!! I'm Hosting a Transmog Contest !!

While the pre-expansion lulls start to settle in I thought I would give some of you something to do over the next few months.

I am going to host my first ever transmogging contest that will span the course of the next 5 months. The theme of the contest is based on the colors of the rainbow and shall hence be called "The ROYGBiV Tmog".

Egypt - ROYGBIVby Chael @ deviantART

Each month, beginning with February, will be based on the different colors in the spectrum. I know there are 6 colors really, but Indigo and Violet are too similar in my eyes for this contest. So, I have left out Indigo leaving the following order of the contest:

February = Red
March = Orange
April = Yellow
May = Green
June = Blue
July = Violet (basically any purples)

Each month the winner of the contest will win a Blizzard Store Companion/Battle Pet.

The rules for the contest are such:

1.) All outfits must be able to be worn as if they were a real transmog. Meaning, no mixing plate and cloth items together or no Mages carrying bows and so on.

2.) You can use MogIt or WoW Model Viewer for your submissions. Feel free to submit true transmogs as well if you have an appropriate outfit or want to gather the pieces in game for said outfit.

3.) Each entry must be submitted by the 25th of each month to allow time for voting.

4.) Please, submit only one entry per month. Take your time putting your outfits together. Remember, you have until the 25th of each month to submit your entry.

5.) Email entries to: momar dot jstmel @ gmail dot com (in proper email address format of course) with the corresponding month's name and color in the subject title. (I.E. - Tmog Entry for March - Orange)

6.) In the body of the email list the names of the items used in each slot. Provide links to the items if you want.

7.) Please use all gear/weapon slots available. Rings, trinkets and necklaces not necessary.

Pretty simple huh?

On the last day of each month I will post the winner's photo as well as the second and third place winner's photos (if I get enough entries to do so). On the last day of each month I will also announce the color and what the prize/pet is for the next month's contest as a reminder.

If you are an author of your own blog, feel free to post pictures of your submitted outfits there. The only thing I ask is that you do not post pictures of your outfits in advance...meaning no showing June's outfit in March and so on.

And that's it! Get your thinking caps on because the first contest starts in two days on February 1st. I will make a post on the 1st as a reminder as well as to tell you which pet will be the prize for that month.

Happy Mogging All!!!

P.S. - For the month of August I'm thinking I might do a contest where you, the contestants, will vote on the winners from each month to determine who's outfit shall be chosen for the grand prize of a Blizz Store Mount of their choosing...as well as a specially made jpg or gif image, by me, denoting them as the overall "ROYGBiV Tmog Winner".

I'm Still Here...

You may have wondered, all three or four of you, where I have disappeared to. Well, I'm still here...honest!

I wish I could say that my absence was caused by a demanding work load. That would be a lie. My job requires NONE of my attention whilst at home.

Truth of the matter is I got burnt out on WoW and took a little break...which I am still on.

Right after my last post I got busy going around Azeroth looking for/capturing battle pets of the opposite sex I thought I would need in preparation for WoW's next expansion. A few days later, and after some 13-14 captures, I read a tweet that said we would be allowed to breed pets of the same families. That put a halt to my plan of having both sexes of a majority of my battle pets. With the amount, and variety, of pets in each family I doubt anyone's luck would be bad enough to have only males or females. So, no need to go capture pets of the opposite sex from ones I already have.

From there I turned my eye towards the Celestial Tournament. Since the tournament was implemented I had only ever attempted it once. I quickly got chewed up and spat back out. I was clearly not prepared...even with some 90 or so level 25 pets. I browsed around the web to look for some tips and tricks to completing the tournament only to find out that I was lacking some level 25 pets that would be needed to effortlessly complete the tournament. How many was I missing you ask? Oh...only about 15-20 or so. *sigh*

I made a list of the pets I needed to get leveled and set off. I started leveling some of the ones I had that were still level 1. Then I worked on others that were around level 10 or so. Got a bunch of them to level 25 in about a week. Then I took note of some I needed at 25 that I did not own. I quickly found a few of them on eBay for between $5-$10 and scooped them up. A few days later I received their redemption codes and claimed them in game. I set up my teams and started leveling them.

