Get the costumes ready for Blizzcon 2014.

Much to my dismay, Blizzard announced Blizzcon 2014, which I'm sure will be fun and games for all involved, but it also means that this expansion is probably not coming out until around Christmas. T_T I'm going to have to pace my QQ a bit better since there are many more months of class changes and reworking of those changes about which I must throw up my arms in incredulity every time someone datamines a grammar edit on a tooltip.

However, as my new guild schedules a major get-together every year that coincides with Blizzcon, I am actually planning on going this year. Stay tuned to see if I manage to get tickets with the new "Walmart on Black Friday" sale system and get to hang out with the crew that proudly brings you priceless content like this:

-Avia.

Putting a little extra effort into your AFK

Parking one's main in the middle of a capital city with all of its raid gear on has been the traditional way to idle since Vanilla, but today I am going to divulge my very secret favorite spots to semi-AFK while waiting in a DPS queue or watching Netflix. I encourage everyone to explore Azeroth in a similar fashion so they can find their ideal home bases that satisfy various individual needs and make their guilds wonder why they are always sitting in the middle of nowhere. Plus, I don't need everyone cramping my spots.

1. Right outside of Shrine

Nothing beats Shrine for meeting all the necessary criteria like city portals, banking, and vendors. However, there's also that annoying trade chat, and I don't need to be lowering my IQ with idiotic arguments and anal chat all day. Thus, here is my favorite place to idle: the now sha-corrupted lake with the forlorn crab right outside of the two Shrines. All the convenience of a capital city is a short flight away whenever I need to find a group hire a crafter check on idiotic arguments, and in the meantime, I can enjoy the relative quiet of my perch like retreating to a suburb on the outskirts of a metropolis.

2. Sunsong Ranch

I did buy it from Farmer Yoon, after all, so it's technically my house. Where else in the world (of Warcraft) can one say that? As a hero of the Alliance, I spend most of my time raiding dangerous dungeons or setting up in inns and sleeping in beds that thousands of warriors have slept in before, and who knows how often they change the sheets? But Tina Mudclaw comes by the ranch house every once in a while to sweep the floor and feed the pigs, and I can relax on MY own personal bed and pet MY unnamed dog while watching the fireflies on MY table. It's enough to make me want to sell my imaginary RP house in South Desolace; that goblin caravan hates delivering supplies to my demon-infested part of the neighborhood.

3. Pride Rock

4. Moonglade

Especially confusing if I'm not on my druid, even the lowbies that randomly stumble upon this zone because they got lost on the way to Winterspring are surprised that I'm there moonbathing by the lake.

Level 45 rogue: What do I do here?
Me, meditating at Lake Elune'ara: Nothing.
Level 45 rogue: No, seriously. Is there a quest?
Me, the serene hermit: Continue on, my son. This is not the place you seek.

5. Guard duty in various low-level zones

If a full set of heroic raid gear is going to be good for anything, it's definitely world PVP, and as anyone who has leveled with CRZ knows, both the Alliance and Horde are rife with rogue soldiers going on killing sprees of quest-giving civilians in towns 70 levels beneath them. Do not fear, citizens, for if I'm going to idle in one place, it might as well be in the skies over Darkshire, ready to swoop down on any unsuspecting no-lifer with nothing to do while their arena partner is out getting laid. Sure, you still have to wait for your NPCs to respawn, but with any hope, my massive epeen will have shot demonic flames so violently that it burned their tiny giblets into fel dust that I can use to power my warlock rituals, and they will crawl away back to Orgrimmar whimpering and holding their singed groins.

As long as they're as terrible at PVP as I am.

-Avia.

Let's talk alpha notes.

It's an exciting time right now because of Warlords of Draenor alpha notes. There is plenty of speculation, badgering of devs' Twitters, and crying about precious removed spells. That doesn't mean I'm not crying, because I definitely am. However, in RP Your Life! fashion, let's take a step back and look at the trends that these changes are indicating for the development of WoD.

- It now takes a lunch break to read mage talents.

- Healers are panicking about Cata-style healing when it was AWESOME.

In the Convert to Raid and FinalBossTV interviews, Celestalon assured healers that healing in WoD would not become the fight against OOMing that it was in Cata, but that period of time when healers had to think about which spell to use, not only to match the situation but to also preserve their mana, was the most engaging. The WoD movement away from critical burst healing back to triage seems like the perfect opportunity to bring that cerebral kind of healing back, but it's not looking like they're willing to push healers that far.

- The devs can't decide what to tell us their ultimate goal is.

If the new Mythic raiding is balanced around having at least one of each class, then why remove utility like healthstones and Innervate? If they want to remove unique utility so a raid doesn't require a specific class, then why leave in things like Gateway? If they leave things in like Gateway because they want to balance around having at least one of each class, then why remove utility like healthstones and Innervate? If...

- The devs might not even be talking to Mythic raiders.

Even after their big claim that the move to 20-man raiding would be the epitome of balanced raid tuning, it doesn't even look like many of the changes that they're making are geared towards Mythic at all. The homogenization of classes and making sure that certain class abilities aren't required are definitely safeguards for 10-man Normal and Heroic raids. Plus, when a shadow priest asks whether or not s/he needs to carry separate sets of gear for multi-target and single-target fights, the answer that I gleaned from Celestalon's appeasing "No, but..." was actually "Yes, but not for casuals," which he could have just said outright. I was hoping that FinalBossTV's interview would be more enlightening for end-game raiders, but there were very few instances in which the crew pushed the devs to a point where they were forced to defend their choices and explain their reasoning in a deeper manner. Why indeed is a certain DPS class retaining a raid-wide CD while others are having theirs taken away?

Watch your raid spot, everyone. The mages are after it.

-Avia.

Edit: Added a link to the FinalBossTV interview.

Am I a question talker? Not usually.

Because my raid leader is on vacation, our raid team is on break this week. Does this mean that I get to spend a week out in nature, collecting fresh blueberries and braiding garlands with wildflowers? Maybe heading to a museum or poetry reading to get some culture? Perhaps learning a new skill to better myself or enrich my life?

Of course not; I'm raiding with someone else for a week.

Warlock for hire!

In true mercenary fashion, OG Priest and I helped out a friend's 14/14N guild, which we are proud to say is now 1/14H. Is it cheating a little to bring in fully heroic-geared raiders to slum it in a normal run? Maybe. Do they care at all? Hell no! Heroic loots!

And how does it make me feel to be back where I once was, progressing on that very first boss of the tier? Is it the same heart-pounding push for DPS and fight for survival, all culminating in the sweet relief of victory? Um... no, not really. Let's face it. Progressing on a fight this late into a tier is much different than progressing SoO just fresh out of ToT. Everyone has been clearing Normal and Flex for months, which means that the average ilvl of a raid team is so inflated that the bosses should be complaining that the fights are rigged or that no one is enforcing weight classes. Then I get to hear my guildies talk about how 10 man is so much easier than 25 because their alts are killing N Garrosh with 20 more ilvls than when it was relevant.

Do I sound a little bitter? I bet I do. Without getting into the whole 10 vs. 25 argument, I wouldn't call anything that we're doing right now difficult for people who have already seen it. There's a difference between killing bosses on alts to prove one's ability to be proficient at multiple classes and progression raiding for guilds not involved in the push for rankings. Does that mean the latter is more valid/worth more/more honorable in comparison? No, it's just different, but I wouldn't use alt-raiding as a stepping stool onto my high horse.

Am I done ranting? Yes, I am.

-Avia.