Category: Latest blog posts
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September bujo spread
I learned a lot from my August bullet journal spread… and I’m so pleased with how September has come together!
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Blaugust 2022 – 17 – tarot tales
Tarot for me isn’t about ‘predicting the future’… I use it for reflection and clarity, creative inspiration, and a wee bit of therapy.
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Blaugust 2022 – 16 – Dragonflight Alpha
You wouldn’t think it seeing my blog, but I’ve actually had access to Dragonflight Alpha for quite a few weeks.
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Blaugust 2022 – 15 – resting witch face
I believe a person’s beliefs are theirs to have, and if they don’t harm anyone else (or themselves) than I don’t care what you do to get through your days.
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Blaugust 2022 – 14 – BuJo supplies
I promised in my earlier BuJo post that I would share some of the stationery I purchased to set up my bullet journal. Well, here is that post!
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Blaugust 2022 – 12 – weekend update
This weekend was yet another working weekend, BUT I think it should be the last one.
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Blaugust 2022 – 11 – Complete Failure
There’s a reason why I hate New Year’s resolutions, and why the word ‘goals’ sends shivers down my spine.
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Blaugust 2022 – 9 – Tilly’s Tucker Time
You know how some cats can see a bowl of food and just spend the day grazing whenever they feel hungry? Our cat, Tilly, is…. not like that.
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Blaugust 2022 – 7 – work work work work work
As the title points out, I spent this weekend working. Not exactly how I’d normally choose to spend my weekends, but such as it is…
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Blaugust 2022 – 5 – A day in pictures
Today we went into the city… Rather than write about the day, I decided to share it in pictures.
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Blaugust 2022 – 3 – Raiding with the Silverbacks
Season 4 brings new affixes and a new mythic raid team!
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On reflection
For a little while now I’ve been feeling myself drifting further and further away from World of Warcraft and the community. I can’t pinpoint the moment I started shifting, but I find myself now feeling oddly separated from everything. It’s like I went to a party and was having a great time, laughing and dancing…
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General Shadowlands addons
Continuing on the theme of addons, in this post I’ll be going through some of my favourite WoW addons, what they do and where you can get them. (If you’re after raiding addons, check out my last post here for my favs.) These aren’t in any particular order – pretty much just the order in…
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My raiding UI and addons
I’ve had a few requests over the past couple of weeks for info about what I’m using for my healing UI and addons. There are quite a few, so I thought it would be easier to run through them all here. I will say up front – healer UIs tend to be very personal. I…
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Covenants & Soulbinds & Conduits – oh my!
My (current) thoughts on the covenants, soulbinds and conduits proposed for Shadowlands.
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Animal Crossing is making me mean, and I don’t like it
Anyone who has been following my twitter account the past couple of months will have seen that I’ve gone bonkers for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. My partner, Thor, will gleefully recount how, when the game was first released and we were deciding to buy it, I spent a lot of time “ummm-ing” and “ehhhh-ing” over…
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When you don’t know what to say
It’s been hard to write, hard to share, hard to breathe this year. But what is most important in all of this, is knowing that – especially now – I’m not the focus here.
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Looking back on Battle for Azeroth – Azerite, Essences & Gear
With BfA coming to end, I’m having a look at what worked and what didn’t (for me!) when it came to gearing up.
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Cinder & Thor in the USA – Blizzcon part 2 – Blizzcon Day 1!
By golly I’m so behind on these. We are finally up to the good stuff, though! Actual Blizzcon! Our Blizzcon adventures actually started the day before, on the Thursday before we headed off to Disneyland, where we got up a bit earlier to line up for our passes. This was our first real feeling of…
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Someone like you
In a game that I dive in to to escape from the world, I found I wasn’t able to fully escape because I just kept seeing parts of myself in it.
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CINDER & THOR IN THE USA – BlizzCon part 1 – Con Before the Storm
Every year around Blizzcon time I’d hear that the only thing that comes close to Blizzcon awesomeness is the parties held in the lead up to Blizzcon. My twitter would be filled with people seeing their friends and/or people they’ve been following on socials just hanging out have a great time being nerds together. Last…
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Cinder & Thor in the USA -Disneyland Part 1 – Halloween
Halloween! And what better place to spend it than at the happiest place on earth – Disneyland! Disneyland was at the top of Thor’s list of things to do while we were in the USA. He’s a big Mickey Mouse fan, so of course we had to go. Personally, I was just curious more than…
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Cinder & Thor in the USA – Blizzard HQ
There were so many things I was looking forward to about this trip, but one of the things that was right at the top of that list was getting to visit Blizzard HQ…
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Cinder & Thor in the USA – Getting there & settling down
We ended up packing our suitcases a few times to help shuffle the weight around. We had a few big boxes of gifts to give to people while we were in the USA, and then of course we needed to pack clothes, which was interesting because we needed to pack for potentially hot California and…
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Cinder & Thor in the USA
It’s hard to believe that we’ve been back from our trip for coming up to two weeks now. It feels simultaneously like a lifetime ago, but also just yesterday. But that’s usually how it goes when you have fantastic experiences. Over the coming days/weeks I’ll be sharing our stories and, of course, LOADS of pictures,…
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Stories to come!!
