Long? No. Strange? Yes. Very Strange.

What a strange year it’s been.

I celebrated one year of successful blogging this year. You can see the shenanigans here, where I lament about my new found popularity (which has subsided somewhat) and make even more promises I forgot to keep.

I’m a terrible blogger, I really am.

I’ve learned a lot of things about blogging. Things like pictures, formatting, avoid walls of text, that sort of thing.

Here I have to give a massive shoutout to Blog Azeroth. I learned so much from that forum very, very quickly. The only downside was having two search bars on the site for about eight months before I removed the excess one.

Props to TJ, for sending me an e-mail outlining the reasons why I sucked and how to improve the situation. Ok, sucked might not be the word. Terrible? Audaciously horrendous? Mystifyingly craptacularly bad?

One does not argue with TJ. One merely does as she bids, and stands in awe at the magnificence of her correctness.

Bigredkitty linked to me. And then put me in his blogroll. I’m still there somehow. I think he just forgot to remove me. He’s a busy guy, I can let that slide. His about page still says “Um, we’re a hunter. More later.”

It’s said that for over a year now.

Meanwhile, my about page has grown and festered, like a literate fungus. Soon it will have children, and they will spread across the site…

Some day, you will load this site, only to be greeted by Darth Vader playing “Thus Spake Zarathustra” on an electric guitar while suspended from a massive, burning zeppelin, whilst pterodactyls fight and Spitfire aircraft duke it out in the background.

This little blog had humble beginnings. It started off with some guy yelling about mages on the internet.

Slowly, over time, it has morphed into some guy yelling about mages on the internet, only now he’s level 80.

I’ve tried many times to have a rigid post schedule. I’ve tried updating seriously on MWF, with silly stuff whenever, but usually on the weekends. Le fail.

I’ve tried Monday through Friday, with silly stuff being posted on the weekend, if ever. Le fail.

I’ve tried “Monday is PvP, Wednesday is raiding, Friday is either” with random stuff posted elsewhere. Le fail.

From here on out, the update schedule is “Whenever I have something coherent to say”. Though I shall try to have something for all the people who read this from work. (Le fail?)

There’s a truly alarming amount of you. No wonder the media is freaking out about the economy. It’s all you buggers reading WoW blogs from work. Shame on you! Stop reading all those damn blogs!

Except mine of course.

What else happened this year…

Well, there was that expansion that came out a little while back. Boy, that was fun, wasn’t it?

Death Knights gallivanting about (PRESS ONE YOU MORONS), Hellfire Peninsula chat exploded into something the Barrens could only be in your worst nightmares, and hunters world wide wet themselves over a cat with glowing eyes.

Meanwhile, arcane sucked in raids, kicked ass in PvP, FFB surpassed all expectations and dominated everything, and frost continues to do the impossible as a hobby.

And, by the way, if you haven’t tried Arcane in PvP yet, I highly recommend you do so in the very near future. Whether you use the fire tree or the frost tree for the leftover points is basically up to you.

The fire tree is more dependent on RNG. Things like Pyroblast, which is never guaranteed to crit, only likely, and Impact make the spec rely on the roll of the dice. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t.

Plays very well with rogues, especially if you have Glyph of Fireblast.

The frost tree is more dependent on the mage being intelligent. It gives arcane the ability to utilize Shatter, and has some rather neat strategies revolving around double Frostbolt shatters. This can guaranteee critical strikes if you plan them right.

Plays very well with Frost mages. Just as an example, when a frost mage Deep Froze some poor hunter, I sank two frostbolts and an ABarr into the guy. They all crit. The hunter’s HP took a dive from 92%  to zero in the span of five seconds.

The ABarr was unnecessary, only a couple hundred of it actually counted. Nearly all of it was overkill. Poor guy.

Speaking of infuriating opponents, the most frustrating battle I’ve ever fought was against a Prot Warrior. Intercept! Blink! Charge! Uhh… Frost Nova! Shockwave! Uhm… Concussive Blow! Ok, seriously, can you st- Charge!

Oh yeah. And there was this rogue that killed me in 1.9 seconds. Later on, a different rogue killed me in 2.3 seconds. After that, I took an Ambush crit of 9800. A backstab for 6k immediately after that finished me off.

Rogues are overpowered. Nerf! Disregard that rogue I two shot in Strand of the Ancients, please.

Speaking of Strand of the Ancients, that’s new this year. A little buggy (and by a little I mean a lot).

For instance, the clock is ticking down to zero. There is a desperate battle between Horde and Alliance forces in front of the final gates. Five seconds left. The gate goes down! A desperate fight to run out the clock ensues!

Zero seconds! Horde wi… still zero seconds… still zero seconds…

What time zone is this clock in?

*waits*

You know, I’ve gotten off nineteen spells since this clock hit zero.

Alliance wins!

Man, I wish I could spec into chronomancy.

Horde’s turn! We zerg, bringing crushing might to bear on the gates. They fall, one by one, with frightening speed.

It is a mere two minutes and 34 seconds before the Horde captures the Titan Relic.

Woo! Achievement!

…

Woo?

Achievement… where are you?

“Capture the Titan Relic in under four minutes”. Hrm. Two and a half minutes is definitely less than four minutes.

Is today daylight savings time or something?

Ahh, well. At least I have enough honor to replace that stupid yellow cape now.

Speaking of which, why are so many capes so damn ugly? In TBC, I could count the number of capes I’d actually wear on one hand! Thank goodness one of them was the Cloak of Arcane Alacrity.

Is it just me, or is Tailoring a really unattractive profession right now? Engineering remains a truly sexy beast (have you seen the glove haste thing? OH BABY), but Tailoring just doesn’t seem to have anything going for it.

Seriously considering dropping it in favour of Enchanting. Ring enchants have always been the minmax player’s dream, and I know many people who get ludicrously rich from selling enchanting mats.

I still don’t have epic flying. I just spend my money on things like respecs, gem swaps, enchants for gear, and so forth, almost as fast as I can make it.

Net result, my cash supply goes up extremely slowly, or not at all. I’ve never really been super poor, I typically always have a couple thousand gold kicking around. Of course, to some people, that is super poor.

I’ve been following some of those economist WoW blogs in an effort to increase my pool of gold… with mixed success. I did manage to exploit the Crystalized Fire/Eternal Fire thing (pulled about 800 gold from that one).

I’m mostly embarrasingly hopeless when it comes to making gold.

Hey! New Year’s Resolution! “Get Rich”. I’ll add it to the list…

New Year’s Resolutions!

• Buy new microphone for the computer
• Go outside
  
• Harass friends to get me birthday presents
• Get the new engineering goggles
• Level the hunter enough to get into Sholazar Basin
• Do some more Heroics, ya lazy bum
• Clean the microwave
• Play Rock Band II with friends, ya lazy bum
• Buy Watchmen. EVERYONE says it’s good
• Don’t get drunk
• Find somewhere in this God forsaken town that serves good steak
• Write some fiction, so I can look back on it in five years and laugh at my own idiocy
• Get Rich!

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE.