"I think you read too many blogs."

"I think you read too many blogs." - Yakra

Blogs.

Blogs.
Blogs.
Oh my God.
Blogs.
Let's read some blogs.
Let's write some blogs.
Let's link some blogs.
Let's flame some blogs.^†
Blogs.
Blogs.

Oh, my God, blogs.

Blogs.
Blogs.
This blog rules.
This blog sucked.^‡
This blog rules.
This blog sucks!
Blogs.
Blogs.
Blogs.
Oh, my God, blogs.
This blog rules.
This blog sucks.^￥
This blog's new.
This blog's gone!
I think you read too many blogs.
Shut up!
I think you read too many blogs.
Shut up!
I think you read too many blogs.
Shut up!
I think you read too many blogs.
Shut up!
Stupid feed.
Stupid feed.
Let's read some blogs.

Let's tweet.
This blog is over three years old.
This blog has over three hundred subscribers.
This blog has over three thousand 'ucking subscribers.
Let's link 'em!
Um... this topic is kinda old. I don't think anyone's gonna read it.
I mean, no one runs Kara anymore.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click, by the way Blizz,
*UCK YOU
*UCK YOU
*UCK YOU
*UCK YOU

This blog is mine, click.

Give me that list of blogs, click.

This feed is mine, click.

Click.

† This is not an invitation to flame Keeva's blog, but rather a reference to the comments posted on that article.

‡ I had to link to Averna's juicy post about Paladin Shmaladin!

￥No, I don't really think my husband's blog sucks, but I had his permission to pretend I did.

After much deliberation over the past month or so, I have decided to seriously cut back my blog reading list. At one point I was subscribed to over 45 blogs by resto druids; that doesn't include the non-resto druids. Sometimes, I would come home from work and spend over an hour reading/skimming blog posts. It was becoming more of a job than a hobby, but I kept it up because I wanted to be supportive of new blogs. I remember how hard it was to be starting out and how much readers and commenters meant. However, despite my attempts, I don't feel I have been that successful at being supportive. Here is what sealed the deal for me though: I was skipping reading my husband's blog to read blogs I felt I SHOULD read, even if I felt they weren't relevant to me. Not only was I taking time away that could be spent with Yakra PLAYING WoW, but I wasn't even giving him the time to read what he wrote.

I have a new plan: Quality over Quantity. The less blogs I read, the more closely I read the one's I DO read, and the more comments I make on those blogs. I am also more likely to follow their links to other blogs, because I don't feel like there are blogs I should be reading back in my feedreader. I'm trying to think of this not as "not being supportive" but as "being more supportive of some" and hoping that will branch out to other blogs.

The motivation and justification was the easy part. The means I am finding a little heart breaking. Every time I log into my feed reader I try to find one blog to unsubscribe to. This was easy at first: people who haven't posted in a while, people posting about other games. Then I moved on to blogs that weren't as relevant to me: blogs that never were about WoW but I thought I might like, blogs where they used to play a druid but now are posting technical articles about another class, blogs with lots of gold making guides. Now its starting to get really hard. My goal is to keep unsubscribing until everything is "read". That, I am hoping, will put me at a healthy balance where I can really read what is posted, make comments on posts, but still have room to add new blogs that really interest me.

How many blogs do you REALLY read? How many do you PRETEND to read? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the quality WoW blogs out there? How do you chose?

WoW Backwards is Still WoW

After I left LOKI I decided to flip my WoW experience on its head. The night after /gquitting I returned to the night elf starting areas to work on quests towards Loremaster. It reminded me of the reasons I fell in love with my druid in the first place: the sereneness, the artwork, the feeling that good would always conquer evil. It also felt very backwards. There was no endgame, next boss, better loot, harder achievement I was used to striving for. Instead of progress I was completing. Backwards, but still WoW and still enjoyable. Maybe I was backwards the whole time I was raiding and didn't even know it???

Thanks for you faith in me... Priestess of MY OWN RACE

Yakra joined me for Azuremyst quests. We had a blast making fun of all the nonsensical things the NPCs said, since they thought they were talking to Draenei but they were talking to an elf and a dwarf... We were reading every word of the quests (at least I was!) Very backwards from plowing through pieces of Northrend content for rep or rewards, since they were needed for raiding. Maybe questing backwards, but still WoW.

I started a guild! Mostly for me and Yakra and for the few lowbies who signed my charter who I don't have the heart to kick. Its called Low Key. Get it... 'cause I left LOKI... Okay, I think its kind of witty, but, yes, you are allowed to lol at me all you want. It is supposed to be funny, but it is also supposed to be pseudosymbolic of that backwards thing again. Its still "loh-kee", but instead of meaning Lords of Killing Innocents it means... Low Key. The tabard is the same icon as LOKI's, but the colors are backwards.