I had hoped to have written about some of our adventures to California and BlizzCon by now, but of course I got sick on the flight home and I’ve just been absolutely wrecked. So I haven’t been able to go through the thousands (genuinely 2500+!!!!) of photos from the trip to pic some favs. And…
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2 weeks to go and the panic is setting in…
It’s amazing how fast time passes. Last time I posted about Blizzcon we were just over 2 months out. Now, it’s 2 weeks and 12 hours before we get on a plane bound for LA. The anxiety about it all has well and truly set in – and blimey is my brain good at freaking…
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66 days
I looked at the date today and realised that it’s just over 2 months until we head off to LA for Blizzcon and I am FREAKING OUT. I have done nothing more for our trip since initially booking flights months ago other than thinking a lot about it. Not acting on anything, just thinking about…
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Who’s getting stabbed in the back tomorrow?
Tomorrow the gates of Azshara’s fabulous Eternal Palace open, giving us a brand new raid, with loads of new boss butts to kick. And with it (hopefully) will come some answers as to the next part of the Battle for Azeroth story. I for one am so pumped for this! I have some ideas about…
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The devil’s in the details
Can’t I just go back to a week ago, when I was ignorant? Please? It was more fun then.
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The stupid is strong in this one…
Oh lordy. I’ve been quite sick all week this week. It’s just a cold, but it’s been a big one. I’ve been off work for almost the whole week (thankfully being able to work from home), and am still recovering now (I sound like a hag! It’s actually kinda funny lol) Despite being quite ill…
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Beat it
I think I need to learn to stop making plans. I’m never good at keeping them. Although this time it was less my doing, and more things happening to me that changed my plans. I had planned on spending a lot more time in the WoW Classic Beta over the past few weeks. Instead, I’ve…
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Classic adventures
Last week I was fortunate to learn that I had been granted access to the World of Warcraft Classic Beta servers. Anyone who’s followed my blog knows I’m a bit of a nerd, and a big part of me loves to contribute to these early access servers. I like feeling like I’ve helped contribute in…
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Avengers and Blizzcon and Harry Potter – oh my!
Note: there are no spoilers in this post for Avengers: Endgame or Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This is a safe space! What a week it has been! With all the public holidays happening over Easter and ANZAC day, I decided to fill in the blanks with personal leave to get 10 days off…
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Sometimes raiding is hysterical (raiding outtakes)
We’ve been progressing on mythic Jaina for 2 weeks now. We’re at 200 pulls and seeing third phase, so we’re actually doing pretty well in comparison to some other guilds. But it is a hard slog, without a doubt. So it’s probably no surprise when I say that sometimes we get a little silly. Tonight…
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Bye Bye, Pandaren
Tomorrow patch 8.1.5 arrives in World of Warcraft, and with it comes the much-anticipated allied races of Kul’Tiran humans and Zandalari trolls (along with a WHOLE bunch of awesome content!) I am beyond excited (as usual) for new WoW content. But I will admit I’m feeling bittersweet. Since I first learned of the Kul’Tirans being…
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Come together
Warning – this post contains reference to sensitive content involving abuse and situations involving children. Please proceed with caution. I’m a bit quieter than usual this month as I am spending the vast majority of it interstate for work. I was hoping that I would have some time to finish off some posts before I left, but as is usually the case, I didn’t really get enough time before…
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Children of the sea
It seems the Warcraft development team are back at work, because this week the first official Patch 8.1.5 PTR went up. And there’s a lot of great stuff in there. As usual, Wowhead are going through and presenting us with a peek at what’s to come (and doing a darn good job of it, too!)…
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The goal for 2019
It is New Year’s Eve. 2019 is on the other side of this day, and as is customary, people are making resolutions in the hopes of making the most of the year to come. I am one of those people. 2018 was a pretty ok year for me. It was tough, but I won’t complain.…
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Tying a bow on 2018
Another year is coming to a close. It’s always a time for us to look back and reflect on the year, to celebrate our achievements and say goodbye to perhaps some of the sadder moments that have happened. For this post, I’m going to take a look back at my 2018 bucket list to see…
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Merry 2018!
