Leafshine: Lust for Flower

It's My Birthday Hat

2009-11-06T09:34:08+00:00

It's my birthday!

And I got a morning coffee achievement to celebrate:

But, as that's the worst Achievement sceenshot EVAR, here's a better one of the culinary Leaf:

I can now cook… slightly faster.

Woo!

(By a strange coincidence, my good lady wife has actually bought me some real-world kitchen stuff for my birthday.)

Back in the Forest

2009-11-05T17:23:07+00:00

Oh, hey, The Forest Cat is posting again.

I love that blog. Captures the sheer fun and joy of the game so very well.

Paid Pets: Pandaren Monk

2009-11-05T09:09:59+00:00

So, Blizzard surprised us all yesterday by opening up in-game pets for sale on the Blizzard store. One of them, the Pandaren Monk, is linked to charity, in that Blizz gives 50% of the proceeds of his sale to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. (I'll address my thoughts on paid pets being a good or bad thing in another post.)

Here's the little fella in action:

I bought him partly out of curiosity, partly out of my duty as a half-assed blogger to investigate in a half-assed way, and partly because some of the money goes to charity. But mostly because Pandaren are just cool.

The process is very straight-forward. You login to the Blizzard store using your Battle.net account, and purchase the pet. I had a card on file from a previous purchase, so it took under a minute. You're then taken to an association page that presents you with the accounts within your Battle.net account. As I've only got the one WoW account, that was my only option. You click a button to associate the pet with the account, and you're done.

How does this work in game?

Well, and there won't be any surprises for those of you who have had other "special" pets in the past: it arrives by mail. Who from? One Chen Stormstout, the pandaren who could be found in Warcraft III. That's a nice touch.

From there the process is oh, so very familiar. A nice wee bit of character text:

And yes, for those who are concerned about such things, it is a Bind on Account item:

To me he looks bigger and more detailed than the other pets in the game, closer in scale to a pet with a Pappa Hummell's buff on them than a normal pet. They seem to be trying to give some extra value to the paid pets. But one thing they won't be is rare. There were dozens of them in Dalaran last night, on our low pop server.

We've definitely entered a new age of WoW. But is it a good thing or not?

Bird on a Rock

2009-10-25T18:09:00+00:00

This is a blog post with an intended readership of one: Andromache.

This is my proof that I was on the summoning stone, not in it:

See? Comfy place for a bit of druid roosting…

Told you this was only interesting to one person. :)

Stop Yelling!

2009-10-24T20:05:20+01:00

Bleedin' Dwarves. Do they really need to yell out that I've just finished a quest about 60 levels too low for me? I mean really. If working on Loremaster wasn't enough of a test of perseverance as it is, having uppity stumpies telling the world of your low-level victory seems, well, just sarcastic, frankly.

And how come so few of the boars in Loch Modan have intestines, huh? How do they digest? Answer me that.

Dwarf lands are strange.

Is a cryification shame

2009-10-21T23:28:46+01:00

Ratters is quittificating blogging.

Honestly, I'm gutted. He and his cohorts were the most distinctive voices in WoW Blogging, and a feed reader without them in it is going to be one hell of a less interesting feed reader.

Thanks Rodent-molestor. You'll be missed.

*Leafshine salutes Ratshag with respect*

Hallow's End: Making Ordinary Achievement Shots Sexy

2009-10-20T13:25:00+01:00

WIN

Yes, that is Leafy.

Leafshine the Hallowed

2009-10-19T14:30:00+01:00

I think this grab has all the clues you need to figure out what the final action was in my Hallowing. :)