A now a break from our regularly scheduled sleep deprived Role Playing fun. Mostly because I've only got time for a quick entry before work.

I got to thinking that eventually I should play a shaman.  I don't know why exactly, I just know that I want one. I've leveled one to 24, but I didn't really get into it and after that water totem quest...ugh. I've heard people say that if you don't like a class by 20 or 30 it's probably not for you, but me? I just grind through it and hate myself for it anyway. Case in point: My paladin. Hands down the worst leveling experience EVER. And the slowest. This was before all the Ret changes though, so I'm sure it's not so bad now. If I could make it through that experience though I'm pretty sure I can make it through anything.

Ok, so I'll start a shaman, play around a litle bit, and see if I enjoy it this time around. Usually when I make a new character the thing that takes longest to decide on is the name. Usually I go to a baby naming website and look at baby names and pick my alt names that way. I've done this with all of my characters except my first and my bank alt. And possibly my mage. I honestly have no idea where her name came from. There are other Aevisana's on the Armory, and her name isn't on the baby name website I usually use...so maybe it's a random name generator kind of thing, but that's not at all like me.

This time however I already know what name I want, and I have it "reserved." - The problem this time is that I can't decide on what race I want to be. Usually when I make a new baby character it's a fairly simple choice.

Am I going alliance? If yes, can dwarves be the class that I want to be? If yes, pick dwarf. If no, try gnomes. If still no, try human.

Am I going horde? If yes, can taurens be the class I want to be? If yes, pick female tauren and go! If no, try undead. If still no, give up.

This isn't working, because I'm up to my ears in female tauren alts now. I have my old hunter that is stuck at 63, I have Cowssa, and I have Asen. I don't want to be a MALE tauren though, because they're big and goofy looking and there are entirely too many of them. I like their combat animations, but not their idle or casting animations. I cannot be male troll, because the thought of being a male troll shaman (but not any other class) brings back horrible memories of the world's most dodgy and laggy pervert. I'm not explaining that. Ok, I might, someday. If I remember. Female troll would be fine, everything about them is good except for the fact that they all look the same because they only have one face that isn't horrible and everyone picks that one. They're fairly rare and I like the idea of playing something that there aren't many of.

Male orcs are out of the question because while they are big and intimidating and have excellent combat animations and great jokes, they're just...broken and wrong. I have issues picturing male orcs that aren't warriors. I think they look good as warriors and good in plate armor, everything else just seems odd to me. Write that up as "Naissa is weird". Female orc is fine, I like how they look, I like their combat animations, I like their jokes, but I don't like the fact that 4 years have gone by and their shields STILL hang on their back about 3 feet away from them.

And I can't do Draenei because I don't like them and am not willing to go alliance. (Sorry alliance friends! Sorry! And Draenei friends!)

But Naissa...What do you mean you don't like Draenei?!

Well I like when they're shamans and they give me awesome totems..But I can't PLAY one. I just can't.

So it looks like it's a choice between a female orc, tauren, or troll. I'm sort of leaning towards orc because I don't have an orc yet. I've never leveled an orc beyond level 24 to the best of my knowledge. Hmm. Well, it's something I'll think about and probably decide on today when I'm supposed to be working but am instead thinking about WoW because I'm an addict.

So now that Asen and Ayi have gotten to know each other, I can rest easier knowing that Ayi is in good hands...and I don't have to watch after him anymore. It's exhausting trying to teach a Reincarnated Sand Gnome how the rest of the world works.

I have faith that Asen will take good care of Ayi and teach him everything that he needs to know...Or die trying. Probably the latter. Just don't tell her that I said that.

As you can see in the picture to the left, they went to Scarlet Monastery and cleaned it out. They both got some fairly shiny items in there. Prior to this Ayi was still wearing Grey gloves and that's just unacceptable. Of course he didn't realize that, but Asen quickly explained to him that you can't be wearing greys at their level and how if you DO wear all greys people will probably laugh at you. Then she had to explain to him that it's not proper to go up and bite a chunk out of someone just because they laugh at you.  We thought we were making progress with him...and then he went ahead and bit a Scarlet Myrmidon's ear off. Woops! This is going to be a lot of work and require a LOT of patience.

