Sharing the Beauty

Okay okay, so I know that I was taking a break from WoW but a very dear friend has gifted me with some time because the moths in my wallet are no fun. All the same, I have been re-analyzing how I am looking at this break from WoW and I know now, and know it well enough, that this is not permanent; this is a “let’s hope I get the promotion” and more money.

But to calm my anxieties, and there were many, about not playing I made my background one of my favorite screenshots of all time. Not only did I love the main storyline in this zone it has become my favorite in appearance as well. This image is working as a 1680×1000 desktop.

Tuesday with Tarinae 2/1

And we’re back! We I apologize for the gap in your World of Warcraft news but here, giving you a kick start to your February!

First the fun stuff!

Core Hound Pup Adoption Campaign

Feel the love.

Adopt the pup.

Win an iPad?!

SRS BSNS

Blizzard wrote a complaint to Paypal about goldsellers using PayPal as their means of collecting funds due. When PayPal received the letter they offered them the chance to prove they are not infrigning on “intellectual property” or their mechandise will be removed from the websites. Blizzard – 1 Gold Sellers – 0!

The Heartbreaking News

We have spent a few weeks waiting on 4.0.6 to arrive and yet…we find our selves waiting some more. This morning rolling restarts were performed and the realms were already playable by 12:30 EST. And as always you can check out the patch notes; they were last updated January 28th! If you are really antsy to play newer stuff, you can always download the PTR and test; please email me or comment and I will gladly help you figure out how to download it if you do not know how!

Thanks, Byez, and Pictures!

Thank you all for the great congratulations on the blogoversary and the birthday! I had an absolutely fantastic day and coasted on that loving, natural high all the way through the next 24 hours. I hope that you can enjoy my screenshot as a token of my appreciation. It was taken from within the scar in the Badlands illustrating that there is always beauty waiting to be seen, even if from the darkest places.

Tuesday with Tarinae 12/21

Okay, so today has started off on the wrong foot. I woke up to an email that said my billing address for my iTunes account had been changed…well I don’t recall moving and getting a new fancy address within the last three years….so my first instinct (after a paypal disaster) was to check my bank account, it is safe…I realized that my credit card was not attached to my iTunes and I decided to check that…WHERE THE HELL DID MY $4 go…great, someone hacked my iTunes.

Now before you go hating on me for not protecting my computer, I do. I have Kaspersky that was heavy duty enough to remove a root kit on my boyfriends old computer before it completely destabilized and destroyed his computer. I stay away from questionable websites, don’t use any P2P services like limewire, or anything of the like. I don’t know what is going on.

3 Years ago my wow account was hacked and held hostage by a playful hacker who wanted even more money from my friends but he got caught. Blizzard was great in helping me and I have an authenticator now.

I hadn’t used PayPal in over a year since I had been a sophomore in college and one random day they hack that and steal my credit card and non-existent money to buy Aion. The bank was great at handling the fraud case, amazingly awesome in fact.

And now, iTunes. On Thursday I bought some Florence & The Machine songs and downloaded them on my computer. I frequently run these virus and spyware scans and they return with no threats detected…how is this getting through, I think to myself. I don’t understand; it really does a lot to make you feel vulnerable and insecure.

But apparently, there was this massive mess with email addresses and usernames and I wasn’t the only one who happened to have their iTunes wanted…but they did happen to get mine.

I have used my secure iPhone to change the password and account information and have a response form into Apple, they claim a response in 24 hours so I will wait and see, I hope they are as good at handling this as everyone else has been in the past.

But really…that should have been a rant for a personal blog…and I don’t want to taint this lovely column with my bad mood, so here…have some pretties…I told you I would save them for a rainy day.

Naga infested areas can still be beautiful, huh!

The World Pillar

The Ruins of Lordaeron

The Shattering: Desolace

One of the zones I was looking forward to the most in the new world was Desolace. The zone was in horrible disrepair and was entirely out of date and lonely. It was once an eye sore but life and Earth will always win, for even the most beautiful flowers can grow out of the rocky mountain faces high into the sky…and Desolace is no different.

 

The next picture is of the newest addition to the Desolace map: Cenarion Wildlands. This image is an outlook from Ghostwalker Post (Horde). For other before images check out my guest post at Revive & Rejuvenate or Angeyla’s Photo Tour of Desolace!