Wishing everyone a very happy holidays! I hope your days are filled with happy hearts and happy tummies. ❤ Thank you to all of you for simply just being here; for reading my blog or liking my tweets, watching my streams or listening to my podcast, or just generally being an amazing person to know.…
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A quick catchup
It seems to be that the more adamant I am about writing more, the less I do it. It’s like the universe listens to my plans and says “Nup! Not today!” and I get ridiculously busy. Which is how I find myself in the middle of December all of a sudden. When did that happen?!…
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Happy 14th birthday, WoW!
Today marks the first day of a 2 week event to help celebrate World of Warcraft’s 14th birthday. As has become tradition, upon logging in today I received a gift form the Dev team, consisting of a ‘thank you’ message, a reputation & experience game token, and 200 time warped badges to spend on whatever…
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On the move
It’s been 2 lockouts since Realm disbanded. It’s been weird not raiding. I played a whooole lot less. The break was nice in a way, but to be honest one of the main reasons I wasn’t playing as much because there just wasn’t anyone else around. It got very lonely very quickly, and it was…
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A new Cinder
I’ve been working hard since my last post to set everything up for me to get a bit braver and be more serious about my streaming. Like I mentioned in that post, I’m going to start streaming some non-WoW content. Because of this, I’ve made the decision to move away from having my pandaren shaman…
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The anxiety and the guild crash… and what’s next
It’s been hard to start this post. Or any other blog post for that matter, if I’m being completely honest. But this one, I don’t really know how to start. I know the things I have to say, but putting them in order is proving difficult. So how about we make a deal and pretend…
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Challenge 40: Getting to know you…
Topic 40 of Z and I’s fortnightly blog challenge is all about getting to know the people behind the blogs. As usual, I’m late with my post, but better late than never! So! Here are a bunch of random facts about me! 1. How do you drink your tea? I like English Breakfast tea, a…
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The un-break-up
Those of you who follow my twitter account will have seen that this past week was quite the rollercoaster. I’m personally still reeling a little bit from everything that happened (though I am overly dramatic, I know). On Wednesday, Realm as a guild ended. And then on Thursday, it didn’t. Confused? Well, it will make…
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The happiest place on Azeroth
This long weekend I said to myself that I would take things a bit easier, and get back to just enjoying WoW. Yeah, there are things I definitely need to do, but my goal for the weekend is just to make sure that I’m doing the things I love. Like explore and finish obscure achievements…
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My BfA levelling adventure
How has it been a month since Battle for Azeroth launched? Holy moly time passes quickly. I suppose a bit part of that is about how completely flat out I’ve been in game. Which leads me in to the topic of this post, and the last Blog Challenge topic (I know I’m late!!) How do…
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Realm takes on Uldir
Last night, the first raid of Battle for Azeroth opened. Uldir is here! It’s a great looking raid. But more on that in a moment. Before we headed off, I wanted to get a team picture of our starting team for the expansion (and thankfully my GM entertains my annoying screenshot-taking habits!). So we all…
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Topic 37: First impressions of Battle for Azeroth in pictures
Ok, ok I’m late for my own blog challenge. Oops! For topic 37 we are sharing our first impressions of Battle for Azeroth in pictures. The challenge was 5 pictures… look, no-one thought I’d actually do just 5, right? I think I’ve done well to get it to 6, but boy have I ignored some…
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Topic 36: Farewell to Legion
It’s been awhile since I’ve participated in one of these challenges (which is pretty hilarious given I’m one half of the team that runs these things… ) I’m aiming to do better with these challenges, though, so here I am. I chose this topic for the challenge because I wanted to see some more positive…
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The night before Teldrassil burns…
It’s the eve of what is bound to be an incredible emotional day for many Alliance players (and maybe even some unsure Horde, too…). Tomorrow, Teldrassil burns. I’ve managed to keep the story of how and why Teldrassil burns a secret- I’ve successfully avoided it in the beta and all the website, and I’m so…
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Pre-patch makeover
I really love a new pre-patch. There’s something about it that makes me feel like I’ve got a clean slate. It’s a new beginning which means new opportunities to kick butt in game and have new adventures. It’s also an opportunity to have a bit of a spring clean and a makeover, which is exactly…
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Hope in Before the Storm
Every time I think about the book, I keep thinking about hope, and what it means to lose it. And what becomes of the person who does.