Luckily for Ayi, Asen is supposedly one of the most patient druids around. This is good because I'm sure with some of the incidents we've already had, most other druids would have lost their minds, gone feral, walked up behind Ayi, pounced on him, and clawed/bit/maimed him pretty badly. I'm sure that thought hasn't crossed Asen's mind at all. Nope. No sir, not at all. >.>

What's that? The picture? Oh...That's totally just Asen sneaking up on Ayi to...hug him. Yes. Hug him. That's it. Hugs totally help with the learning and reformation process. Especially big feral bear form hugs. Totally.

Now that Scarlet Monastery is out of the way they've got their eyes set on Uldaman and will probably run it the next day I'm not working a billion hours and then being too tired to actually do anything.

See this fine tauren to the right of the text? This is Asen.  Well actually her name is longer than that but that's the pronounceable part of it and I imagine that is also what everyone will end up calling her anyway.  She's a tauren druid and is much the opposite of Cowssa. Cowssa is an albino. Asen is clearly not.  Asen also dreams of one day being a healer, where Cowssa doesn't exactly have that option, even though she's a grand master first aid ... person ... thingy. Asen and Ayiyi don't know this yet, but they're destined to become good friends and level together.

Asen unlike Ayiyi, is quite sane. She's also very patient. This is why they're being grouped together so that poor Ayiyi actually has a chance because I'm sure if left in the care of Cowssa he would suffer some unfortunate accident and be left with a mysterious hoof-print on his forehead. Asen is all about the Earth Mother and all that hippy druid stuff, so she's much nicer than a warrior and much more patient. I'm sure Ayiyi will be fine in her care.

I'm pretty sure these two will meet up the next time that I, the quite insane and sleep deprived writer of Naissa's Rage, am not either working or sleeping. Possibly tomorrow, but not likely. All work and no play makes Naissa...go insane and start crazed RP alts because I don't really have enough time to do anything constructive with my main? Anyway.

I learned something interesting today. I learned that up until level 40, and sometimes even beyond 40, Holy is a great leveling spec for priests. I think that this means that Ayiyi doesn't have to play around with the shadowy magic that has made so many of his people go insane and try to destroy the world or whatever the trolls in ZF/ST/ZG/ZA have been doing. I'd know if I ever bothered to read the quest text but I'm an impatient hippy so yeah. I mean...uhm. Er. Right.

This allows Asen to go Feral so that Ayiyi can stand behind her big  bear butt and cast his glowy healing spells while chattering on in undecipherable Sand Gnomish. I think it will work well. I should probably go ahead and have that talk with Ayiyi about taurens being friends not food. I forced Ayiyi to be a tailor, and he also learned how to pick flowers and sell them for money.  Well...He tried to learn how to sell them for money, it didn't go well. Perhaps Asen should hang on to all the money.  I have no idea what Asen should do profession-wise.  I'm going to go around to all my favorite druid blogs when I get a free moment and see what, if anything, they recommend for a leveling druid. I was thinking about Jewelcrafting, because I haven't really done that one yet...but then Leatherworking could be quite beneficial, with her wearing leather and all, and I've never done that one either.

Have I gone insane? I say no, but my magic 8 ball says that all signs point to yes...and it also asks that you send help immediatly.

See this handsome troll here to the left of the text? He's a Sand Gnome that has apprently been reincarnated as a troll.  At least that is what I got out of it. He doesn't seem to speak any language that I'm familiar with. Mostly just says "Ay yiyiyiyi yiyiyiyiyi yi yi yi!" and I don't know what his name is, so I just call him Ayiyiyi.

He's having issues letting go of his Sand Gnome customs and traditions. See, he's a priest  but when I found him in Durotar he was trying to melee scorpions and pigs. We've made some progress since then and now he's using Shadow Word: Pain, Smite, and a wand.