Please note that while the content of the images belong to Blizzard, the compilation before and after images are my own pitiful attempt at imagery and they are licensed under my Creative Commons license.

A Screenshot Tip:

I found this tip late and in one day I find it from two resources on how to enhance the quality of the screenshots that we take.

Gazimoff illustrates the image quality differences while WoWhead recommends the enhancement for submitting screenshots to them!

As standard this is set at 3. A quality setting of 1 reduces the filesize of the screenshot at the cost of quality. A setting of 10 provides the best quality, but creates larger files.

/console screenshotQuality 10

I hope you enjoyed the tour of Desolace! What changes were you looking forward to that you couldn’t wait to check out? Underwhelmed? Overwhelmed?

Tuesday with Tarinae 9/21

Hello everyone! Here we are back for another week of WoW goodness…I’m at a loss for an really good introduction today. So let’s just move on, shall we?

Blog News

I have done some updates around here including an updated Blogroll & Bucket List. I am also getting steady views per day to be in the three digits! Now, I started blogging January 29 so I have definitly taken my good sweet time building up readers but I appreciate every single one of you. I missed my 6-month anniversary but I am working on some way to celebrate that big anniversary! I am also trying to hash out a new header or perhaps a theme, neither of which are working right now. Just wanted you all to know!

Playing Partner

After almost 3 months, my boyfriend has decided to come back to WoW. In preparation for Cataclysm, he is setting up a faction-opposite sister guild to Age of the Phoenix so that we will all have a home in the alien territory that is the Alliance. We have done things out of the ordinary, things we have never done before. His RP story for his character, Azazoth, was to end with him killing Isillien, and now…that is done. It opened a lot of lore for me I did not know. If you have not done it, find Tirion Fordring in the Eastern Plaguelands (on the western border on the south side of Terrordale cave) and do his questline. Your time to do so is running out. We also did Dire Maul…all of it! It was a lot of fun. It involved a lot of WoWhead-ing, and backtracking but we got it done and I got Recipe: Runn Tum Tuber Surprise!

Speaking of time running out…

I took this picture recently while leveling a baby and it is lovely. I have thought long and hard about when to share it, but now seems good. This may be the last time I ever look out onto this site with the Cataclysm coming…

Brewfest!

The time to get drunk is here! If you are the inappropriate age to do so…now is the time to live vicariously through your avatars…BREWFEST IS HERE. This holiday event is pretty straight forward with eating, drinking, and killing but there is something you may want to know. Originally, I started playing WoW around the time of Brewfest, my laptop sucked SO bad, I had no idea there were drunk effects. I didn’t see anything blurry at all. This time, I noticed that even though I was completely smashed, I saw things just fine…I ran crooked…but saw just fine, so I wondered to myself why this was. Had they changed it? And finally, I found it and I want to share with you. If you dislike the drunken visual effect, turn off Full-Screen Glow Effect! And be warned….the music will haunt you everywhere you go!

Harvest Festival

While we are on the subject of holidays, Harvest Festival is pretty simple. You do one quest to honor fallen heroes and then eat whenever that’s all. You get a non-soulbound book for the Horde called The Horde’s Hellscream. Most people want to get rid of it, it serves no purpose other than lore. For this holiday, I suggest doing it once and checking out Rio’s Honouring Heroes postcards.

Yes, there was a patch.

The big thing this week was “What was that patch”? It served to download tools including the background launcher that was apparently broken for the content data patch. No, it was not a keylogger.

Gnomeregan vs. Zalazane

Quick content review: I can only finish the Zalazane event having no Alli over 75, but the quests leading up to the event are amazing on both sides! I heard the troll was better but really…”They may take our lives, but they will never take our…INNOVATION!”

Good-bye ladies and gentlemen! *she bows off stage to loud applause*

Tuesday with Tarinae 9/14

Welcome back to this week’s episode of Tuesday with…me! I am glad that you could make it! There is no QQ of nothing to talk about this week, in fact I have plenty to share so I won’t hesitate to get started! *scrambles for post-it notes*

Oh no, not de Echo Isles mon!

Zalazane’s rule over da Echo Isles be comin’ to an end mon. If you didn’t happen to notice (you get a cool letter in da mail), the events for the reclaiming of the Echo Isles and Gnomeregan have started. It went live shortly after I was complaining about nothing to talk about last week, and have not been able to since tell you about it.

