One year and One Month: A Blogaversary!

Once a Paladin, not necessarily always a Paladin, but still grateful nonetheless.

December was a big month for blog birthdays! Mine was actually December 11th, but as Rades put it, I felt a bit like the kid whose birthday is on Christmas. Cataclysm had just come out, I don’t think anyone was paying much attention to blog birthdays. Now it’s been one year (and just over a month) since I first made that little paladin and started pugging. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. You might read that and think, “Oh, Vid. Pugging was so hard for you, what an ordeal! Now you are going to complain about how hard it was.”

Nope, that’s not what I mean at all. What I mean is that I had no idea how richly rewarding blogging was going to be for me. I still remember my jaw dropping when I saw that Lath at HoTs & DoTs had linked to me. It was my first link! Later, Tam also linked to me, and I have shared links with many other awesome bloggers in the time since. It would be easy to say that I was frustrated by the actions of puggers as I leveled Vid, and it would probably be true. But it would be more true to say that I have been astounded by the generosity, warmth, and welcome shown by the blogging community. I didn’t know what I was missing. For each person in a pug who did or said something outrageous, there have been many more people who have commiserated with me about it, or gave a kind word.

I’ve made friends, colleagues, and cohorts. I used to enjoy reading blogs, now I truly can’t wait to hear what folks are saying because in many cases I feel I know the people behind them. I have the utmost respect for all of you and I can’t thank you enough for helping make the past year such an enjoyable one.

If you’ve ever left me a comment, or linked to me, or mentioned a post of mine on Twitter, or even just read – thank you.

You probably know that Larisa at Pink Pigtail Inn has been holding her annual awards – for instances, blogs, and noteworthy events alike. She’s honored me by choosing me as the winner for Biggest Blog Facelift. It really means so much to me, because I was incredibly anxious about moving from Pugging Pally. I was afraid I’d become a pariah – that people who only read my blog thinking I was a pally would stop reading it, or that people who only wanted to hear funny pug stories would realize I’d stopped writing those and just stop reading altogether. I wondered if I’d lose all readers and just be talking to myself. I worried about those things, but I tried to press on and hope for the best. I hoped that a few people would still be interested.

I worked really hard to make Manalicious an inviting place and to keep writing here consistently to show that I was serious about keeping my blog and I wasn’t just a “gimmick” writer, good for writing about pugs and that’s it! There’ve been times where I wondered whether I’d succeeded, and made the right decision. I think it was the right decision and again I owe thanks to people who supported me, changed their links, blogrolls, feedreaders, and continued to comment although my subject matter had changed.

Thank you all. Thanks to my guild members, too, who always tell me if I’ve written something they liked, and even for reading and being patient with me when I want to write about them or guild stuff in general. Thanks guys. I can’t say it enough times.

It was Windsoar who started the fine tradition of offering a “muse” to celebrate her blogaversary – I love the musing, but I don’t think I’d do as good a job of it! What I am going to do instead is a quick (literally, I am limiting my time spent on these to a set amount, I think about five to ten minutes each) drawing for folks who comment on this entry. I really do want to do something tangible to thank you for your support.

If you’d like a small black and white character portrait sketch, all you have to do is:

• Leave a comment on this entry.
• Include a link to your character’s armory.
• Have commented before. (I don’t know how many people will comment so I have to put some restriction. I’d like to give these to people who have taken the time to share a bit of themselves. If I have to “confirm” your comment it’s out, unless there aren’t too many).

I have in my head a semi-limit of how many of these I’ll do, but I’ll try to do one for everyone who wants one. It might take a bit of time. But then again, you’ve stuck with me for this long, so I imagine you’re willing to wait a little longer too!

Tuesday Art Day: Wildhammer and Link Love

I feel both guilty and gleeful about the look on the fish's face. The answers to the question, "What does a dwarf feed her gryphon?" were pretty awesome, incidentally, and ranged from "dead orc heads" to...well, fish. You're probably happy I chose the former.

I know that art day posts are a bit boring (what do you say about them?) so I’m combining two time-honored traditions, art day AND link love. I’ve had some links stored away in my file for several weeks now, so it’s time to get caught up! This was a sketch that strong-armed its way into becoming a semi-paint, it’s still a bit rough but for a warm-up sketch, I’m happy with it! (That’s two and a half hours of warming up, by the way).

Without further ado, link love!

Cynwise wrote a great post about warlock CC, if you’re into that kind of thing, but many of the tips and macros could be re purposed easily to apply to mages or most any other class. It’s a good read!

