Season of wonder and hope

I am about to go off and start my Christmas shopping today, at least the brick and mortar part of it. Luckily for me I have a very small family, and most of the children in it are at the point where the only thing they are interested in receiving is money or gift cards. …

A little help for guilds

Blizzard rolled out its revamped in-game guild recruitment tool a couple of weeks ago. There is, of course, the obligatory “It’s about time!” response, which is justified — in general, Blizz has tended to not only ignore administrative tools for guilds, but in some instances even remove or worsen the bare few that existed. But …

Purity is overrated

Usual mild spoiler alert — don’t read if you don’t want to know. After a week of mad cooking and entertaining, it is nice to get back to normal humdrum days again. Though I have spent most of my life in the exact opposite kinds of jobs, at this stage I find great satisfaction in …

Asteroid of broken dreams

Yesterday Blizz confirmed what some Shadowlands data miners had reported, that the vastly overpriced status symbol mount, the Mighty Caravan Brutosaur (5 million gold) will no longer be available when the next expansion goes live. Blizz will launch its own weaponized virtual asteroid to wipe out this particular species. I paid approximately zero attention to …

Patch 8.3 — anticipation or dread?

Here be spoilers. This post contains minor spoilers about Patch 8.3 as well as about the next expansion. Information from the PTR, where Patch 8.3 is being revealed in larger and larger chunks, is now coming at us at a fast pace. It seems likely that it will be the last major patch before the …

Games within the game

A couple of days ago Blizz announced there would be “some changes” coming for the pet battling mini game in World of Warcraft. As most of you know, I am decidedly not a fan of this activity — I find it to be simultaneously extraordinarily complex and extraordinarily boring, a lethal combination for me. I …

Still not a fan of PvP

Last night I joined a few guildies to queue as a group for “Alterac Valley of Olde”. Side rant: Here of course we have another example of a meaningless, confusing linguistic affectation. The extra “e” on the end of “old” seems to be an attempt to recreate someone’s idea of a Chaucerian stage of English. …