nagaina

http://www.wow.com/2010/04/26/cataclysm-raid-progression-refinements/

The long and short of it:

* 10- and 25- man raids in Cataclysm will share the same lockout
* Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel
* 10- and 25- man bosses will be close in difficulty
* 10- and 25- man bosses will drop the exact same items
* 25-man bosses will drop a higher quantity of loot, but not quality
* For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid.
* Content will continue to be gated
* First Cataclysm raids will be tuned for players in dungeons blues and crafted items

....Steadfast fields 10-man teams pretty much exclusively.

........Solivar could practically go on the first Cataclysm raids as he currently stands if that last bit is true. Ashatha and Llan most DEFINTELY could do so.

BRB, getting my hip waders and emergency inflatable boat for the torrent of waaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this is going to evoke from the 25-man raid guilds.

Oh, man. Just in time for Callan's birthday. ^_^

Okay, this movie has just become SOMETHING I MUST SEE EVEN IF IT MEANS BREAKING MY HERETOFORE VOLUNTARY NETFIX EMBARGO.



Seriously, cut the boy's hair, give him a red wash, brown contacts.

* Having got Ashatha to 80 I decided to also bite the bullet and grind the last bits of her Alchemy to 450. This endeavor was aided by the mate, who passed her gems for transmutation, and by a nice Alliance shaman in Wintergrasp who helpfully refrained from killing me while I was harvesting frost lotus there, even though the zone was Alliance-controlled at the time. Have made the happy discovery that my inability to move any alchemy products on the auction house was likely the result of Dalaran US' crappy Realm economy more than anything else, as I'm doing a brisk business in herbs, raid flasks, healing/mana potion stacks, and transmuted epic gems on Cenarion Circle. I also see why so many alchemists specialize in transmutation because holy crap the returns are so worth it and the possibility of generating multiples of, say, Cardinal Rubies, currently the highest-valued epic gems on CC? That's just cake. Pure profit on the sale of extras and value added for a protection paladin -- epic red cuts with your own mats, and all you'd have to do is pay the jewelcrafter. In any case, if this rate of sale remains sustained -- and I have no reason to doubt that it will with raid groups hitting every level of Icecrown yet -- I'll finally have epic flying on Ash by the end of March at the latest.

* Over on Steamwheedle Cartel, Dayari and I conducted a field test of the GryphonHeart Items add-on and found the results generally satisfactory. We're both going to fiddle around with it a bit more to see what evil, evil things we can tease out of it.

* You remember when I squeed last week about being named Assistant Bard of Steadfast? Well. Last night I was tooling around, picking up Lunar Fest coins, and watching the Olympics, chit-chatting on the guild channel, when Bard Seltheras whispers me. He starts off telling me that he's feeling kinda at loose ends with Seltheras' character arc and, initially, I thought he might want to chew over some 'going forward after the end of the Lich King' type stuff, as I've indicated that my door is always open to those who want to talk Character Development. But, no! He also indicates that he's thinking of leaving Steadfast for a higher-intensity raiding guild, as raiding is really his first interest in-game, and Steadfast has backed off Icecrown for the nonce in favor of reconstituting the raid team and running less-progressed content in order to help gear people up, relearn each others' raiding styles, and let our new Warlords arrange things to their liking. Then he asks me if I'd be willing to take over the office of Bard if he were to resign the position, so his departure wouldn't leave a gaping hole in the guild command structure. After I got done squeeing so loudly they probably heard it over the applause in Vancouver, I indicated that I was, indeed, willing to take on the position and had intended to run for Bard as soon as I made Veteran. Before he logged for the night, Sel indicated that he had talked to Dayari about resigning in my favor and that Dayari was putting the issue to the senior officers of Steadfast. So, when next I log in, I might actually be Bard of Steadfast. SQUEEEEEE.

...so let me squee about them in relative order.

* According to our Children and Youth Advocacy Services person, CPS has closed the investigation against us. We haven't received official confirmation yet, but she did not feel it necessary to continue the 8-hour intake paperwork procedure and told us to give her a call if we ever wanted to pursue access to any assessments or services. So, yay!