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Raiding with Realm
I’ve been wanting to do something for my guild for quite some time. I’ve grown so fond of my guildies, and I wanted to say thank you.
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Titanslayer, btw
Well, we have officially “finished” Legion. Last weekend our guild finally killed mythic Argus, giving us the Cutting Edge achievement. It took over 600 pulls and countless frustrations, but we made it. We are now Titanslayers (a title we now use to brush off dozens of wipes during re-clear…) I’m proud of our team, though. Even…
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A peek at Cinder’s world
Well hi there, friends. Today I wanted to take on a little peak behind the curtain, and show you where I am when I’m writing/streaming/talking to you all. It’s take awhile… in fact, it’s take the whole time we’ve lived in this apartment, so about 4 years? But finally – FINALLY I have all my…
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Class mounts – complete!
It has been a very long time coming (thanks my slow-ass levelling skills) but this weekend I finally finished collecting all of the class mounts. I’m officially finished!
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The last of the journey to Lord of the Reins
What a big weekend! Achievements and mounts and pets – it all happened! ~*~*~*~Note there are some class campaign and class mount story spoilers in this post for Death Knight and Rogue.~*~*~*~ This weekend I managed to tick of a lot of things from my bucket list, and even a few that weren’t there. First up, my…
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Uuna <3
One of the more recent secrets discovered by the amazing Secret Finding Discord is a story line involving a pet from Argus named Uuna. Instead of giving a mount or a pet or achievement, this quest line is simply story. Utterly gut wrenching, heart breaking story. It’s beautiful and tragic and hopeful and perfect. Here’s…
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Chosen
For the past few weeks/months a few people in guild have been trying to get a group together to work on getting The Chosen achievement. For this achievement, you need to complete the Trial of Valor on mythic difficulty without dying. That is, defeating Odyn, Guarm and Helya on mythic, and still being alive at…
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BfA Alpha Elemental Shaman thoughts (so far!) ~*SPOILERS*~
~*This post contains pictures and information relating to the Battle for Azeroth Alpha. If you don’t want to know or see anything relating to Alpha, please turn away now~* EDIT: MArch 16 – a new build went up last night with a couple of changes that will hopefully address some points below, so expect a…
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Rainbow bright
I’m not very good at saving money in real life, but I’m a little better at it in WoW (mostly because we don’t have to pay rent or anything in game hehe). I’m not the greatest at making gold at all; I don’t have the time or the patience. But I do make enough to…
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What to do in 2018
2018 is a big year for many reasons. The most obvious being that World of Warcraft’s next expansion, Battle for Azeroth will be coming out. awww yeah!
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The catch-up
It’s been awhile, so I thought I’d best do a catch-up post to let you know what I’ve been up to and what I have planned.
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Malfurion and Tyrande can get stuffed
Before Legion, I hadn’t really given Malfurion and Tyrande much thought other than Tyrande’s dress is super pretty, and Malfurion sleeps an awful lot…
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Raiding and streaming and healing, oh my!
I mentioned in my 2017 wrap up post that raiding had gone a bit weird for awhile with yet another guild disruption and shifting and all that. I’m not going to dwell on it- the past is in the past. And since Antorus opened, I’ve been trying to keep a positive attitude towards everything, because…
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Corrupted Ashbringer
~*~*~*~*~ This post contains spoilers for collecting the Retribution Paladin hidden appearance ~*~*~*~*~ During the Christmas break I had made the decision to get the Corrupted Ashbringer skin for my retribution paladin artifact (the hidden appearance). I looked up on wowhead what I needed to do. I knew it was quite a detailed expedition, so was…
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The quest for a hunter’s mount
~*~*~* This post contains spoilers for the Hunter class mount quest chain.~*~*~* One of my ongoing goals in game to have completed before the next expansion is to get all of the class mounts. I’ve been slowly but steadily making my way through levelling each class, then getting their mount/s. Today, I unlocked another, my…
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My 2017 in pictures
Part two of Topic 29: the 2017 wrap-up double challenge bonanza! The second challenge topic we had for December, to help wrap up the year, was to show one favourite screenshot for each month. I like this challenge, because I love taking screenshots (I have almost 3000 just from this year alone!!!) but boy is it…
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A look back at what was in the bucket of 2017
We’ve put up two challenges for the rest of December over at Z and Cinder’s Blog Challenge. Partly because we couldn’t decide what order to post them in, and partly (ok mostly!) because we’re just so busy these days that we didn’t want to miss the topics entirely because somehow 2 weeks passed by and…
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There is only one word- EPIC
~*~*~*~*~SPOILERS AHEAD!! This post contains images and discussion about bosses in the new Antorus raid. If you do not want to know anything about this raid, please turn back now. ~*~*~*~*~ Anyone who has been reading my blog for awhile that I love a new raid. There’s always something so exciting about it. There’s a buzz that…
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It’s not a surprise many are disappointed about the Battle for Azeroth announcement…
Blizzcon 2017 was wrapping up when I first starting to type this (it’s now a couple of days later!). Like every other year there were loads of announcements and competitions and game finals and cosplay and so, SO much love shown in the faces in the audience and online. It has been a great year,…
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Z and Cinder’s Blog Challenge Topic 27: Where do I find the time?