I was seriously let down by the Zalazane event. If you haven’t levelled a Hordie doing those quests, Zalazane was a b!tch to kill. Over and over I faced death to defeat the HexMaster Voodoo Daddy. But if all it took was one fatal swoop to kill him, why did we wait this long? I was really hoping for a lengthy event of dailies and readying resources and the like…but alas…you do it…he is dead…it’s over. Whoop. I was a little let down.

I haven’t experienced the Alliance event yet but here is a screenie from the release day masses!

The event was massively popular within the first 24 hours, but like I said, when it is done it is done and there is no more. It is sad.

Tarinae & her Recruits

Public Test Realm

So the word is that the PTR for patch 4.0 is now available to play but there is a massive delay for character copies. This patch is for the pre Cataclysm release content. As far as I have been told in #Blizzchat’s the new race/class combos will not be available in 4.0, they will require Cataclysm but we will see.

September Festivities

With today being Tuesday 9/14/10 it is important to note days of September that are hopping with things in game. Harvest Festival (not to be confused with Pilgrim’s Bounty) starts this Thursday 9/16 and goes until the 22nd. Overlapping with that holiday is the infamous Brewfest. It is about this time three years ago that I was introduced to WoW in the first place so it also marks my gaming anniversary! I did say September was hopping didn’t I…like barley and hops…get it!?! 0:)

Azazoth & Tarinae -- Brewfest 2009

Player Update

I felt like I needed a moment to you about Rotface. What a formidable foe he is. It seems that PuGs are incapable of killing this festering construct of a beast. Recently, I was healing a 25 man run, mind you we had our share of healers, and he was at <1%…more like .3%..and we wiped. It was devastating because it was to be our last attempt. But we also tried Dreamwalker in that run…and I really need to figure out this portal/bubble/stack thing…it was my first go at her and I understand the mechanics it is just maneuvering to get the healing stacks I need to perfect.

On an additional note, I am so mad at the Lady Mother of the RNG. I am so close to making a blood sacrifice to get some drops and/or rolls!! I cannot beg hard enough for the Marrowgar shield to drop nor can I plead hard enough to win a roll for a Mark! Alas, QQ!

Models: Troll & Worgen Druids

I have mentioned them before, the forms for the new druid races, but the recent interaction with Zen’tabra, the Troll Druid, has sparked my excitement again. I am so thrilled and she is just so awesome. While surfing around Worldofwarcraft.com I found the latest release of the bear/cat forms! Check it out, I am LOVING all except the worgen cat!

With that said…

I leave you with one thought…

Tuesday with Tarinae 8/31

Good bye August. Another month has come and gone. Time flies. I don’t even know where last week went but it was a murderous  week dealt out by the evil hands of Orcus, The Demon Prince of the Undead, I am almost sure of it. On top of a mountain of disasterous news, I have strep throat. I have succeeded for 23 years in never having this awful illness but now, working with kids, guess what. 101 degree temperature and 3 days of nearly nothing to eat, I am still exhausted. I have maxed out the extremes of my iPhone while watching a House Marathon, a Ghost Whisperer Marathon, and a season of Inuyasha while I lay dyeing on the couch.

So…for that reason…I have absolutely nothing to talk about. Aside from the post on Saturday, I have touched the computer only to pay my (conviently) cell phone bill. So I leave you with this and I am going to go hide under the covers again, but I do have medicine now!

I love images of space and the nether. This works well as a 1920×1080 wallpaper I do believe. And as always, I encourage you to check out some of my favorite screenshot artists over at Revive & Rejuvenate and Postcards from Azeroth.

Until I am well, may the light be with you.

Tuesday with Tarinae 7/13

So another Tuesday goes by and I am a little closer to a calmer life. Only 2 more Tuesdays before a vacation! Well, a break from work anyways. All the same, this post is a little later than my typical 10:45 because I woke up feeling ill this morning and called in to work. My boss had a virus last week and I hope that has nothing to do with this. But you’re not here to hear about me! You’re here for the wow goodness, the fun stuff, the srs bsns!

What must come first is…

A BIG thank you to Zelmaru & Angelya for their amazing guests posts. The awesomeness that they generated last week propelled me through and I should be able to keep up the pace. If you have been working on a post, please let me know and email me at tarinae (@) gmail dot com and it will be posted!

