not playing League for several months. But I finally came back and stayed in Bronze 1/2 without going on too hard of a losing streak. Finally this week we won the Silver promotion on the second try and got back into Silver. Now we're working on Gold for the goal by the end of the season.

There's also news that a new support, Braum the Heart of Freljord, is on the way. I looked at his abilities and was instantly bored as it is another tank support. I really hate tank supports and like supports that are more bard like with heals, shields and buffs for clutch saves and lane pressure. Our last healing support was almost a year and a half ago with Nami who came out on 12/07/2012 but she was never picked up in pro play because tank/cc/AP damage supports were too popular.

Other Stuff!

Whatever my internet issues I'm very optimistic that they have been solved! I went the entire week streaming without a single hiccup until Sunday. That entire day I was having random disconnects from all of my games (WoW, LoL and Hearthstone) but I think I might have found the cause. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with my computers network being registered as a Public Network and not a private network and the firewall/virus protector was fighting with the game servers themselves because of it. I changed it and was able to stream on Tuesday for nearly 5 hours without a single dropped frame and no DCs in WoW, HS, GW2 or LoL. My download speeds for game patches have also increased quite a bit as well.

School is almost finished. It's finals week this week and I have an exam and a Capstone essay and then I will be done with school until August and I will no longer have an excuse to not be putting out articles. I'm gonna be pretty happy to finally have school over with and get a break for a while. Something tells me I'm going to need it when my brother finally graduates.

And lastly, after much discussion on Twitter I decided to pre-order Wildstar. I got into the beta in December and liked it but lost interest quickly and wasn't sure if it was worth the box price and the subscription. I'm also extremely jaded from Rift, SWTOR and FFXIV not staying in popularity for very long after buying Collectors Editions of each of those games. But lots of people are really excited for it and I do need a second game to play outside of WoW so as to not get burned out. I did pick up ESO but I haven't actually played it yet.

How the Leaves Are Changing? - Week of 04/06/2014 - Weak Auras Everywhere!

This week has been pretty busy for me all things considered so let's dive right in....

Internet Shenanigans

So I tried to stream a few times this week some of you might have noticed. For a little while we thought that it might have been fixed but it was too much to hope for. When it got really bad on Thursday night I called TWC while it was happening hoping to get some up to date information so that I could lead the technician who was coming up on Friday on the right track. They, of course, couldn't find anything wrong. Eventually, after much thinking and me mentioning that the Router had just been replaced and that it wasn't actually turning off when the internet was disconnecting. Finally, enough bells rang and we realized that putting an older television on 6 year old splitters that weren't replaced when we got the new equipment 6 months ago probably was the cause. Technician, who happened to be a family friend of ours, came up and took readings on the modem and said it was spiking up without going offline so that means that it's probably the wires on the pole needing to be messed with. It just so happening to be raining so they're gonna try and fix it on Monday. So... that'd be great!

Erry Day I'm Raiding

Joined two raiding guilds this week. My Restoration Druid is now in <Draconic Orders> which is a 10 man with 8/14HM progression and are working on Malkorok. Their a pretty chill group of guys that needed a Resto Druid for their run this week and I joined the night of. And my Restoration Shaman joined a 25 man <Quest>. Not sure how much raiding, if any, I will be doing with them this expansion due to my gear being so behind after being away for 3 months and her never being a raiding toon. She's sitting at 510 ilvl right now but if I can get the Raid Finder gear she needs and 2/2 it with Item Upgrades then I might be able to hit the 540 item level they want. I managed to sneak into a Flex run and outhealed a 542 Disc Priest on Juggernaut. So we'll see where it goes.

Weak Auras Everywhere

I redid my Weak Auras on like all of my healers this week. I'm starting a 6 week piece on Weak Auras for all healing specs starting with Restoration Druids this week. I really like Weak Auras because after just a little bit of practice it's something I can do without having to beg for help with it.

Hearth-Stoned

I finally sat down and decided to try and get the Hearthsteed incase they randomly decided to take it out of the game for some reason. I got it playing Casual mode with a Priest Deck. I like the mount, it's pretty little thing with the Invincible/Tyreals Charger model which I really like in horse models.

How has your guys' weeks been? What have you been up to?

How the Leaves Have Changed? - Week of 03/30/2014 - Welcome Back From the Dead!

So the last time I posted was around New Years when I said I was gonna do all these things. Then a bunch of things just kind of happened. First off, my WoW subscription ran out for the first time in the 10 years I've been playing this game. I mean, I've gone on breaks before and paused my subscription so I could recharge from burn out but I had never actually been so poor that my subscription had run out and I couldn't renew. And with that subscription expiration I kind of just stopped caring for a bit. My guild had imploded, we weren't raiding, I had gotten my Ahead of Curve Feat of Strength and the mount and I was happy to stop for a while. Ontop of that, my internet suddenly died and I was no longer able to stream every night due to frequent disconnects. First it was attributed to when my router got hard restarted and it got reverted to it's factory settings and the IP address was resetting every hour instead of every 24 hours. That has been fixed quite a few times and still keeps getting rebroken. I finally got someone up here to take a look and the guy was sick as a dog and spent two hours up here just to get nothing done.

However, this last weekend I finally preordered Warlords of Draenor after 3 months away and I'm back in love. And I've pretty much just come back at running speed.

Morning Rituals

I wake up in the morning and I do 6 (and soon to be 7) farms that consist of herbalist plants to get them Golden Lotus'. In 6 farms I rake in about 20-25 Golden Lotus a day and I am working on a 7th now that my old Hunter finally has flying in Pandaria. After I finish all of my farms I then get on every character and do my daily Heroic Dungeon and my daily scenario for my Valor points. I do this every morning and it takes about 4 hours to do it all.

Looking for Raid

Then I do a LFR on one of my characters every day. Depending on the character I do the whole thing or just a few bosses. My druid, who is like 5/14 HM still doesn't have her four piece but I'm working on it still. Maybe I will get it before the end of the expansion. We'll see.

Boosted!

As I stated before, I preordered Warlords of Draenor so that means that I got a free level 90. I already had all of the healers available at level 90 so I wasn't sure what I wanted to use it on. I finally decided to use it on my bank alt mage that I've had for forever. I'd tried to level a mage several times before but I could never get past level 20 or so. I might pay for another boost sometime in a few months to get a rogue for the lockpicking but we'll see. It was really easy and I think I've gotten the hang of Arcane Mage.

Outside of the game I've been watching a lot of Wrestling and it's Wrestlemania weekend that I'm super excited for! School is also almost over for this semester with only a month or so left before I get a break. Didn't do so well with my first Psychology exam but hey at least it's not failing (technically). I also have an article about the Patch 6.0 Alpha Notes and what it means for Druids! Hopefully this means I'm back baby!

How the Leaves Are Changing? - Week of 10/19/2013 - What Have I Been Up To?

Well, you might have noticed the lack of posts this week. I've decided to not post so many weekly articles and have cut it down a tad. Right now I'm currently only sticking with the Weekly Innervate for the moment and may bring back Loremaster Innervate in the near future. I have decided to spread out my college work a little more evenly as I was simply not doing it due to complete uninterest. The blog didn't have much to do with that to be honest I just really have a hard time sitting down and doing homework because I'm lazy. I'm also extremely somewhat ADD and I'll sit down to write a post or homework and constantly alt tabbing to do something else I thought about doing. In other words, I have shortened the amount of posts to preserve the life of the blog because I have at least 30 posts I want to write which is more than half a year if it all goes towards the Weekly Innervate. I'm also going to move it back to Tuesday because I don't have much homework to do on Tuesday where Thursday I have two things to do.

In game a lot has happened this week. First, I finished my Legendary Cloak on my main character after months of work and I streamed it (you can find the VoD here)! Complete disappointment for a ton of reasons. One, I was expecting a Feat of Strength for completing it like all other Legendaries and there was no achievement for actually completing the cloak at all specifically. And as pictured above, the cloak wing animation in completely broken for the Glyph of Treant form for Restoration Druids. If you're in Tree Form when it procs in combat, it won't show up, if you're idle it won't cosmetic proc if you're in Tree Form and if you're in human form and then shift to tree form, the wings proc sideways. Every other form for Druids works fine, Resto Druid does not and I am completely unhappy because of this.