Then 'burn-out' set in.

I just couldn't get myself to log in and do any more pet battles.

Mind you, in the mix I had created two new toons (a Tauren Druid and Goblin Warlock) and had been leveling them. The amount of experience from pet battles is nice for lower level toons. But even logging in to work on my baby toons wasn't appealing. I needed a break from WoW.

One afternoon while watching television I came across a channel playing 'Star Wars: A New Hope'. While watching it I started thinking about how much I missed playing Star Wars Galaxies Online. Which then lead to a thought about the game Star Wars: The Old Republic. I got up from the tv, turned on my computer and did some reading about SW:ToR.

I didn't see too many negative comments about SW:ToR  so I decided to give it a try. What could it hurt? It was now a "Free to Play" game. If I didn't like the game it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I would only be out the time it took to download, install and try. Meh...a small price to pay if you ask me.

Well here I am, almost one month later and a subscribing player, enjoying my jaunts around "a galaxy far, far away". I have five toons ranging between the levels of 19 and 31. The game has been a lot of fun. It's a bit better than I expected, but still not as good in some ways as SWGO...in my eyes at least...which I might elaborate my thoughts on some day.

How long will I be lost amongst the stars and planets and alien races? I couldn't tell ya.

But, please, take comfort in knowing that all is well in my neck of the woods. I'm just off going "pew pew pew" with weapons that actually go "pew pew pew".

Happy 2014 all! May happiness, health and safety be prominent to each of you.

Taking Pets to Another Level

When we were first given pet battles in game, I had scoured the interwebs to learn as much about the new feature as possible. Among a few handy addons I found, I came across this little gem:

Warla's Pet Search

The above website is basically an "all-in-one" site to find information on pet breeds, types, abilities and to keep an eye on your own collection of pets. It is a wonderful tool for those of us that like to battle and collect our pets.

If you've taken a quick peek at Warla's site, or have been familiar with it for some time like me, you can imagine how thrilled I am to have access to it when I read the following in Wowhead's compiled list of information about WoW's next expansion:

Medium buildings: pet stable, trading post, lumber mill, barn, and inn. Pet stable will let you breed epic pets and there is a special trainer to fight.

Yay! We get to breed our pets!!!!!!

When I read that I instantly thought about Warla's site. Why you ask? Because Warla's site lists the gender of pets as well as all the other information about battle pets.

This means that I can check the list of my personal pets, to see what genders I already have, so that I know what gender of pets I need to go get in order to be ready for breeding them.

Snapshot of my pets at Warla's Pet Search

As you can see in the above image, there is a lot of information you can find out about your pets. What we are most concerned with right now are the ones colored blue and pink in the "Breeds" column.

Blue denotes the males we have, pink the females. This is what will make all our lives easier, in a manner of speaking, when it comes to acquiring the right gender of pet.

Even more information available

In the above picture you can see what happens when you move your mouse over a pet in the "Breeds" column. A handy-dandy little window pops up that gives you more information about the pet in question. As you can see, I have the breed 11 (or S/B) of a male Alpine Foxling Kit. Now all I have to do is decide if I want to go on the search for a 13 (B/B) or 21 (S/B) breed female.

Sadly, not all of the available pets come in both male and female genders. This makes me wonder if we will be able to cross breed our pets? Or will we only be able to breed pets of the same family?

A few other questions I have are:

• In order for us to birth an epic quality pet will the breeding pets have to both be rare quality? Or will each breeding be a toss of the dice and we end up with what we end up with?


• If we mate two different breeds which will be the strongest in the outcome? Example, if I breed an S/B and a B/B will they give birth to a B/B?


• Will we be able to mate pets with different breeds to bump up the stats on the new pet? Example, if I breed a P/P and an S/S will I get a pet with really high Power and Speed?

I am sure more information on this will be given to us as we get closer to the opening of the beta. In the meantime, I'll be busy traveling the lands of Azeroth to acquire as many male and female pets I need to get pairs of them all.

Feel free to call me Noah from here on out.


:o)

Thela's new groove...

