Leafshine: Lust for Flower

On the extreme casualisation of the Leafy

So, raided for the first time in a while last night. We dropped Magmaw for the second time - which prompted me to remember that I never got around to posting about the first time. Here's the moment we dropped him:

I was actually in tree form for a boss kill! Sad that it's unusual these days…

And here's our team of mighty worm abusers:

So, that's something to celebrate. We managed some decent learning on the Omnitron Defence System last night, too, which was nice. Maybe the others will get them down on Monday, but I won't be there for what could well be our last pre-nerf raid. You see, much in common with the last few months, I've been bouncing from event to conference to country. And next, I'm off to Qatar.

The net result is that I'm in über-casual mode right now, spending more time levelling my pet puppy Halesworthy, than doing development on Leaf. And I'm not reading many WoW blogs or keeping up with WoW podcasts, either.

But I'm hoping all that will change when I get back from Doha. My life resturns to something resembling sense from then onwards (for a while), and myabe Patch 4.2 will relight my fire. 

Oh, Lord. I just made a Take That allusion. Time to end this post.

Now, that's just cruel…

Humph.

Leafy Love Children (Because Gnomes Don't Care)

So, the short, heartless individual going by the moniker Gnomeageddon has a post up, seeing how many love children he and other prominent WoW bloggers have.

And he DIDN'T INCLUDE ME.

Still, I'm not a bitter tree, so I can move on from HIS CALLOUS and VICIOUS NEGLECT, and just do the damn research myself. So, let's see: how many Leafshines populate the US servers?

Two? TWO? And one of them isn't even a Druid? Awful.

Surely my EU compatriots will be following in my footsteps a little more closely...?

Four. And one of them's me. In fact, the only one at the level cap is me.

So…people aren't inspired to follow in my footsteps? I'm not an inspirational tree? *sniff* Perhaps that's why Gnomer neglected me. He was trying to spare my aboreal feelings…

To balm my feelings, I did a Google for myself. And this blog is the top result for "leafshine". And all the other results are something to do with polishing plat leaves, which just seems weird to me. Stiil, whatever floats your boat.  And talking of boat-floating, this was at the bottom of the post:

Someone penning some weird blogger slash fiction, maybe...?

It's My Party, And I'll Cry Sappy Tears If I Want To

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday dear Leafy blog
You're an aging tree…

Yes, folks, today is my third blogiversary. It's been three long years since I first put finger to keyboard on this fine blog.

Amongst the world of resto druid bloggers, I'm now an ancient, lurking in the woods, handing out annoying quests and reminiscing about the times when Phaelia and Bell were blogging…

Sadly, however, advancing age has not brought wisdom in my case, like it has with, say, Big Bear Butt (but I may be confusing "verbosity" with "sagacity" in his case…) so you can safely assume that for serveral more years you'll be "blessed" with the normal irregular combination of silly observations and video, mixed with the occasional long, deep and highly-linked to cultural analysis piece that makes up my output here.

Consistency, as a wise man once said, is the hobgoblin of small minds…

Anyway, thank you to all of you who bother to swing by, and especially those of you who comment, link or accept my strange view of a guest post. It's the community of readers, commenters and bloggers that makes this such a fun thing to do, and why I carry on doing it.

Oh, and a belated happy blogiversary to the lovely Keredria of Tree of Life, who is a few days blog older than I am…

Photo by Nashworld on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons licence

Did Anyone Order Some Ultimate Triage?

Now the Loremaster grind is done and dusted, I'm amusing myself with grabbing some of the simpler Achievements. For example, our ICC run was going bad this evening. We were running with two healers, and the other one kept disconnecting. People were dying, and I got brutalised by a Blood Beast, leaving me at sub-1% health. What choice did I have?

And a quick post-raid glance at potential Achievments showed that I was on 399/400 for my unarmed skill. Easy:

I takes the pre-Cataclysmic fun where I can.

Oh, and talking of Cataclysm, I answered the burning question I had about the expansion: Can you fly down from Darnassus to the sea?

Yes. Yes, you can. WIN.

Loremaster Leafy at Last

'tis done.

My major pre-Cataclysm goal is achieved. 

Big thanks to Deacus and Wyntair for helping me through the last Icecrown group quests.

This Is Me

Burned-out Healer – Has been doing this WAY too long, and is just tired of putting up with the shit that goes with healing. May also be tired of raiding in general, but may find relief in being allowed to pick up a DPS spec occasionally. Probably either very quiet or very chattery, but only about non-raid-related things. May turn into the Angry Healer or the AFK Healer easily

via toomanyannas.com

Makes me wonder if the Annas have been lurking in our Vent...

Taking A Step Back From Hard Knocks

I've been quiet again.

Why?

I've been fighting an internal battle. 

Oh, sure, I've been distracted by christenings and elections, but the other thing on my mind this week has been WoW. And, more specifically, Achievements. And they've become a problem.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, Achievements have become a burden to me - especially the ones around the World Events. A set time limit to do a number of pretty complicated tasks? That's pressure, especially in a life where I only get a few free hours to play WoW every week.

Now, I'm not doing badly. I am all but two achievements away from Long, Strange Trip. One of them is to do with Children's Week. Yes, it's the 'orrible School of Hard Knocks. And it's actually stopped me logging in this week. I just didn't want to do it. I didn't want to feel obligated to do it. So I didn't. Children's Week ends tonight, and I don't care. I'm letting go of Achievements, and I'm letting go of WoW pressure. I really enjoy only two things in WoW: questing and doing dungeons or raids with my guild. 

I have come, in the last few weeks, very close to quitting WoW for good. I found myself feeling bad that I didn't have time to do the things that I was working on, and then steadily realising that I didn't want to do them. I'd been sucked in by the time sink spiral that makes MMoRPGs so compelling, chasing Achievemnets and emblems from daily randoms and all the rest of the distractions built into the game, and it was twisting my life around in ways that I didn't find comfortable. Instead, I've chosen to work on my photograph, or to spend time with my wife, family and friends. It feels good. And, maybe, tomorrow I'll do some dailies and some quests on one of my lower level toons. That'll be fun.

But WoW can't be a chore, because life has enough chores. It's a game, and games are fun. It's a pity I need to remind myself of that from time to time.