I finished Flex 14/14 this week with my usual Wednesday group. I have all fights recorded which means I can start streaming the Flex raids. Also, I admit that I have been missing raiding a lot recently and have decided to put the robes back on again for real. I put up a post on the Thrall forums and got about four responses within a few hours. I decided to try out a guild that only raided two nights a week on pretty odd nights (Friday and Monday) and I'll admit I was skeptical at first because good guilds don't generally run two nights a week and generally never not raid on Tuesday. As well, only raiding 6 hours a week generally means not a ton of time for progression and if you get stuck on a boss for any length of time you're done. But they were raiding last night in a fresh clear so I decided to try them out. And I was really happy! We finished 13/14NM in 3 hours by one shotting every boss in the instance (also streamed the VoD is here). We go back in on Monday for a full night of Progression on Garrosh (which is the only boss they haven't killed yet) and I am super excited.

The only other project I have now is that of gold! Anyone who knows me knows I absolutely suck at making gold. But I've been trying to make some gold because I was sitting at 18,000g and completely unhappy with where I was at. So I've been doing the Ore shuffle a lot as well as selling a lot of my stuff in my guild bank. Gems and enchanting materials/scrolls have been selling really well but as expected Glyphs are not at all. The current plan to to make 100,000 gold and then keep that amount and restock my guild bank until the end of the expansion where I do my mass clear out sale since I only stock pile things relevant to the expansion we're currently in. Another two or three weeks I should be at 100,000g since I was at 18,000g last week and I'm sitting at 65,000g currently!

Lastly, it's my birthday on Monday! Nothing to celebrate really because I'm going to be raiding Garrosh on my birthday. I plan on transferring my final two close max characters to Horde and US-Thrall. This will not only give two max level characters (I hope to get my monk to 90 by Monday) but it will give me two more Alchemists (for a total of three, one for each specialization) and a max level Tailor. I will be sad to see my sexy Draenei transmog gone as I absolutely loved it. My Shaman will be a male Troll named Suraga and my monk will becoming a Blood Elf named Mishtah. The other thing I plan on doing is name changing my Priest to Circalla (since Shieldra is a bad name for a Holy Priest) as well as race changing my Druid (AGAIN!?) to a Tauren. This hinges on the fact that Blizzcon announces we  aren't getting any new races. If we are I will hold it off for the expansion.

What have your guys' weeks been like!?

How the Leaves Are Changing? - Week of 10/12/2013 - What Have I Been Up To?

What have I been up too this week... well my sleep schedule is still not fixed as I am writing this about 20 minutes after waking up. I thought I finally fixed it after I took a nap mid-week but then I stayed up until 3pm for no reason today after rewatching Andrew Lloyd Weber's Love Never Dies. I've been on a Phantom of the Opera binge lately with the 25th Royal Hall soundtrack and Ramin Kaminloo's Love Never Dies soundtrack.

I'm still on my World of Warcraft binge and I have been working on alts a lot. I finally got my Holy Priest to level 90 and am currently working on my 87 monk to get all 5 healer types to level 90. I currently have 5 level 90s and they are all able to do LFR of some kind and I worked a lot on enchanting/gemming their gear since I have so many spare gems lying around.

Speaking of which, I've been working on the Ore Shuffle. I currently have Mining, Herbalism, Alchemy (Transmutation), Jewelcrafting and Enchanting and not a lot of money. Now that the final tier is here (assuming no real 5.5 tier) my goal is to now make as much money as possible with what I have before the next expansion comes out. So I'm currently either farming or buying Ore, prospecting it into gems, using the uncommon gems to make jewelry and disenchant it into materials to make scrolls and cutting the Rare Gems into the most expensive gems and selling all of that.

I will also be finishing the Legendary Cloak on my main next week because I'm currently sitting at 11/12 Titan Runestones. I promise I will livestream completing it because it's important and I need to stop being a noob about not streaming. Which hasn't been happening again because I'm still watching others streamers old stream vods or Phantom of the Opera DvDs.

I got into the Hearthstone beta! A friend gave me a beta key and then the next day I got a key from Blizzard who I then gave to a friend. I've been playing it in the early morning when queues for dungeons are really really slow. I like it and have been playing the Druid/Priest decks a lot. I've never actually played a card game before and I find it really interesting. I wish I had streamed me opening it for the first time but I was so excited that I forgot.

How the Leaves Are Changing? - Week of 10/05/2013 - What Have I Been Up To?

Not a whole bunch to report on this week I feel. Firstly, been thinking about making a side blogs that I won't have a schedule for. One was inspired by a long outline rant after the US Government shut down on October 1st. I obviously wouldn't post my opinions on it on this blog but making a secondary blog to post it on did come to mind. I like to think myself extremely intelligent with a lot of opinions on stuff (which unsurprisingly people take as always wanting to argue for some reason) so to have a second blog to put that stuff on might be a good idea. I don't know if I actually will however since I don't know how much I would post on it since I rarely pay attention to real world news that happens. I only hear about things if they happen on Twitter.

