I’ve been wanting to do something for my guild for quite some time. Sure, we’ve only been together (in this form) since the end of Tomb of Sargeras (so since around November/December last year? And to be fair, I’ve been raiding with some of them for the whole of Legion. ), but in that time I’ve grown so fond of my guildies. And I wanted to say thank you.
Thing is, the past few months have been a bit rubbish. Well, truth be told, the past year hasn’t been the greatest (work situations are just the worst for making you feel crap!) and raiding with these folks has been one of the few things that has kept me sane (that, and of course, Thor). Raiding with Realm is something I look forward to each week. I love these guys to bits. Even when we yell at each other. Even when we’re apes (ok, maybe especially when we’re apes). When we’re killing bosses together, or playing hide and seek in Dalaran, or fudging our way through mythic+ dungeons & bgs… it’s all just been so much fun. Pulling together and getting our Cutting Edge on mythic Argus the other week really was the icing on the cake of what was already an amazing expansion.
So I’ve been wracking my brains for what to do. And for the longest time I knew precisely what I wanted to do. But… well, I don’t have the talent to do it. (I maaaaaaayy have re-written the lyrics to ‘Part of your World’ from The Little Mermaid to tell the story of someone who wants to raid with us 😀 But I can’t sing for shit!) So I was back to square one.
Then the other day, when I was doing my WoW screenshots archiving, it occurred to me that I have a lot of screenshots. (Seriously… a LOT). And I had already been asking guildies for pics of themselves for me… so I decided to make a mosaic of all of us (and a whooooole bunch of pics from Antorus) into a wallpaper using our guild logo.
And so with the help of AndreaMosaic I made this…
UPDATED: added some more raider pics to it cos some people were missing in the first one 🙂
The original is big enough that you can zoom in and see all the individual pictures pretty well (not perfect, but well enough!). If you want to have a look, check out the fullsize version of the wallpaper here. Here are some snippets:
I know I’m a giant sap, but I’m an older lady now, and I’m very fond of the people that I chose to spend so much time with each week. I just want them to know how appreciative I am that they put up with my cranky moods and my nagging for screen shots and silly wee wee songs and inappropriate jokes (though, I’m the tamest of them all, I swear it!). I am so thankful for these people who have stood up for me and come to my defence when trolls came to my stream; who have become facebook friends and not run away screaming when they see pics of me; who don’t make fun of my terrible kill videos; who are there for a chat in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep; who are just good fun people to be around (even when I’m not).
So Realm – thank you for being amazing. I am so looking forward to kicking ass with you all in Battle for Azeroth. ❤
xo
P.S. Here are some closeups of the guildies who sent me selfies ❤ (All the pics below are in the mosaic)
It’s mid-October, and you know what that means – it’s time for the annual Gnome Run! This year was the 8th run, and the turnout this time was absolutely phenomenal. Last year they had almost 3000 gnomes race, and raised $5,500. THIS year, oh my goodness. According to organiser Dravvie, there were over 7,000 (yes SEVEN THOUSAND) gnomes in the race today, and they have raised $14,000 at the time of writing this (and that number keeps going up. It was $13,000 when I first started writing this post lol!!). The goal was $4,000. It’s incredible.
This year, as many of you will know, the Gnome Run was added as a micro-holiday to the game. the Blizzard team set up a race track for all of the gnomes to follow, so you knew where you were going. A lot of people were concerned that Blizzard were “taking over” the Gnome Run when it was added as a microholiday to WoW. However, Dravvie wrote an amazing article for Wowhead that talks about how amazing Blizz were in asking for her ok before adding it to the game. The article also talks about the history of the event, and how it has grown over the years.
There were gnomes EVERYWHERE. We had banners to run through so we knew where to go, blockades stopping us from going off track, REFRESHMENT TABLES and loads of NPC gnomes cheering us along the whole way. It was so brilliant the way it was set up. I hope that Dravvie and the team love what Blizzard did to bring the race into the game.
