Caturday Revival

I haven't done Caturday for about two months. Whoops. I never intended to stop, persay, but it got really easy to skip. I also skipped last Wednesday - but this week has been incredibly busy, so I have plenty of excuses.

Since I haven't done Caturday in so long, I decided that instead of giving myself a way out of it by trying to think of a theme and possibly not coming up with anything, I'm going to make it about my own cats.

these ones

If you're here because you're one of the people who see my cats on a regular basis, you may have seen these pictures before. I can only get so many interesting pictures at a time, since the cats are usually

just lazing around.

But I'm also going to talk about them a little bit, in case you've just started tuning in recently. And also because I want to, because they are my cats and I think they're great. Surprising, I know.

A Day in the Past: The WotLK Story

If you read The TBC Story, this story starts off right where that one ended. It's less self indulgence about me and my own personal history (but don't worry, I still managed to squeeze it in there) and more about the history of my long passed, best guild I'd ever been in.

To catch you up, after TBC release I screwed around as a non-raider until my guild exploded and asked me to go resto during T4. Fast forward through that guild dissolving shortly after, during T5, and over a year of me healing TBC progression in a new and better guild, and slow down around the end of TBC when I went back to balance.

flashback fade out, queue dream sequence music

TBC was the pinnacle of my raiding career. As I said at the end of my TBC story, at the homestretch of Sunwell, I was ranking as 4th best balance druid in the US and 12th best in the world.

It's Another Flying Post - Pre-Legion Edition

I made a disclaimer earlier that I'm purposefully keeping myself ignorant to announced Legion features. If I say a thing or things that have already been discussed, announced, explained, or debunked, that is because I intentionally did not research this topic. My reasoning can be summarized by saying that I don't want to spoil the game before it even comes out. My reasoning can be lengthily explained by this particular blog post. Please excuse me and any accidental uneducated nonsense.

Blizzard decided to enter into Warlords without allowing flying. They nudged at maaaybe adding it later, only to kind of backhandedly "announce" in a random article somewhere that they maybe might not be adding it back to the game ever probably most likely. Of course, throughout the entire debacle, people were very fervently internet-campaigning about it, and this just took the cake. I mean, if you somehow missed the whole thing, you must have left mid-Mists or earlier and just come back to the Warcraft community scene like, yesterday.

actual depiction of pro-flying protest rally

Everyone was writing about flying, so I tried to keep my posts about it to a minimum. My first two posts were before they had announced that flying would be back, where I ended the second stating I was sorry and wouldn't write anymore flying posts. Then I made a third one when they made the decision to add flying, insincerely apologizing for lying about not writing another flying post. Knowing better this time around, I did not, in fact, promise to not write about flying again, so here we are!

The Grand Garrison Mistake

As of this moment, I simply cannot stand my garrison. Just a few moments of walking around in my garrison reminds me that I'm sick of it and I'm sick of Warlords.

That's just how I feel. I'm sure not everyone does, but I'm definitely not the only person. But why? What did they get wrong?

Garrisons were a decent idea that got implemented poorly. There is one particular aspect of garrisons that is not only a problem on its own, but caused a huge problem in Warlords entirely.

I'm Not Buying a Ticket for the Legion Hype Train

As everyone knows, the next Warcraft expansion was announced.

wait wait

there, this one

I really don't want to know too much about it before it comes out because I don't want to experience the same kind of uncontrollable hype followed by months of disappointment. Of course, no matter how hard I try, there is only so much I can avoid learning beforehand, since the majority of people I talk to and follow are all talking about it like crazy. I can only expect that they will continue to talk about it until the day of release.

If you knew me back when Warlords was about to be released, you may remember just how hyped I was. It won't be like that for Legion. It's not that I'm not excited about it - my only impressions so far are bits and pieces I've put together from the unavoidable internet and I'm already super excited. It's just that I realized long ago the benefits of not spoiling yourself - learning everything about the game before it comes out is like reading a full script of a movie before you see it.

For these reasons, my blog posts before release will not be about Legion hype. I understand, too, that this will mean far fewer people will have interest in my blog for the time being. My most viewed posts are Warcraft posts about current content, controversies, or upcoming or recently released features. People aren't going to care about Terraria and what my guild was doing six years ago while there's Legion hype being thrown in everyone's faces.

But I'm okay with that.

This means, too, that I may make posts with thoughts, opinions, or discussions about things that are embarassingly irrelevant. For example, I may mention that I'm happy to be leaving my garrison, but in fact Blizzard has announced that your garrison as is will be air lifted into a new zone in Legion. Now, this is just an example, but I may make a faux pas like that. I don't know. That's what happens when you purposefully don't know things.

Speaking of garrisons, I am thrilled they won't be in Legion. They won't, right?

...

Wait, don't tell me!

The Banished Colonial Charters

Banished is a great game that I haven't played in awhile. I wrote about it and why it's amazing despite its supposed flaws a couple months ago. A friend told me that he's been playing Banished while waiting for Warlords to come to an end, and that there was so much new stuff for him to do because of this mystical colonial charter mod.

I had looked into their mods last time I played, which was around when I wrote about it, but it looked like they weren't actually in service yet. They finally came out and let me tell you, this one is crazy.

The colonial charters mod adds so much stuff. It has its own website. From the moment I loaded the game with the mod enabled, I could tell there was going to be an overload of new things to understand.

what's CC Medium- oh holy crap what even is this

A Day in the Past: The TBC Story

While I started as feral and fought tooth and claw to succeed and have my ability be recognized, at the end of Vanilla, a friend convinced me to go balance.

just add moonfire

He wanted to play my character late at night in WSG (don't tell Blizzard), so I let him. He raved about how amazing balance was in PvP and sent me many screencaps of impressive scoreboards. I think he was just a very good PvPer, but he did get me exalted with the Warsong Outriders, so there's that.

Because I was "stuck" as balance, I got adjusted to it, to the point where I realized, hey, I kinda like this. I stayed balance into TBC where I kept it while leveling and for the first three or four months.

In terms of socially being a subhuman low life hybrid spec, I definitely took a step backward. Feral got a lot better in TBC, while already ahead of balance in the first place. If I had stayed feral, I'd have achieved being a "real spec" a lot sooner, but as I've said before, I never back down from being an underdog.