I've been in the weirdest sleeping schedule ever for the past week and a half. I've been waking up super late, the latest being 7:00 pm making it impossible to write an article and publish it in a good amount of time (which is why this weeks Loremaster Innervate came out today and not yesterday). I need to either switch my sleep schedule back around or write the articles the morning prior before I go to bed and schedule them to release while I'm sleeping.

Ontop of that, I've been thinking about doing a sixth blog article called "Wow, now that's Nerdy!" which would be a review type of article where I review some sort of game, anime, TV show, movie or album. I'm going to debut the new article this Wednesday for an anime I have been watching called Dangan Ronpa which came out on DVD about a month ago and see how it goes.

http://www.latestbuy.com.au/decor-star-projector-with-soothing-sounds.html?sc=19&category=5284

My birthday is coming up this month (finally not going to be a teenager anymore!) and Christmas is just around the corner and I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. For my birthday I'm thinking of getting a Ticket to Blizzcon to watch on TV so I can liveblog it like I did in 2011. And then maybe transfering my two stranded Healers (my Shaman and Monk) to Thrall so all of my close to max level toons can be together. And there's also a sleeping machine I really want to get because I'm prone to needing sound/dull light while sleeping. I had one as a kid that did rainbow lights, a little waterfall and nature sounds. I haven't been able to find a replacement for it sense but I did find one! I probably won't be able to do all of it for my birthday since it will come out to about $200 but we'll see.

For Christmas I plan on doing an overhaul to my room since I've been living in the Living Room for about 6 years and need to actually make it my room since right now it's just a living room with a mattress on the floor. I want to do like a totally girly nerd cave where I get a new desk, figure out my three monitor set up and put my posters up. So I need your help because I have a terrible imagination. If you have a gamer cave then tweet me pictures of your setup so I can get some inspiration.

World of Warcraft has still been my gaming ADD game of choice. My Druid finally got her Legendary Meta gem and got 7/12 Runestones in the first week. If I'm lucky I will be finished with the Runestones after the Reset. In other news, still no Ashes of A'lar. I've also been leveling a lot of alts and am currently working on my 85 Mistweaver Monk, a baby Warlock and a baby tanking Warrior.

There hasn't been a lot of streaming going on because I've been watching a lot of VoDs from streamers (like Devolore and Pokket) or watching podcasts from GamebreakerTV which means that I can't stream while I'm watching those. I go through these phases a lot where I watch stuff and don't want to stop so I can stream. It will go away soon!

How the Leaves Are Changing - Week of 09/28/2013 - What Was I Up To?

Welcome to the first week of How the Leaves Are Changing? Every Saturday we take a break before the start of the new week and I just kind of sit and talk a little bit about what I have been doing for the past week or so. This came from the idea from a friend that I should start vlogging (in which I lol'd at him) so I decided to blog instead of vlog.

I can color... The cover art for my outline binder!

Well for starters, I've been super busy with the blog this week. I've had this blog that's been on and off for about two or three years now where I would get the inspiration to write a bunch of articles, write one and then that would be the end of it. For the past six months however since I got my first smart phone every time I came up with a blog article I would write down the title in a To-Do list App but still wouldn't write them. This week inspiration struck me again but I took it a little further this week. I made a big binder with 5 tabs and took all of the ideas I had on my phone and wrote outlines for them so I wouldn't forget what I wanted to talk about. I even took out the college planner I haven't been using for this year and put up a five article a week schedule Friday-Tuesday. I've also done a little bit of work on the blog as well such as adding better tags, adding a blog roll and updating the links sections. I also have been putting the thinks to new blog articles on my stream for easier access.

I've been thinking about doing audio/video versions of articles. Articles like the Monday Musings are just really thought out opinion pieces, people might not want to sit and read through it all so I thought I might try writing out the article, doing an audio reading of it and putting it over a backdrop of my character dancing based on the game that it's about. And then putting highlights for the written section of it. I was also thinking of doing an audio recording only of How the Leaves Are Changing since this is also more of a personal article. Like a Captain's Log... I don't know how I would publish an audio only version, I guess I would have to find out how audio podcasts do that little audio thing on their websites.