* As I squeed briefly last night, I was promoted to second-in-command/Assistant Bard of Steadfast last night. Steadfast's Bard is their officer in charge of roleplaying, scheduling and running RP events, maintaining the guild's records related to roleplaying, and generally recruiting for/promoting roleplaying within the guild and with allied raider/roleplaying guilds. When I first joined up with Steadfast, the guild office of Bard was vacant and had been for several officer election cycles: there was interest in roleplaying within the guild, and Dayari was doing double duty as Record Keeper and acting Bard, but I get the feeling that no one felt they were quite experienced enough to hold the office. I confess, I coveted the Bard office the instant I heard of it and fully intended to nominate myself for it as soon as I became eligible, which would have been after I was promoted to Veteran status. Last election cycle, which was in January, nobody ran for Bard again -- until Seltheras, who is also a roleplayer of many long years duration, put himself forward at the last guild meeting and was appointed to the office of Bard at the end of the elections. I was cool with that, as it gave me some more time to get a feel for things and get to know people better, as at the time of the elections I'd been a member of Steadfast for less than a month. I had also been rummaging through the guild website, responding to old threads in the RP forums, particularly the RP question/answer threads, posting Ghosts and Echoes to the In Character Forum, and attending Tavern Nights with the usual suspects. Last night, Sel did his official 'hi, I'm the guild's new Bard and this is the stuff I'd like to do' at the monthly guild meeting, I volunteered to confab with any guildies that wanted to chew over character background/story ideas, and then Sel whispered me, asking me to hang for a bit after the meeting. Upon which time he asked me to be his second-in-command -- a decision apparently supported quite vigorously by...everybody, pretty much? I AM FULL OF SQUEE. SQUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

* 2/17 was the best day in the history of the Winter Olympics for the American teams. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/olympics/2010/writers/brian_cazeneuve/02/18/wednesday.gold.rush/index.html Shani Davis kicked ass, took names, repeated as champion in 1000 meter speed skate; Shaun White absolutely dominated, threw down the highest and most progressive run of the men's halfpipe competition, repeated as champion; Lindsay Vonn lay a beatdown on Whistler, won her first of hopefully many medals, stole my heart when she had trouble keeping her composure on the medal stand -- much like Shaun White at Torino, as a matter of fact. No matter how cool and composed you are at other times, there's nothing like taking the podium as an Olympic champion. And tonight is the men's free skate. I expect Drama. I expect someone to crack under the pressure and fall on their ass. I expect Johnny Weir to outglam Lady Gaga by a considerable margin. I hope Plushenko and Lysacheck remember to shave.

* Also: is anyone else horribly amused by the international clamor over Kazuhiro Kukobu's undone tie and low-riding pants upon arrival at the games? Because I am. Horribly, horribly amused. Especially considering what the traditional Olympic alternative could reasonably be said to be: NAKED AND SLATHERED IN OLIVE OIL. That'd REALLY give the Japanese Diet the vapors.

Is it just me or does, like, every other conversation you have with Allister have at least one option that can constitute flirtatious snark? Because it seems that way to me. And, yes, indeed, it is a crime against humanity that my poor, poor Darrian Tabris will not be able to romance him. BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE AS HILARIOUS AS IT IS HOT. It'd be snark, flirt, snark, flirt, romantic advice from Zevran, snark, flirt, snark, Morrigan suggesting we get a room, smut, approving looks in camp from the dishy bisexual assassin, snark, flirt, until we win or die. It helps that my Darrian was not at all enthusiastic about that whole 'arranged marriage, meet your future bride five seconds before the surprise double wedding thing' though he is also faultlessly polite to women and his elders and particularly to slightly batshit elderly women who have just saved his life.

Cannot wait to begin the trek across the wilds with Allister and Morrigan. This could be the snarkfest to end them all.

Watching the content I got with my copy of Dragon Age: Origins Collector's Edition downloading, contemplating what to roll first: a bitter, bitter vicious Tabris thief/assassin rogue or a bitter yet virtuous Dalish ranger type? Both will find Zevran to be catnip, I assure you.

http://zooborns.typepad.com/zooborns/otter/

OH MY GOD PEOPLE BABY OTTERS THEY CHIIIIIIIIIIRP!

Short Form Reaction:  Oh, KANDA!