Topic 27 of Z & Cinder’s blog challenge is a personal one for me, so I was curious to see if other people struggled with time as I do. So far, it has been nice to see that I’m not alone. The topic asks: How do you balance playing WoW with the real life commitments…
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By the light!
The alt that I have been working on lately has been my priest. I’ve never been very good at being a priest. Shadow just doesn’t mesh well with me, and I didn’t really like holy last time I tried it either. Same for Discipline, really. But I *really* wanted the priest class mount. And the…
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The little run that could
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…
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Mythic not-so-sassypants-anymore!
We did it! After all the dramas we have gone through as a team over the past couple of months; after losing so many players and recruiting and trialling others, we are finally at a point where, not only have we defeated all the mythic bosses we had killed before, but we have now got…
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Now scheduling: Blizzcon hype
I’m currently in the middle of a different post, but I saw that the Blizzcon2017 schedule was released today and just had to squee about it for awhile! Seriously, the hype is oh so real. Blizzcon this year looks AMAZING. There are so many panels that I’m planning to watch, that I don’t know if…
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It’s about time!
Oh my goodness what a month this has been! Back at the end of August when I finally made the decision to move my blog to somewhere more permanent, I had no idea how long it would be until my blog was safely in place and available to post to. I expected a weekend of…
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Hello!
Hello! I’m Cinder. It looks like you’ve stumbled across my little corner of the internet. Here you’ll find my adventures in gaming, particularly World of Warcraft. Check out my blog to read about what I’ve been up to lately.
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Moving
Hey guys just a quick heads up. I’m making some changes to my website over the coming days/weeks, so things might look a bit weird around here… hopefully I shouldn’t break anything!! But don’t freak out if I do, or if things look strange or broken or whatever. I’ll get it right at some point!…
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Trial of Style – Cinder’s tips!
This week one of the most anticipated micro-holidays finally rolled around- the Trial of Style. A micro-holiday all about transmog!!! It really is a lot of fun. It does help to go in prepared, so I thought I’d give those who haven’t had a go yet a quick run down of what to expect, and…
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Z and Cinder’s Blog Challenge Topic 23: Why do I blog about WoW?
Hey, what a surprise, I’m behind on posting responses to our blog challenges! That is so unlike me! 😉 Clearly I have a lot of catching up to do, and rather than starting at where I last left off, I’m just going to go in any darn order that pleases me. So, Topic 23 asked why…
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Look to the skies
~*~*~*~*~ Potential spoilers ahead.~*~*~*~*~ EDIT: adding more pics of little things like this as I find them. See them at the bottom of the post. This latest reset has seen a few new things appear in game. For those who have not yet killed Kil’Jaeden on Normal or higher difficulty, the skies would have been…
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Art featuring Cinder
Over the years I’ve been very fortunate to collect a number of beautiful pieces of artwork featuring Cinderstorm.
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Here comes the sun…darter hatchling
So the secret finding community has been at it again, and with the launch of 7.2.5 they discovered how to get the gorgeous Sun Darter Hatchling pet. It’s quite the puzzle, and incredible of them to have figured it out!
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Mythic Gul’doooowwwwwwwn!!!!
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.
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Sunday suckfest
I’ve spent a bit of time this weekend attempting the mage tower artifact challenge yet again. I put in about an hour or 2 each time the tower is up in an attempt to get the artifact appearance that I have been wanting since I first saw it on beta. This weekend I got the…
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Z and Cinder’s Blog Challenge Topic 17: Playing dress-ups
Anyone who knows me knows that I love collecting transmog pieces.
cinder says 