I've also been looking into ways to make a little bit of money on the side. I put about 3-7 hours a day for 5 days into both the blog and my stream. I'm currently in school, and of course I hate it, I have a really high IQ so I feel like I don't learn anything. I don't read the books or do any studying take a test and get an A on it. I currently have no income because I'm at school full time and having absolutely $0 all the time really sucks. I'm not looking to make a ton of money, just enough so that I could pay for my game subs and the occasional game that I want without having to ask someone else to get it for me or wait until a Holiday. So I put a Donation button on the blog links and on the stream. I don't plan on promoting them or shoving them down anyones throat but I figured I would put it there incase anyone did and that's probably the last thing I'll say about it. I also got approved for Adsense by Google so there will be ads on my Youtube and here on the Blog. If you have Adblock (I do too, mostly for Youtube) I would ask that you consider turning it off for this site, since they'e tiny and not in obnoxious places. It would help me out a lot!

I also did a lot of work on the stream page this week. I finally realized that Twitch didn't move over the HTML profiles we used to have and I had nothing in my info section. I worked on it for about two hours and am really happy with the way that it looks. I like it, I think it looks super professional. You can check it out here.

Now, to the Video Games!

I'm currently on a pretty heavy WoW binge right now. I have a very bad case of gamer ADD where I play one game for 6+ hours a day for 2-4 weeks, burn out and switch to something else. Right now my addiction is World of Warcraft again. I'm currently working on finishing my Legendary Cloak that has an odd story behind it. I quit playing WoW hardcore for about six months (my first and only extended break in 9 years) because I got a new job that had really long hours. So I missed almost all of Tier 14. Ever since I have been super behind on the Legendary. For the past month or so I've been working on the Secrets of the Emperor, killed over 100 bosses and didn't get a single drop. Finally this week I realized that when I faction transferred I lost the quest and had been wasting my time for almost six weeks. Thankfully, I still had some bosses left and got my last Secret I needed on the Sha of Pride on flex difficulty and I completed my meta gem Legendary and next week I start Runestones. Other than that I've been pretty much doing nothing except for odds and ends in game, still working on getting the Ashes of A'lar, run it on five different toons, still no luck.

Tera had a promotion last week that gave you one free instant level 58 if you made a character with the .Levelup in the name. I took advantage since I am definitely not a grinding/Western MMO type of player and the chance to get an almost max level character and skip all of the grinding I'll definitely take it! However, other than logging on to get her gear I haven't actually played it yet. Maybe one day I'll find the motivation!

Now this. Guild Wars 2 is holding a free week from September 27th-October 3rd where the game is completely free to play to people who don't own it for one week. They also have a sale on the box making it $20 cheaper at $39.99. I didn't really have an interest in Guild Wars 2 when it launched because of it's not trinity system. I am a healer so if I can't choose to heal 100% of the time then I really have no interest. However, I will of course try the game if it's free! I made a Sylvari (which is a plant/tree thing because RESTO DRUID AT HEART) Elementalist and have been live streaming my first impressions. The Weekly Innervate this week will host a full article. It definitely won't be a main game but I am considering getting the deluxe addition (which is only $45) and adding it to games I play casually for the story content.

That's it for me. Thanks so much everyone who has stopped by in the last week with support of the blog and the retweets on Twitter, I appreciate every single one! Now, I'm off to record a run through Copperbell Mines for tomorrow Sunday Stroll, have a good night everyone!

How the Leaves Are Changing - General Gaming - How Do You Spend Your Days/Weeks In World of Warcraft?

Now that summer is upon us and a lot of people are on their summer break, including me, there will be a lot more hours clocked weekly into World of Warcraft. Currently, WoW is the only MMO I play strictly except for a day or two every little bit that I dabble into Rift. Needless to say, I am definitely in the top one percent of people who play more than 10 hours a week. I've played so much over the past several years that I've developed a bit of a routine that leaves my OCD a little bit crazy if I don't keep up to it.

Every morning (or late afternoon, depending on my sleep schedule) I wake up and I pour myself a big glass of orange juice or have myself a bowl of cereal and start the day by reading WoW Insider articles, MMO Champion or other blogs posts from the day prior. Unless something like Patch Notes for a PTR get released or any other huge news I generally wait and read everything all at once. This is where most of my ideas for my blog article topics come from as this wakes me up and gets my brain working. Then it's time to log in (or start writing an article if it's maintenance Tuesday!).