For me, I ran into some lovely twitter friends…
Once again this year, I did the run with the gorgeous Ms Miggi, but would you believe it? I didn’t manage to get a good pic of the two of us together! So bummed. Though we do both look pretty determined in this pic…
Running with Miggi! (@MsMiggi)
The run itself is always loads of fun. It was incredibly helpful having the gates to pass through, because I’m always so good at getting lost. We only got disconnected once, and that was zoning into Stormwind after getting off the tram. The servers held up brilliantly well. They’re just amazing.
Once we made it to Booty Bay we did try to make a heart, as is tradition. Our shard didn’t do too badly, until a naughty person dropped one of those toys that turns everyone into Moonkins… so that was a little disappointing. But truthfully, it wasn’t as bad as last year, so I think that’s good 🙂
As is also tradition, once the race was done, we jumped on a boat to head over to Orgimmar to /lick the warchief. I’ve never made it all the way into the Throne room. I think the furthest I had gotten was to inside the gates of Org before I’d get horrifically killed. This year, though, I was successful! Well, kinda… you see, stupid Cinder didn’t /lick Saurfang… she /kiss him instead. Awkward! She was immediately killed for her insubordination. But it was worth it.
So by the time I finished writing this, the total donation amount is currently sitting at over $14,600. It’s astonishing and wonderful.
Well done to Dravvie and her band of helpers for putting on yet another amazing Gnome Run. And well done to the Warcraft community for making it another amazing year.
See you next year!
Well, it took us three weeks, lots of tears, frustration, swearing and hysteria, but we did it – Mythic Gul’dan is defeated! We got our Cutting Edge achievement, and new title Vengeance Incarnate. And my partner, Thor, was very lucky and won the mount (it looks AWESOME!!)
I’m even more excited about this because we came into Nighthold as a new guild. As many of you know, we’d had some dramas with the last guild and it disbanded, leaving everyone to go their separate ways. A bunch of us like-minded types ended up forming a new guild – Pit Crew. And we worked our butts off to recruit like mad and build a great team.
Working on Gu’dan himself was an adventure in patience. We had a lot of PC and internet issues (including my computer absolutely packing it in in the middle of a pull last night), some attendance issues of key players, and a general issue with being numpties sometimes. But we got there. And we got there by one-shotting him on our first pull of the evening tonight! We all were laughing and cheering at the end – it was awesome.
Our clicker hunter (he clicks to play… we’re all baffled, but he does it very well!!) caught it all on stream. You can find Tombstone’s stream at http://twitch.tv/whiteronnie
I’ve uploaded a copy of it to my YouTube channel so you can all see it here. The good bits come in at the end around 12 mins where our rogue starts getting excited and says “Fuck yeah bois! … and girl!” I cracked up. 😀 (please excuse my dodgy attempt at making this presentable for youtube! I have no real editing software for fancy intros and stuff, so just did the best I could.)
We need to get as many people in who missed out on the kill tonight in for it next week so they can also get the achievement.
Anyway, we are all so excited to have gotten him down. Now to start getting ready for Tomb of Sargeras!!
I’ve said quite a few times how wonderful the WoW community can be. From organising fundraisers, to helping each other out, to just being super awesome people. This week I was lucky enough to be the recipient of some generosity from the WoW community.
Coolidge approached me, asking if I’d like him to draw a picture of my character, Cinderstorm. Of course I said yes, please! He was very patient with me, asking what I wanted and if I had any special requests or anything. I just said I wanted FIRE! And boy did he deliver. Check out my cutie!!!!!
Cinderstorm artwork by Coolidge
I love her so much. She’s absolutely adorable. I am so, so grateful!
THANK YOU a million times over to Coolidge for my gorgeous girl. Go check out more of his amazing artwork at DeviantArt, or go visit his twitter and let him know how awesome he is. 🙂
The hunt for a new guild/raid team is still going strong, and I’m not having any luck at all yet (which will be the topic of a future post, I’m sure). However it hasn’t been a complete loss. On Wednesday the ever so delightful Navimie happened to notice my post on the forums about looking for a raid team. She was there looking for numbers for her guild’s mythic runs. Long story short, Navi invited me and Thor to come along to their raid run that night, which we happily accepted!