Slightly Longer Reaction: Oh, Hoshino-sensei, that was even more breathtakingly vicious than I had anticipated. And I knew it was going to be something utterly vicious.

( Oh, so spoilery! )

http://community.livejournal.com/wow_ladies/11682870.html?view=185729846#t185729846

Two things: Ashatha is SO going to roll into Icecrown with Quel'Delar on her hip, no matter how many pugs have to run to get it.

Kalvarin Eventide is either plotting Queen Lana'thel's death or is her willing love-slave. Or possibly both.

Okay, I'm sure that at least some of you heard a couple weeks back about Eli Roth discovering the existence of Inglourious Basterds slash and passing on the unclean knowledge of this phenomenon to Quentin Tarantino, with predictably hilarious results all over Twitter and assorted other outlets.

This?

IS EVEN BETTER.

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_lounge/972201.html

The creators of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz discover Hot Fuzz slash. Receive ficrecs. Write their own HF slash 140 characters at a time on Twitter. Compile the results for all the world to see in one handy reference page:

http://edgarwrighthere.com/2009/10/the-steamy-hot-fuzz-slash-fiction-tweets-october-19th-2009/

....I may never stop squealing.

Still digesting. Wish the comms would stop bitching about the extremely gorgeous art, the fact that this chapter is long and Noah-filled (the fact that this chapter was going to be Noah-centric was advertised weeks ago, people), and the shounen-time-skip feel so I would not feel strange about posting actual observations about the chapter's content.


( Crack? Maybe, maybe not. )


As it is, I kinda want to bang DGM fandom as a whole's head against a blunt object and tell them to stop bitching about the absence of canon-supported Yullen, suck it up, and appreciate what they have.

SPOILERTASTIC!:

http://community.livejournal.com/dgrayman/585220.html

Three-quarters of the plot of Survivors was just validated by canon. I cannot express the depths of my squee in words alone and, unfortunately, my work comp has no camera on it so I can do so with interpretive dance.

http://sarahtales.livejournal.com/151006.html

Money Quote:

HARRY: Ah Quidditch try-outs. Good to be young and single and fit, surveying my options on the stands. Quiet everyone-
CORMAC MCLAGGEN: Hey, I thought I'd introduce myself. My name's Cormac, and you've never seen me before because I just transferred into Gryffindor. I heard this was the go-to house if you're interested in getting some play this year .
HARRY: Yeah, I don't know how those rumours got started, dude, or well, I do, but the thing you have to understand is that I was young! Impressionable! And Cedric Diggory was all, 'Do I dazzle you?' and-
CORMAC: So could you introduce me to Hermione Granger?
HARRY: Oh right! Totally.

Cannot. Stop. Snickering.

http://www.wow.com/2009/08/12/onyxia-returns-in-patch-3-2-2/

ONYXIA SHAPED EPIC FLYING MOUNT.

I WILL HAVE THIS THING.

http://www.wow.com/2009/08/12/stormrage-novel-cover-art-revealed/

As others have observed, Malfurion obviously respecced Feral at some point.

Also: Illidan wants his eyes back.

Also also: I express my provisional approval of the new cover scheme. The close-up face with emphasis on glowy eyes is much more visually appealing than the Extruded Fantasy Product covers many of the other books were afflicted with.

Also the third: I...am not quite certain that I understand the snarkery about Arthas and his horse. I mean seriously, people. He was a knight. You know, a mounted warrior? Of course his horse is going to be important to him, especially a horse he hand-raised from birth to be as constant a companion to him as his weapons, or his armor. Oh and, btw, the fact that Arthas' recklessness got Invincible killed and he never, ever fully processed or took responsibility for that is, in fact, a major characterization point for him. Also the fact that he thoughtlessly causes pain and harm to the things and people he loves right up to the point that he starts deliberately causing pain and harm to the things and people he loves.

Also IV, A New Beginning: Make up my mind -- Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra for the 68 - 70 grind?

http://community.livejournal.com/exorcists_order/151530.html

Chapter 187 next week. I am trying not to die of joy inside too obviously but...Hoshino-sensei. You are making it so, so hard.

SQUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

::tries not to lick the screen due to ENTIRELY LICKABLE Kanda and Allen::

Hoshino-sensei, totally shipping Yullen y/y?