The first thing I do when I log in is go and do my dailies! Now that the expansion is nearly over and most of my reputations are maxxed there aren't many dailies I have to do anymore. When the expansion first came out dailies took up most of the day (4+ hours on an undergeared Boomkin) but now with Operation: Shieldwall being my final Reputation I need to complete for MoP, dailies don't take up very much time. Argent Tournament Dailies are the only other dailies that I complete from old content as I am working on a tabard for a really awesome Druid of the Argent Dawn transmog set that is centered around the Argent Crusader's Tabard! Then it's time to fly over to my tranquil little farm and collect my catch for the day. Now that I have over 700 White Turnips sitting in my guild bank I have started growing Razorleaf Plants for nearly three stacks of Leather a day. After that I generally log into my bank/auction house toon and collect money or repost down auctions. After all of that is completed if I don't have anywhere to be that day I switch into my weekly schedule. With so much to do in WoW even now I like to keep myself to a schedule of things to do every day instead of spending 1 or 2 on each task I could be doing. I feel if I try to do all of the things I want to do in one day I end up forgetting something completely.

Tuesday - Throne of Thunder LFR/Prepare For Raid Day

Out of all of my days, oddly enough Tuesday is generally my slow night in terms of days I raid. Tuesday is widely known as progression night for normal/hardmode guilds so the least amount of bosses (depending on how far into progression you are, sometimes it's Wednesday) are killed. This is the day where I generally take my main through Throne of Thunder on LFR difficulty. I find that if I try to do ToT later in the week I'm burnt out from progression raiding and I just don't have the mental fortitude to get through all 12 bosses. So I get it out of the way on my main first thing in the week. As a 520 equipped Resto Druid some would ask why I bother to do LFR at all as I don't have any upgrades inside of the instance. The simple answer is I'm an Enchanter and LFR is the only good income of Sha Crystals, Blood and Haunting Spirits and I need to catch up on the Legendary quest chain. I end up doing all LFRs on my Druid for enchanting materials or an extra few chances at Secrets (and soon to come Runestones). Once LFR is completed I generally go and try to farm Crab Meat for my Spirit Food since the Pandaran Feasts still give Intellect and not Spirit to Healers. I still have to go and not only farm meat from Crabs but I also have to fish for my food but also for Iron Paw tokens to complete the meal. I generally just fish up Emperor Salmon in the long river in Valley of the Four Winds. This is how most of my day is spent as I try to do enough for the week. Any other time I have during or after raid is generally spent helping other people in guild do Heroic Scenarios or complete steps of their Legendary.

Wednesday - Heart of Fear LFR/Horde PvP Day

I try to split up the separate instances in LFR as to not increase old content burn out rate. I do the old LFRs strictly for the Sha Crystals and am sure to have 20 Greater Charms of Fortune so I can roll on every boss for maximum gold/gear outcome. Once Heart of Fear is completed I head over to the other side with WoWMartiean and the Trauma II crew and work on my other main. I have an absolute blast with Holy Paladin PvP and have been working slowly on this girl. I've recently been doing PuG Arenas from trade chat and have been marginally successful getting her Conquest Weapon, Shield and PvP Trinket. She only has a few PvE pieces to complete before I will feel comfortable enough to bring her to PuG Rated Battlegrounds. Once I'm fully geared I work for PvP achievements. I completed my Warsong Gultch Battlemaster achievement after finally getting Ironman a few weeks ago so completing the other Battlemaster Achievements are the primary objectives for my day on Wednesday!

Thursday - Rest of LFR, Achievements and Rep Work Day

I wrap up my Raid week with a bit of a Rest Day by completing Mogu'shan Vaults and Terrace of the Endless Spring on LFR and doing some Achievements and working on a Reputation from old content. I'm currently working on Loremaster for my Druid as the main achievement that I'm working towards as I like to go after achievements that have rewards like mounts, titles or tabards. I also try to work on old reputations for the same reason. Most of the mounts that I'm missing come from Reputations that I haven't completely gotten to Exalted yet. I tend to work from Classic Reputations and work my way up as those are the ones that are the more difficult to get. This is one of my two pretty laid back days as it is also farm day for our guild.