It was a really fun night, and was a stark reminder of how much I really enjoy raiding. I was so nervous, though. Thor and I figured out that it had been about 4 months since our guild had stopped raiding, so I had the “omg I’m going to fail so bad!” jitters. We ran through on heroic as we didn’t have the numbers for mythic, but that didn’t matter. Navi’s team got to bring along some alts which helped get them some gear which is always helpful. I did a few bosses (including Archimonde!) as elemental, which was terrifying! But I don’t think I was too much of a burden (hopefully!). I was able to heal later on which I was loads more comfortable with. It really confirmed for me that healing is what I love to do, and that’s the role I need to be in for Legion.
I tried to sneak in a few pics of Navi, but they are a very “on the ball” team so I didn’t get much of a chance. Instead, after we were done, Navi came to my garrison for a dance and to get some pics together. And so I was Navispammed!
Thank you to Navi for letting me and Thor tag along to your raid, and for being such a delightful person to know. And for Navispamming me! I feel truly honoured 😀
Feel Good Friday! is a weekly exercise to help bring some positivity in to the gaming community by sharing stories to make people smile. They may be heartwarming or funny stories, tales of your epic kills or something that you’ve found in game – anything that gives you some good vibes.
Feel Good Friday! this week is all about Blizzcon. Well, not specifically about Blizzcon itself, but the people who attended, whether in person or via the Virtual Ticket.
gahhh!!! SO adorable!!!
This was my first proper Blizzcon, even though it was only by Virtual Ticket. Previously I had only really got the Blizzcon info from sites like mmo-champion and wowhead after it had all happened. Which is all well and good, (and they have done a wonderful job again this year, along with Blizzard Watch), but it didn’t really get me too buzzed.
This year, though, I decided a Virtual Ticket was in order. Not just for the Murkadin pet (who is frekaing ADORABLE by the way!!!) but because I wanted to see all of the panels that you can only see with the ticket. I wanted to hear all of the news first hand, and to see the excitement and passion from the Blizzard team themselves. I expected to enjoy watching the videos and hearing the news. What I didn’t expect was to feel like I was almost there thanks to the wonderful WoW twitter community.
I watched the opening ceremony with you all. I was there when our twitter feeds went silent as the Warcraft movie trailer and the Legion trailer played, and then when our feeds exploded in to shouts and woops and tears and excitement once they were finished. I was there when we oohed and ahhed over the beautiful new zones that are coming, and I was there for all the BACON!!!! & transmog tweets. I felt like I was there with you all. Getting to experience that together was really heartwarming. I know it sounds corny and stupid, but it was a really wonderful experience to share that time together, even though we were from all corners of the globe. For last weekend, we were all hanging out together, and it was glorious.
So this week’s Feel Good Friday! is for everyone! All of you who shared the excitement on twitter; all of you who shared their pictures from Blizzcon itself and helped us to feel like we were there; all of the beautiful cosplayers and the photographers who captured their hard word; all of you who worked your bums off so that we could get all the behind the scenes or non-Virtual ticket content; and to Blizzard themselves for working so hard to pull it all together. I had an amazing weekend, and look forward to Blizzcon 2016.
Thanks everyone! ❤
If you have a story you’d like to share that made you feel good, share it below in the comments! Or drop me an email at [cinder (at) cindersays (dot) net] and I’ll feature it in a future Feel Good Friday post. It doesn’t have to be a World of Warcraft story – it can be from any game at all. And it doesn’t have to be long – it can be a short message if you like. Just something that brings some positivity back to the gaming community.
Feel Good Friday! is a weekly exercise to help bring some positivity in to the gaming community by sharing stories to make people smile. They may be heartwarming or funny stories, tales of your epic kills or something that you’ve found in game – anything that gives you some good vibes.
Gnome run 2k15
Never have I seen such maniacal bubble blowing!
This year I was fortunate enough to catch the info that the annual Gnome Run was happening on Sunday October 25th (in Australia! Everywhere else it was on Saturday October 24th). The event is set up to raise funds for the Cleveland Clinic’s Tuohy Vaccine research program for a vaccine for breast cancer in adults. A very worthy cause.
I set my alarm to make sure I wouldn’t miss it, and made myself an adorable (if a bit unhinged) gnome for the journey a few days before to make sure I was ready. Tip for future gnome runners: Make your gnome before the day, and post them an Illustrious Guild Tabard or a Renowned Guild Tabard. These are both bind on account, so you can purchase them on a toon who has the gold (and the rep) and send it over. There is a mailbox at the starting room so you can get it straight away.
On Sunday morning after finding a new home for a certain pony, I headed over to the Scarlet Crusade server 2 hours early to see if anyone was there. Already at that time the place was packed full of little pink haired gnomes jumping about the place. I was immediately invited in to one of the guilds, so my tabard changed to a bright pink. I was following what was happening on twitter and I could see that a few people, like myself, were quite early, but they were all hanging out outside. So I decided to do the handful of quests to get out of the starting area (you don’t have to complete the quests – it was just fun to).
Once outside I could see a lot more people – lots of fun toys were out, like bubble wands and rings and what not. And all the crimson spores! Turns out they’re more pink than crimson, so they were a popular pet choice for the run. I decided to go with my Terrible Turnip for something different. I ran around trying to find people I might know, and eventually ran in to Thor (my bf) who has snuck on without me noticing (which is a pretty poor effort on my part given we’re barely half a meter apart and in the same room…)
Me and Thor accurately represented as gnomes!
Eventually I found Spankyhunter and MsMiggi and joined their lovely group. Here we are posing before the run:
Spankyhunter, MsMiggi and me
We were also joined by Moogyver and Wingthequick. I was so grateful to be grouped up with them because I had absolutely no idea where I was going!
I saw in chat that Elvine was streaming the event, so I booted up my other computer to watch it at the same time. I’m glad I did, because it helped with knowing where to go and what was happening.
Then, it was time. The call was given, and our little gnome legs were off! Of course, as soon as we started running everyone disappeared. It felt like I was running all by myself. I tried to keep track of where to go by following Elvine’s stream.
I made it to Iron Forge in one piece and got on a tram with hundreds of other pink-haired runners.
Pink tram ride!
We all stopped at the front gates of Stormwind to give everyone a chance to catch up. Because there were so many of us on at a time, the servers were struggling. Some people (including myself a couple of times!) kept getting rubber-banded back to the start. Then we were off again. Our little group stopped to take some pics
MsMiggi, Spankyhunter, Moogyver, WingtheQuick and me!
We stopped very quickly in Darkshire then headed off again for the last dash to Booty Bay. Unfortunately the sheer load of gnomes running the Eastern Kingdoms was too much for the server and it all went down. Thankfully Blizzard were on to it and we were back up and running again (even if it was from Darkshire again!)
Eventually we made it. I missed the picture of the heart, which was a shame, but you can check out some pics on the official Gnome Run 2k15 tumblr site here.
In Booty Bay I managed to catch up with fellow guildie, Neuroscience! Neither of us look happy about being in the water…
Swimming in Booty Bay with gnome-Neuro
With the run officially over, the only thing left to do was to make a wild dash to Orgrimmar to lick Vol’Jin. So off we all went. It was hilarious seeing some many pink haired gnomes get on to the boat.
All aboard!
When I arrived in Kalimdor I got a whisper from Disneygirl85 who was with the lovely Ottahz (EJ from Girls Gone WoW) and they were just about to arrive. So I hung around to get a picture with these two lovely ladies…
Disneygirl85, me and Ottahz!
We then made our mad dash to Orgrimmar in the hopes of licking Vol’Jin. I failed… miserably…
poor dead gnomie
The reason I wanted to highlight this for Feel Good Friday! is not just because it was fun, but because it was a wonderful experience that we got to have as a group, and for a good cause. The event ended up having almost 2500 attendees! And has raised over $4000 (so far!) which is more than double the goal for the year. It gave me all the warm tummies being a part of it, and getting to “meet” some of the lovely people I interact with each day on twitter was wonderful. I love seeing the great things this community can do together.