In other news…

Yes, I have told you that Blizzard has changed their minds for the Real ID on the forums. It was brought to my attention that I didn’t make it clear that they stated the change is “at this time”  but I meant to do that. I am not won over by the fact that they hide behind the “optional” use of it all and that they still have intentions for the forums and the Real ID feature. BUt to tag along with this, many players ~1,000+ wrote to the ESRB about the situation for help.  If you were one of those people, chances are your email has been leaked. PS. There is also another security flaw you should know about.

Up sprouts a new blog!

Congratulations and good luck to Cynwise who has just released her Auction House based manual blog! Her latest post is about why you need a bank alt, and supports the fashionable cloths that these factors can wear.

For more bank alt goodness…

Rades posted an amazing farewell to his bank alt. I read the biography of the great cow and was in awe. A great (RPish) post.

Because I love mine so much, I thought I would share…again…in all her fashionable glory.

Beta time!

So, we all know the beta has started. The moment the NDA was dropped and invites went out, there was a rush of information tot he blogging world. People couldn’t wait to share the changes, the spoilers, the goodness. I was a little sad I didn’t have an invite. I have mentioned before that I am not sure what I would do in beta, but I would definitely check out the talent trees and professions for Tarinae. All the same, I share the good news that a new round of beta invites are going out this week! So to anyone who has opted-in, I wish you the best of luck!

Other class feature

I have a category over there, *points to right sidebar* for other classes. See it? Good. I have been wanting to do a small feature of some sort for hunters but I just haven’t managed to think of anything pertinent to say. With that said, while I work on getting a paladin gear slot guide done, check out another one of Rades amazing posts on Distracting Shot that is perfect for that huntering newbie (different than noob!).

A farewell screenshot

To say good-bye is to leave you with beauty and loot blessings. Until next time…

Tuesday with Tarinae 6/29

There has been a hefty buzz around the World of Warcraft this week. There are some things that are highly worth mentioning while they hold our servers hostage and hopefully attempt to deal with the 3.3.5 known issues. Let’s take a look around and see what all has been going on!

Guests Posts

As promised, I got the chance to do a guest post for Angelya over at Revive & Rejuvenate as well as some other great bloggers. Check it out!

Screenshot

There were multiple factors for my screenshot motivations this week. I was doing the guest post but I was also playing WoW on a 42 inch television screen with the HIGHEST graphic settings I have ever experienced. This was the most amazing thing I have even seen. The detail, the clarity, the beauty!! There were several that captured my heart, and since have been more but I thought I would share one of my favorites since it has been a while:

If it isn’t apparent, this is from Blade’s Edge Mountains where the beautiful crystals grow and the weird little hobbly-knobbly guys roam around. It is an interesting shot that took some work to get the right way, and it turned out better than I thought it would. I hope you enjoy it as well; it can be used as a 1920×1080 wallpaper.

Real ID

I think that a variety of perspectives on a subject is important. When 3.3.5 went live in the US, it brought the Real ID and a lot of bloggers have their own thoughts to share on it. Some are for it and some are not, but they put the opinion out there to be heard.

• Six-Inch heals talks about the Real ID Buzz and being in between
• Miss Medicina talks about the patch notes and the Real ID
• Anna talks about privacy and Real ID
• Evensong shares her 3.3.5 thoughts
• The Noisy Rogue and the antithesis of WoW+Real ID
• Zelmaru does a quick refresher on Real ID

Ruby Sanctum

I am unsure if the Ruby Sanctum is experiencing any difficulties or anything, but I haven’t seen a single moment in trade chat were someone was saying LFM RS Need heals PST. I haven’t even heard it on a whisper. I am pretty disappointed with that fact; not that I have really had the chance to sit down and go if they were looking for heals, but I just thought that there would be more people jumping into it. I remember when Onyxia was turned Level 80, everyone loved it. But open a trinket heavy raid for ICC iLvl and nothing.

How is it going on other servers?

Fire Festival

There are some things you should know when trying to break into Alliance cities for this particular holiday.