Friday - Lazy Friday 

This is the day after a long week of Raiding and this is my Free Day. I basically do whatever I want on this day of the week. Honestly, most of it is sitting in Shrine posting links of my professions as I wait for Call to Arms Tank Bags to proc in LFG. This is also generally when most of my posts are written incase there's only a realm restart and it's immediately back to the grindstone. This is also the day I actually leave my house and go and have a nice dinner because there's a 99% chance that the last three days I swallowed a small dinner whole inbetween trash pulls since I raid 8-11pm.

Saturday - Old Dungeon Run Day

 

Definitely one of my favorite days of the week is Saturday where I run all of the old Raid instances to get the old Tier sets. I've played WoW pretty much since it's release however my Druid has always been an Enchanter and up until T14 I simply just DEed my old gear when I got an upgrade for the materials. It took me a long time to get sentimental in WoW and I always laughed at people who kept their old gear in their bags or banks thinking there was no point. But now that I've gotten a little older I've found I keep all my old gear that meant something to me. I kept my full set of Dragon Soul Heroic Tier as well as Cho'Gall, Alysrazor and the Dragon Soul random drop Trinkets and the Reputation rings from ICC and Firelands. Now I'm going back into all of the old Pre-80 Raid instances to try and get all of the old gear I used to have and destroyed. I've nearly completed my Cenarion and Stormrage sets and am working on my Malorne set from Karazan to try and finish a transmog I'm working on! I have a lot of fun in the old dungeons as nostalgia always hits me as I'm able to solo the old bosses that 40 people used to wipe to.

Sunday - Farm While I Watch Streams Day

My second favorite day of the week. As the screenshot above may suggest... I like to farm. I generally spend the entire Sunday on my Shaman, who is a miner and herbalist, just turn on a live stream (either one of the Evil Genius boys, Towelliee or one of Lore's old videos) and just casually watch it on my other monitor as I run around and try to collect things. I always try to have a completely filled personal guild bank incase a guildie or friend needs something. I generally don't sell anything for most of the expansion unless every tab is completely filled and I can't do anything else until I clear some of it out. At the end of the expansion, I sell everything at once to clear it for the next expansions materials. I only keep current content materials in my bank at any given time. (Note: I used to have A LOT more Windwool Cloth when it was dropping like crazy at the beginning of the expansion, I had so much I actually started vendoring it and didn't keep it all when I transferred over.)

Monday - Alt Leveling/Pet Battle Day

Another one of my lazy days. I've recently been working on my Mistweaver Monk a lot lately but have hit yet another block once getting to the Cataclysm content. I hate leveling! Which is why I also mix in pet battles on Monday. Monday is a pretty lazy day in all rights on Azeroth so there's not much going on so Monday is the best day to do something lazy like level alts or run around trying to find cute animals. I'm trying to get at least one of my pets to level 25 so I can go find an Unborn Valkyr! Apart from that I still have to level my Holy Priest and Mistweaver as well as do an RP Playthrough on my new Human Paladin.

And then it's maintenance and time to start again! I've been running this schedule for a year or so now as I'm someone who benefits most from a structure. What about you? Do you have a daily routine that you stick to every day or have a layout of things you do during the week or do you just wing it when you log on?

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How the Leaves Are Changing - World of Warcaft - End of Cataclysm Update

A few awesome things happened today. First, and to me most importantly, I finished my Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider Meta achievement. The achievement not only calls for full 8/8 HM kills but also calls for 8 achievements across all bosses. So to complete this achievement while the content is still relevant is no small feat and I am very proud to be able to say that I got mine. Also, this is my first ever meta achievement drake that I finished during the content patch that the raid came out in.

Second, I received the Heroic tier shoulders from Hagara (after rolling a 1, may I add) which completed my 4/4 Heroic Tier BiS items! I have to say, the heroic tier looks really nice and I may keep it for next tier depending on how Druid Tier 14 looks on me.

And lastly, I’m rich! The Blazing Drake dropped from Deathwing and I won the roll with a 99. However, my guild master is a crazy mount collector with a lot of gold to spare and offered me 50,000 gold for the drake. I would have given it to her anyway, seeing as it is her birthday in a few weeks. But I’ve always been awful with money and she seemed so sure that I was going to want the Drake back. But I got the drake that I wanted and am happy to say that this expansion for me is over! And just in time too!

Now I have to get ready for MoP to be released. That means finishing the level grind on my Shaman as well as gearing her. Maxxing Justice Points and saving Valor Points for the next expansion and money saving for the immediate expenses coming our way! See you all in Mists of Pandaria!