In the summer of 2012 I connected with an old school mate through Facebook. During our reconnecting conversations I found out that she played World of Warcraft, and had been for some time. I created a character on her server so we could chit chat and get together and goof off at times.

Her toons were Horde and on an RP server...wow talk about sticker shock, so to speak. I am no stranger to the Horde side. I have a few Horde bankers here and there and had created Horde toons in the past to test their waters. But, an RP server? Hmmmmm...this could be interesting.

Trying to be as RP-ie as I could I created a Tauren Death Knight and named him 'Mootamir'. My train of thought was, "Hmmm...DK Tauren...what's a good "deathie" name?....death...cemetary...funeral home...what kinds of names would I associate with a funeral home?....Mortimer...ya...that sounds deathie and creepy...OK, Tauren on an RP server...name has to have 'moo' in it....Mootimer?....no...I'm not a moo timer....Mootamir! Yep, that'll do." Hence, Moot was born.

After Moot's creation, and after I got him out of the DK starter area, I whispered my school mate and she invited me to the guild she was in. I was promptly greeted with welcomes from quite a few people, which was a nice feeling. I soon learned that my school mate's guild was a very active one, which was also nice because things had been growing pretty quiet in my regular guild and on my regular server.

It didn't take me long to level Moot to 90...at least in play time that is. In total it probably took about a month. I let Moot sit for a week or so here and there to gain rested XP.

I don't remember exactly when, but things kind of picked back up in my regular guild. Moot got very little play time for quite some time...like 6 or 7 months...maybe even more. Anywhooo, things got quiet again on my regular server and I thought I'd pop on over to Moot and see what all was going on.

To my surprise, every time I logged onto Moot there were never less than 10 people online. This was a shock. For the longest time, more than a year or two, my regular guild never had more than 4 people on at once. More often than not, it was usually just myself and one other person online.

Little by little I started playing Moot more and more. I started to get to know some of my new guildmates and join them in some activities. I also found out that my school mate was no longer in the guild and was glad/surprised they hadn't booted me when she left.

It was such a breath of fresh air to be doing things with others...something I had not done in a long time. Occasionally I would group with one or two others in my regular guild to do stuff....but on my new server I was doing things with 5-10+ others. It started to feel like I was back in the TBC/LK days....when my regular guild was at its most active.

As I became more active with Moot I saw I was starting to be in need of some financial assistance...poor guy never had more than 2k gold on him at any one time. With the new Timeless Isle (or, as some have started calling it, Loot Island) it took very little time to get Moot's gear from a sad 440- something ilvl to just under 500. I was able to start doing Flex raids with my new guild. But, I was still lacking in some necessities.

I started thinking about which of my toons I could server and faction change with to lend Moot a hand. First, I thought of Sheeturself. She was the toon I was playing most on Alliance side. But, I thought, Blizz might make me do a name change. So far it seemed like I had been flying under the radar in the sense that Blizz hadn't made me change her name already. So why rock the proverbial boat? Plus, she's one sexy Draenai. Why ruin a good thing?

Then I thought of my Warlock, Sheetahn. Nah...can't do it. I mean she's a Gnome Warlock...can it get any cuter than that?????? How 'bout Weland, my Paladin? Nah, don't really "need" two plate wearers just yet. Humphrey, my mage is fun, why not move him? He's already gotten a lot of gear from Loot Island so it won't take much to get him Flex ready. Nah. I've got TONS of Loot Island gear sitting in one of my banker's guild bank that is mail and leather. I should move a toon that can use it instead of it sitting collecting dust.

Well, that leaves just Thelandira. She's not 90 and can't use the gear yet. But, she's only 88. That means that it won't take long to get her to 90. And while doing so she can gain reputation points, through questing, for my new guild. Yay! Kill two birds with one stone.

Then, it took me about 3 weeks or so to finally decide to move her. Thela was the third toon I ever created and was the first toon I joined Nighthaven with. Was I really about to move her???? Nighthaven, and Echo Isles, has been her home since early 2007. Over the course of those three weeks or so I talked myself into moving her and right back out of it. It just felt weird...and wrong.

