The Usual and Customary Introduction

This is my third try at World of Warcraft blogging. Third time may be the charm!

I've played every class in the game, and gotten an affliction warlock, restoration shaman, combat rogue, and protection paladin to 70. But I find myself most thoroughly comfortable with my newest 70, Tivara the blood elf beast master hunter. Hunter turns out to be the class that most accommodates my wildly variable competence and willingness to engage in complex detail management - I can coast well, and I can get intense well. I can be a slow learner, but I'm trying to notice when I'm having fun, so that I can do more of it. So. Hunter it is.

In the past I got into blogging trouble by announcing over-ambitious goals. It turns out that I'm not one of those people who does very well living up to them. This time, therefore, I've got a more modest goal: I'll chronicle what I'm doing with Tivara and what I'm thinking about WoW in general, and talk about other characters when it feels like they're worth talking about.

Here's the scorecard the day before patch 3.0.2 comes out:

Tivara is 70, and geared with two pieces of season 2 (Merciless Gladiator's) armor, with more coming. She got to go help kill Magtheridon the day after she hit 70, and we've got a guild run to the Molten Core coming up on Saturday.

Her main pet right now is Sagarmatha (Nepalese for "The Head of the Sky", the Nepalese name for Mt. Everest). He's the rare white gorilla Uhk'loc, now level 69. I have completely fallen in love with pets that can do AOE. I get impatient and distracted with the flying pets (apart from nether rays and presumably spore bats), with wings getting in the way, but now I find my gorilla indispensable for grinding. I'm looking forward to seeing what rhinos can do, too. The pet families that will become Ferocity families are certainly cool - what in this game is just so thoroughly graceful and neat as a cat on the offensive? what is so much fun as the boom boom boom of a freshly tamed devilsaur? - but Tenacity seems likely to be my "home base" family of families.

For dps purposes, I have Alcyone, a nether ray from Slave Pens, currently level 68. He did quite well for himself in Magtheridon's Lair, and I think I'll keep leveling him up for instances where pet AOE isn't particularly wanted.

Tivara belongs to a cool guild, Archon on Horde-side Shadow Council. We're sort of the textbook casual guild, with a core of folks interested in raiding and a lot of dabblers, some PVPers, and like that. I came in knowing a few of the folks from elsewhere and have made some real friends among people I didn't know before. One of my real regrets about Burning Crusade is the progression opportunities I missed by spreading my attention among too many alts. I'm looking forward to focusing more and seeing more of the game in the upcoming expansion, rather than looping through the earlier parts more times.

And that's my introduction.