In a similar vein, Ophelie over at The Bossy Pally wrote about all the types of CC there are. I suppose some people feel now that CC is no longer necessary in heroics and everything has become an AoE zerg-fest, but for many of the tougher pulls we’re still CCing. It doesn’t take long and it makes life easier for everyone!

I enjoyed Spinks’ short post about the Women of Cataclysm. I’m always happy to see stronger female characters taking a place in WoW! I would hasten to add there are some great Wildhammer characters there too (have you done the quest with the gryphon rider in Deepholm? I won’t spoil it for you, but suffice to say she is tough as nails).

Perhaps you’re back into raiding again, but do you know how your raiders learn new encounters? Kae wrote about this a few weeks ago and I thought it was an interesting read. I’m visual and tactile myself, which means the videos don’t generally work well for me (and the talking in them mostly annoys me). A good diagram and some hands-on experience helps me more than anything.

Finally, this post is old but I happened across it when the topic came up for us the other night. Anexxia’s post The Changing Face of Spirit talks about how the stat fits into Cataclysm gear. Have you decided what your raid is doing about gear with +spirit? It’s something to consider before you are caught unprepared!

Tuesday Art Day: Mishaweha

It seems I took part in quite a few gift exchanges this year; the Blog Azeroth Secret Santa, but also an art exchange on Twitter! The art exchange was especially fun because we found out a month in advance who we’d be drawing for. Here is the piece I did for Mishaweha. You can see all of the art that was done for the exchange here. Thanks again to Loreli who organized the event, I had quite a bit of fun with it.

I think the background took longer than the actual character!

This is Mishaweha, clearly, Tauren shaman (restoration, I believe). She wears goggles. I’ll quite likely use the art I received of Millya in a post at a later date!

Happy Holidays!

I think in this case I’m going to let this picture be a thousand words on its own – my three main characters, doing what they do best. May all your moonkin be airborne in the new year!

"I just have to adjust the trajectory properly..." "I told you, your method is highly unreliable, we'd do much better to..." "AM I FLYING YET, GUYS?"

 

Tuesday Art Day: Quaras

Because you can never have too many draenei. This was a gift commissioned from Snack for his fiancee Melisan and they are getting married very soon! So I think it’s like a wedding gift, sort of – on my part, that is. A little. Anyhow, here you have it:

"This is my BAN hammer." No, not really.

I’ve been trying to work on incorporating backgrounds into my work more often (witness this, and the last Tuesday art day, also a draenei paladin.) I think it’s an endeavour that’s been going well so far!

I’m working on a WoW-themed Christmas card that will be sure to make an appearance here, as well as a Secret Santa art exchange between other Twitter folks. It’s very exciting. I love and hate secrets all at the same time.

Meantime, I hear something happened to Azeroth last night… like five years of time lapse and Deathwing. Doubtless I’ll have some things to say about that this week. I’ve spent my initial time in Azeroth pretty much acquiring Withers and then playing Plants vs Zombies: WoW Edition before I had to call it a night. I’ll confess, I’m really not that good at Plants vs Zombies.

Tuesday Art Day: Talwen

Back at Pugging Pally I used to do art posts fairly often. I think it’s a fine tradition that I wouldn’t mind continuing!

Here is a commission I just recently finished for a friend of Lara‘s. This is her draenei paladin, Tal, and she is awesome (if I do say so myself). The armour was conceived of by her and assembled/altered by the two of us with our brainstorming; it’s a combination of the Tier 8 paladin set combined with Tier 6 (shoulders and crown). I changed the colours of those pieces so that they would look as if they were part of the T8 set.

Because you all know how I feel about draenei. Draenei. Are. Awesome!

So that is thing one; I always enjoy sharing some art I’ve been working on! Secondly, I have written a guest post that is the probable first in a series of guest posts for Vosskah over at Sword and Board. Yes, that’s right, Vosskah, infamous raid leader and utterer of French expletives! Those of you who have been sad I don’t write about pugging as much may like this series, because…

I made a warrior.  And all she’s been doing is tanking (ulp). Meantime, Voss provides useful information about tanking. I think it’s a fun combination, especially for anyone else who may be interested in leveling lowbie warrior tanks. That’s something that Vid was always lacking as she leveled – I couldn’t tell people about good choice to make because I really was just figuring it out as I went along. Unlike me, Voss knows what he is doing.

It may take my little warrior a long time to level this way, but the journey promises to be a nerve-wracking one. Mosey over and read Looking To Be A Great Warrior? if you are so inclined!