There are a load more pictures in my gallery below to check out. Elvine has a video of his stream from the day which you can check out, and there’s another great one here, too. Visit the official Facebook page for running totals on the fundraising. Speaking of, it’s not too late to donate! If you want to make a donation, please do! Every little bit will help. You can make your donation on the Cleveland Clinic website.
It was a really wonderful even to share with so many people. I’ll definitely be doing it again next year!
If you have a story you’d like to share that made you feel good, share it below in the comments! Or drop me an email at [cinder (at) cindersays (dot) net] and I’ll feature it in a future Feel Good Friday post. It doesn’t have to be a World of Warcraft story – it can be from any game at all. And it doesn’t have to be long – it can be a short message if you like. Just something that brings some positivity back to the gaming community.
Feel Good Friday! is a weekly exercise to help bring some positivity in to the gaming community by sharing stories to make people smile. They may be heartwarming or funny stories, tales of your epic kills or something that you’ve found in game – anything that gives you some good vibes.
I will admit, I need Feel Good Friday this week. As many of you are aware, Blizzard announced some new stuff coming in 6.2.3 and unfortunately a large – or rather, a very LOUD – portion of people on my twitter timeline are not finding anything positive to say about it. Which can be a total downer. Yes, there are things that are disappointing, but there’s also a lot to be excited about (which I’ve tried my best to articulate in an earlier post.) Unfortunately not a lot of people are talking about that.
Which leads me to today writing this post and trying to find some good vibes in a sea of negativity. I got to thinking about the blogs I read and the podcasts I listen to and I felt good again. Because even when I feel rubbish, and even when there aren’t a lot of positive vibes out there, the ladies at Girls Gone WoW still make me laugh, and still find a way to find the good in what’s happening in WoW and the people who play it. So this post is dedicated to them.
Hosts EJ and Raven are beautiful human beings who make me laugh every.single.week without fail. They really value their listeners and engage with us all by sharing our stories and voicemail messages (no matter how sleepy we are when we record them!). They celebrate our triumphs and commiserate the low points. They talk about the WoW news and yes sometimes there are negative things to say, but they don’t dwell on them the way some other podcasts do. They find the positives and move on. Because this is a game we love, so why focus on the bad stuff?
Girls Gone WoW is celebrating their 200th episode in a couple of weeks! Which is very exciting for them. For their 200th episode EJ and Raven have asked listeners to send in questions for each to ask the other person. If you’d like to contribute a question for the show, get in touch with them. I’ve got a big list piled up in preparation. There may be zombies involved…
In the meantime, thank you EJ and Raven for being a ray of positivity for the Warcraft community. 🙂
If you have a story you’d like to share that made you feel good, share it below in the comments! Or drop me an email at [cinder (at) cindersays (dot) net] and I’ll feature it in a future Feel Good Friday post. It doesn’t have to be a World of Warcraft story – it can be from any game at all. And it doesn’t have to be long – it can be a short message if you like. Just something that brings some positivity back to the gaming community.
Feel Good Friday! is a weekly exercise to help bring some positivity in to the gaming community by sharing stories to make people smile. They may be heartwarming or funny stories, tales of your epic kills or something that you’ve found in game – anything that gives you some good vibes.
For this week’s Feel Good Friday! I wanted to draw everyone’s attention to a fabulous initiative on twitter – #WarcraftPositivity. It was created by Roxiqt and Nyn to get people sharing their positive Warcraft experiences. Roxi talks about creating it on her blog here and shares some of her top 10 (at the time!) Roxi also talks about #WarcraftPositivity as a guest on this episode of The Worgen’s Howl podcast (which is a new podcast to add to my listening list!).
I love going through and reading the positive messages from people! Here are a couple of recent favourites:
To share the love, tweet your positive Warcraft stories and just add #WarcraftPositivity.
If you have a story you’d like to share that made you feel good, share it below in the comments! Or drop me an email at [cinder (at) cindersays (dot) net] and I’ll feature it in a future Feel Good Friday post. It doesn’t have to be a World of Warcraft story – it can be from any game at all. And it doesn’t have to be long – it can be a short message if you like. Just something that brings some positivity back to the gaming community.