• The Darnassus flame is not located in the city, you don’t even need to cross through the portal as it is on the island outside the portal and by the bridge to the flight master/dock. If you are getting hit, it will interrupt your attempt at stealing it so you may need to be especially sneaky. It is important to note that while you DO NOT have to enter the city to steal the flame, you need to extinguish the flame of Teldrassil that is located in Dolonaar which requires a trek through the city.
• The Exodar flame is tricky. Assuming you will come in from the front, go down the ramps and take a right into the Crystal Hall. You then have to be paying attention to maneuver the flaming braziers that are on the steps as you go up the steps to reach the flame. If you are not careful, you will end up with a gaggle of guards and possibly even dead.
• Ironforge’s flame is located in the Hall of Explorer’s. I don’t often play Alliance, to me it seems like that place no one knows about except that it makes their journey around the city longer. However, for us Hordies, it is conveniently located to the North/Right of the Deeprun Tram, which makes our venture here a little less reckless if we come in from Stormwind.
• Speaking of Stormwind, it couldn’t be any fruther from the Tram. This flame is lcoated in the Canals outside the entrance to the Stockades; I agree, it is a little random. The best route may be to take the ship from the Auberdine dock, enter in through the Harbor to the Canals, then keep to the back side of the Trade District to make your way to the Dwarven District for a de-flagging tram ride.

I have decided that I will not be doing a full guide to this holiday this year, I was too busy at the on-set of the holiday to have the chance. However, if you are looking for one, I would happily suggest you look at Jaedia‘s very helpful and thorough guide.

One great thing to come from all of this is the Ice Chip! I got one for myself..so what if it is on the wrong character?

An Off-Topic Musing

I have been to two weddings on back-to-back weekends. There is one thing that I can definitely say with a high degree of certainty: I will NEVER get married in June. Not because I already know a lot of people who share anniversaries that month, and it is not a bad month but it has one deal-breaking flaw: It is to damn hot. I don’t want to carry a 50lb wedding dress in 90-100 degree weather and I don’t want my groom/groomsmen dieing of heat exhaustion in penguin suits. I don’t like sweat and June is just a sweaty month!

I do understand that it is one of the most popular months for weddings so I wish all of those couples good luck and congratulations!

Also, I would like to take the time to proudly admit that in ~12 hours I will be standing in line for the midnight showing of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and I am very excited! I also hope to be in line for The Last Air Bender on the next night but we will see how that one goes!

The End

So while I find out bad news at work that yet another Saturday is going to be ruined for me, I hope that this doesn’t detur my play time but it does in fact ruin my yard sale plans. I wish you all the best in game and hope you keep flames tamed this week!

Progression

I had thought about throwing this in for this Tuesday post as an accomplishment section, but I just couldn’t wait that long to share the good news.

Last night, I was in one of the best PUGs I have been in a long time. There were a couple loot issues, that were my fault for not asking loot rules, but the group was spectacular. We One-shot the entire first quarter of ICC-10. I hadn’t seen such coordination in a PUG like that in…well I would say never! The ranged new what to do, the OT learned how to jump ship, and even I got to do something new!

Take a good look at the recount there...what do you see?

That’s right folks! This chick DPS’d Saurfang as a Ret Paladin! Furthermore, after having talked to Zal, check out the number 5K+. I was shocked and had a GREAT time just smacking that boss around like he was a broken toy. And speaking of broken toys…we progressed further than I have ever been. I got see the Upper Spire and that has never happened. The weekly was the blight strains and so after killing Precious & Stinky (STILL AWESOME!) we went to Rotface first.

My very first look at Rotface...

We attempted it twice, but we were wiping with a lack of ooze control and the assigned cleanser was having some trouble. He was at ~50% though both times, so it was a good first attempt for many of us. There was a rogue though, first wipe OF THE NIGHT, and he “had to go”. Leaving in a progressive raid is rude without prior warning, just FYI mister. We replace him with an even better mage and…

Festergut...

Totally pwnd the face off of Festergut! My very first Festergut kill and I has a picture! We were doing so awesome that we have a continuation invite for 2:30 ST tonight, I haven’t been this excited to play in a long time! It is so awesome and the tank reminds me a lot of a great friend that I used to run with so I like it a lot.

Like I said, there were some loot issues (off-spec and too many MS) but I didn’t walk out of there empty handed:

Achievements:

Upgrades:

• Frost Needle (I was using Seethe–bad I know)
• Ashen Band of Greater Wisdom (I reached Honored!)

I would also like to send a thanks to Rades who informed me about the awesome sound byte of Rotface, I was sure to have my speakers up and laughed! It was genuinely entertaining!

I had a blast last night and can’t wait to get back in tonight but no, this does not change my casual persona! I like to raid when I am in the mood and have time and this happens to be my last free weekend for a while.