In the end, the decision to move her won and I started getting her ready. I cleaned out her bank of things she really didn't "need". Then, I pilfered things from my other toons and bank alts of things she would need without having to farm them up all over again. I robbed my Alliance toons of a little less than half of all their gold and sent it to Thela. Then I was off to my Battlenet account to make the move.

I was nervous as ever after reading that the move could take up to 72 hours. Yikes! The thought of stressing out over the next few days as to whether or not all her items and gold would transfer over was a bit much. Thankfully, and much to my surprise, the move took a little over an hour. YAY!  I quickly checked her bags, bank and Void Storage and was happy to see it all came with her...with the exception of Dartol's Rod of Transformation.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thankfully, you can get Stave of Fur and Claw by getting exalted with Timbermaw Hold. But...it's not the same.  :o(

My new guild, Kinsmen, welcomed Thela with open arms. She was immediately invited in and has been building bonds with her new guildmates.

I leveled her in no time to 90 and donned all her new Loot Island gear. I've not run Flex with her yet, but am sure I will in time. The few times I've run Flex with Kinsmen has been on Moot as a tank...which is fine. I enjoy tanking. Plus, I'm a little nervous raiding with Thela. I know I'll put out poor dps and don't want to be known as a "huntard". hahahahahahahaha

Long-story-short, I know...too late, Thela has a new groove, in a new guild, on a new server. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Thelandira, the Orc, of Kinsmen.

Thank you very much Kinsmen for making me feel welcomed and at home. I look forward to getting to know as many of you as I can as well as having fun times with you all.

P.S. - female Orc dance is HORRIBLE!!!!! And, I miss my idle bouncing that Thela did as a Night Elf.

Musical Monday...and more...

I haven't done a 'Musical Monday' in a while have I? Well, seeing as how I can't get this song out of my head, I thought I'd share it with you. Peter Murphy's 'Cuts You Up'.

This used to be one of my favorite songs to dance to back in the mid-to-late 90s. I was in the Navy back then and occasionally this song would be played at the bar on base, as well as the local gay bar. Most of my Navy buddies thought I was a bit "off" when I would be the only one dancing when this song was played. None of them had ever heard it before. Eventually they warmed up to it and after hearing it a few times they would join me on the dance floor whenever it came on...not that I really "needed" them on the floor with me. I was always dancing in my own little world when this song was played.

So, that's it for 'Musical Monday'...here's where the "more" begins...

First, I need to send out another "THANK YOU!" to Tycertank for choosing one of my screen shots during her August screen shot contest. In recognition of that I took the following screen shot. This is my Druid, Draiko, wearing his best Druid outfit while standing proudly admiring his new pet. Thank you Tycer!!!!

I was flying around doing pet battles a few nights ago and caught the lighting at a perfect moment. I was in Swamp of Sorrows when I took a series of screen shots.  I made an Animated GIF out of the screenies and sadly the quality diminished some from the original images. But, you should get the idea of how cool it looks. I love how the wings of my Hippogryph shadow in the sky.

While browsing though my old screen shots folder I came across the following image. I had taken it during one of the Brewfest events in game. I had had Thela drinking quite a bit and her vision was a little skewed. I happeneded to notice the name of a toon near her and decided to take a screenie of it...drunk and all. The name fit perfectly with how drunk Thela was. I really like how it came out. (If you don't know what 'Foobard' (actual spelling is supposed to be FUBAR) is don't be ashamed to ask)

If you can't see it too well, the toon's name is 'Foobard'.

I also came across the following screenie I took inside the dungeon 'The Arcatraz'. I love the kalidescope look it has.

The following screenies are of some glitches I found while out in the zone 'Uldum' one day. From a distance I could tell something wasn't quite right with the mob I was looking at but couldn't figure it out. It wasn't until I got closer, and changed angles, that I saw it was a glitch...and a funny looking one to boot.

The next ones are of the infamous 'UFO' that people have seen in various parts of Azeroth. I've actully seen this in three different zones. Uldum. Isle of Thunder. And Zangarmarsh. I got these screenies the same day I got the ones above of the glitched Neferset.