Feel Good Friday! is a weekly exercise to help bring some positivity in to the gaming community by sharing stories to make people smile. They may be heartwarming or funny stories, tales of your epic kills or something that you’ve found in game – anything that gives you some good vibes.
This weeks’ Feel Good Friday story comes from Thor (who happens to be my bf). It’s a video of his first Heroic Lei Shen kill, and is fantastic to watch. For a bit of background – Thor was a monk tank (a very overpowered monk tank!) in this video. He and his team had been at it for a long time (as you generally are with the “last” boss) and were keen to get him down so they could see the Ra-Den fight. Check out the video below to see their kill. The nerd screams and professions of love at the end always make me grin! Enjoy!
Note: there is mature language in this video.
If you have a story you’d like to share that made you feel good, share it below in the comments! Or drop me an email at [cinder (at) cindersays (dot) net] and I’ll feature it in a future Feel Good Friday post. It doesn’t have to be a World of Warcraft story – it can be from any game at all. And it doesn’t have to be long – it can be a short message if you like. Just something that brings some positivity back to the gaming community.
I’ve seen a lot of people in the WoW community (particularly on twitter and in some podcasts) go out of their way to bring some positivity back in to what can sometimes be seen as a negative place. I wanted to contribute to that positive vibe, and so I have decided to start a tradition – Feel Good Friday! Every Friday I’ll be sharing a gaming story that (hopefully!) brings a smile to your face. The stories might be funny or heartwarming or just a little bit silly, and hopefully will give you some nice fuzzies.
But I don’t want it to just be my stories – I’d love to hear stories from all of you! If you have a story you’d like to share that made you feel good, share it below in the comments! Or drop me an email at [cinder (at) cindersays (dot) net] and I’ll add it. It doesn’t have to be a World of Warcraft story – it can be from any game at all. And it doesn’t have to be long – it can be a short message if you like. Just something that brings some positivity back to the gaming community.
I hope you enjoy!
So, for the first Feel Good Friday, I wanted to share one of the first lovely experiences I had when I started playing World of Warcraft.
I was in Dragon Soul in one of the first LFR raids I had ever done. I was very shiny and new , and worst of all, I was a healer. I didn’t have a lot of gear, and my weapon was terrible. But I did the best that I could and must have managed to keep everyone alive well enough because I didn’t get kicked from the group!
Then we got to Madness of Deathwing – the last fight in Dragon Soul. This was the fight I was most nervous about because it looked pretty scary to me. But most of all, it dropped the weapon I so desperately needed – the Maw of the Dragonlord. (Which I very stupidly kept referring to as the Dragon Maw!!) I don’t remember how many times we wiped, and I don’t remember how well I did. But I remember that we finally defeated Deathwing, and in the loot cache was the weapon I so desperately I wanted. I was so excited because there were only a handful of healers in the group, and surely they already had better pieces than me?
Now for those of you who remember, LFR loot back then was need before greed, and it didn’t matter what spec you were rolling for – if your class could use that weapon you could roll for it. So a lot of people ended up rolling for the weapon. I sat there waiting patiently for the rolls to come in, and was heartbroken to see that the weapon ended up being won by the paladin tank. I was pretty disappointed, but hey, fair is fair and if a tank thought he needed an intellect based weapon then he probably needed it for offspec and that was ok.
I stood around on the rocky platform feeling a bit miserable, but happily checking out all the scenary, when next thing a trade window pops up on my screen. In the trade window was the Maw. I turned to my boyfriend to ask what was happening – what was the tank doing? My bf said that the tank probably wanted to give it to me. I was in shock. I whispered to the tank “Are you sure? Don’t you need it?” to which he replied “Not at all. I rolled on it so I could give it to someone who actually did need it.” I was overwhelmed by his kindness. I accepted the trade, and thanked him a million times over. And then I ran around the house chanting “I got the Dragon Maw!! I got the Dragon Maw!!”
It was a wonderful act of generosity that I still remember to this day, and one that I have been fortunate enough to experience quite a few times in my WoW playing days.
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