He's got some bizarre idea that he's going to be a shadow priest forever, but we all know that hasn't worked out so well for trolls in the past. Just look at all the trouble that has been caused by trolls playing around with dark magic. I'll let it go for the first several levels, but then I'm definitely pointing him in the direction of the light so that he can follow me around and cast some healing spells on me while I charge head first into large groups of several enemies, showing reckless disregard for my own safety and his as well.

I think it's a sign from a higher power. See, I was exploring Durotar for an achievement and, as a tauren, I've never been to see the trolls. When I got there I found this little troll priest running around whacking a pig with a mace and yelling what I thought to be random gibberish.  Just prior to this I was wishing I had a healbot, and now I have one! He just doesn't know it yet.

Taurens really don't get my customization options the Barber Shops. As far as hair goes we didn't get any new styles, but we did get new horn styles. None of them are awesome and exciting. Female tauren choices are: Really short horns, short horns, broken horns, medium length straight horns, medium length straight horns that point in a different direction, massive horns. For hair? Same 2 styles involving braids that we've always had and we can't change our spots. I would like to be able to change the color of my tauren's fur, but I can't. I hope blizzard adds this eventually, but if not...Well, nothing I can do, so oh well.

Nothing exciting to report today.

I survived Turkey Day after all. Hope everyone else out there had a nice turkey day. And to those who don't celebrate it...Well, I hope you just had a nice day.

I got some more screenshots put together for you all.

And, not that anybody here has any idea what I'm talking about, but for the first time in like...forever...I updated my blog. Not this blog, the OTHER blog. The one about me. Weird. Well, it's 7:38AM now, and I've got things to do today. Zombie Naissa ftl. Have a nice day!

So this morning I managed to hit level 80 on the cow. All of my other characters still sit happily at level 70. Leveling up to 80 as protection was actually quite fun. A little bit slower than arms or fury would have been, but definitely fun.

I've done a few instances so far, Azjol'Nerub being my favorite, no surprise there. I've been hoping for a Nerubian dungeon for like...forever.

Well, it's turkey day so I'm off to visit family. (Bah!) Have a nice day.

I've got more screenshots from Howling Fjord and a couple from beyond that. You can view those here. Or here if you want to view them in a more interesting way.

I'm level 74 now and having a lot more fun that I did initially. Last night I dropped engineering (Bye bye awesome goggles) and picked up mining so that I could level Blacksmithing easier. There ARE awesome level 80 engineering goggles, but they're not AS awesome as the level 70 ones were. The level 70 ones would last until Tier 6 content. The level 80 ones get replaced by the first tier raiding set. So its not a big loss really. If they do add some super awesome engineering goggles, that are awesome enough to beat out the bonus health from mining, I can always stockpile some Bars, drop mining, and level engineering again.

So I completed Howling Fjord (I think) - And got several million more screenshots. (Ok so not THAT many.) Started putting them in gallery form for you all, but its late, and I'm tired, and I've got work super early. x.X - Should have it up tomorrow evening though.

Trying something new here. Hope it works. 

I started out in Borean Tundra (There's nothing boring about Borean!) and had lots of fun with it. Last night I ran out of quests there except for a single group quest and I don't have any lead-ins to another zone. Maybe I missed something? Going to go check out Howling Fjord now and see how that goes. My only experience with it so far is what I saw when I first arrived in the zone. All I know is that the starting town there looks sinister. Not in a cute way like my Sinister Squashling.

The leveling goes SLOWLY. I'm level 72 at the moment and I *MIGHT* hit 73 today but I'm not promising anything. There are already level 80s on my server. The first level 80 was a human priest. Second was a Blood Elf Paladin I believe. Crazy, because I know its going to be a week or more before I hit 80, mostly due to my work schedule I think. While I am having fun with the new quests, I'm not really having fun with the leveling - Possibly because I JUST finished leveling my latest character a month before WotLK hit. So I'm just not "into it" so far. I'll get there though because I'm really looking forward to the level 80 content.

Right, so, pictures. Trying something new. Working on integrating a gallery into the posts to make these mass picture posts easier, but until then, click here for pictures.