How the Leaves Are Changing - General Update - New Computer In the Mail

I'm so freaking excited that I just had to write something about it. I recently had to quit raiding in WoW because I'd only get 2 fps in raids and just wasn't contributing to the Heroic progression team like I really wanted. I couldn't do much of anything on SWTOR anymore because I was just so framy and even League of Legends was dropping in down in frames while I played. I have a Slim Cased Dell Desktop from '06 so upgrading was impossible because nothing fit in it. I had no video card, 1GB of Ram, 1 Core Processor and a whole lot of frustration. Finally I decided enough was enough and decided to build a computer!

Processor: Intel Core i5 2400 3.1GHz/3.4GHz Turbo LGA 1155 Quad-Core Processor (6MB L3 Cache)
Graphics Card: Single 2GB GDDR5 Nvidia GTX 680
Memory: 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600Mhz (2x 4GB) Dual Channel Memory
Power Supply: 850 Watt Corsair TX850 PSU
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68 V PRO (USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s,)
Hard Drive One: 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache HDD

I even decided to pack in a new Logitech G110 Gaming Keyboard and a Razer Naga!

This machine is like... a god of machines to me and I am so excited to actually have a gaming computer since I game so much! This also means that I will be able to do a lot more in the community as well! I will be able to raid both in World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic and... LIVESTREAMING! Livestreaming is something that I have always wanted to do but didn't have the computer to do so! Now I do! I will be livestreaming all of my raids as well as League of Legends, Minecraft and anything else I get into now that I have a computer that can run games! I will also be able to record videos in much better quality. That means more Conquest kill videos, SWTOR kill videos, SWTOR story line videos and much more!


Needless to say "I'M REALLY EXCITED" and I can't wait for the 23rd of April to arrive!

How the Leaves Are Changing - World of Warcraft - I Ranked... Twice!

My first ranking was on Hagara the Stormbinder 25M LFR. I was the highest of all of the rankings our guildies received tonight (which was 30-40 of them). Pretty proud since I didn't feel like I healed that much.

My second ranking was on Morchock 25m Normal Raid. With only 13k heals I'm kind of surprised that I even ranked at all. Really proud though. That's 3 rankings in 2 days. I should have turned off Recount years ago!

Thanks to my guildies for being awesome and bringing me along to these bosses to give me the opportunity to show my stuff. ^^

Conquest Is Recruiting!!1

How the Leaves Are Changing - World of Warcraft - What Happened... Recap!

Where am I... I don't know what happened... I fell asleep... and woke up two weeks later. No seriously. I haven't really had much to write about recently since there hasn't been any big news since Blizzcon. I want to wait until we're closer to 4.3 before I release my HUGE Patch 4.3 thoughts post in case anything new comes out but I still want to give you guys some form of content. So I guess I will show you guys what I have been working on the last few weeks.

I have recently made the decision to bring all of my characters Alliance so my druid wasn't all alone. A level 60 warlock was also transferred over, primarily because she had 450 maxed tailoring. It was a wise decision economically because all of these characters, minus the Death Knight, had one or two maxed professions that are valuable. And also helps to have farmable Valor Points for future sellable BoEs.

As stated above I finished leveling my Death Knight. My Death Knight was my fist ever level 80 and was the first character I raided on. I feel a little bit bad that it took me this long into the expansion to finally get her this achievement. I was never very good at melee DPS in general but with more experience in the game as a whole, I am now decent at her and feel like I can play her again.

I have a new UI as well. This took me a collective 8 hours to put together just the way I wanted it. A lot of the colors are green to make them more visible in the generally red instances and to make things a little easier to find.  Really useful setup for all types of characters.

Took about 2 hours but I got this little beauty. Going around and collecting 150 Tricky Treats wasn't particularly difficult seeing as I had completed the Hallowed achievement last year. But it is still an awesome pet. A black cat in a witch's hat that flies on a broom when you mount.

I've been spending a lot of time leveling since I've become a little bored with dungeons. I'm hoping to have every class (minus a Warrior because I want to keep one slot open for a Monk incase they don't give us an extra slot) and profession maxed before the next expansion comes out. Also been doing a little leveling in Rift.

Level 15 Cleric

And been playing League of Legends with the guild. Stay tuned for a (hopefully soon) Patch 4.3 survival guide!