Hey Yak, Shouldn't we have killed this dude before raiding Ulduar?

I used to try to fit a little of the Real World in my Warcraft. Now I plan on putting Warcraft only where it comfortably fits into my World. Backwards? I don't think either of them are. However you play, as long as it makes you happy and you are enjoying yourself, that's WoW forward to you.

I want to thank you all for the support you showed when I wrote my last post practically pouring my heart out. I was really going out on a limb writing it. I am overwhelmed by the loving comments and this post by Beruthiel (who is going to give me a big head!) Even for those of you who didn't comment, 95% of you are still reading - so says Feedburner. Allison at WoW.com wrote about this recently, way down at the bottom of the first page:

"If you've been writing long enough that people get curious about who you are as a person, then stuff like [why your guild sucks, why your raid leader sucks, why your server sucks, why your life sucks] isn't actually going to send them elsewhere; it's a sort of privilege conferred on bloggers who have already earned an audience."

I don't know if I like the word 'earn' there, but the 'curious about who you are' and a 'privilege conferred' describes exactly how honored I feel to have you stick around.

Tell me again why I needed the leaves...

Many of you realized that I posted after 'things' between Yakra and I were on their way back up. I made my last post on Wednesday. The Tuesday before was when Yakra took me out to dinner. We talked a lot and decided he would leave LOKI too. I couldn't put that in my last post. For obvious reasons that was something he needed to announce to LOKI in his own time. But since then things have just been getting better and better. I know we made the right choice for us for right now. Here are some of the awesome moments of my last week:

• Yakra took me out on a Tuesday night. OMG thats a RAID night!
• Questing on our mains in noobie zones and in Icecrown. Yup, Icecrown still isn't done.
• Going for walks. Probably 4 or 5 in the last week.
• Going on a NINE MILE HIKE yesterday! It was so beautiful. There were pretty trees. I thought of all of you!!!
• Talking about buying a piece of land or starting a business instead of recruiting DPS.
• Yakra picked me up and spun me around while we were on this one walk and pretended he was going to throw me down a hill. I know its cheesy, but those moments had been missing.
• Watching anime.
• Doing some projects around the house we had been procrastinating on.
• Really good s... um... intimate moments. Yeah, lets call it that.
• Just talking and listening and loving.

I Less Than Three You

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Where have all the flowers trees gone?

WoW isn't the game it was before and summer is a great time to start IRL afresh. And with those two things we have been 'loosing' some trees in the forest. I really shouldn't say loosing because they were here for their stay and brought their personality or math or pretty purple banner or gear analysis to the community - and now they are moving on to more important things in life.

Druid Heal! ended their WoW account early June, at least for the summer. We do have this mysterious cat picture though... Raaff says the guide is staying up at least for a while. I loved going to Druid Heal for math. It also had calculators embedded into the site. Most of bloggers don't have that sort of talent.

Beware Splinters is closing so Obitz can focus on school. Can we hold blame there? It probably something I should do myself. It looks like she may still be playing Aion if you want to keep in touch. She's been putting out some guilds. I would take any excuses to read things on her pretty purple site.

Corgi from Barky Bits has been playing WoW for 4 years and she will be moving on to spend more time with family and friends. Not too long ago her blog was getting daily face lifts and she was testing the waters writing guides. It looks like she too may be heading to Aion...

I wish you all well in the big world away from the forest! I know you will be doing awesome "more fun than blogging about a video game" things :P If you have not already headed over to wish them well, I'm sure there is still time.

Along the same lines, I dug through my feedreader yesterday unsubscribing to blogs that haven't posted in more than 2 months. There were 11 - including Resto4Life. THAT was surprisingly difficult and symbolic for me. I don't let go well I guess from things I love and we all love Phae.

I also made a folder of blogs under 2 months old that I am subscribed to and there were 14! There is little I love more than a new resto blog. I would like to spend more time reading and commenting on those sites. We will see... There are many things in life I would like to do...

Blog Updates and Mailbag

~ Added Star-Beaded Clutch and Crown of Luminescence to their appropriate spot on the hard mode Ulduar list.

~ Added Soul Preserver to the Mana Trinket list.

~ Mammako asked over in my sidebar which ring I would prefer: Lady Maye's Sapphire Ring from normal Iron Council or Fire Orchid Signet from Hard-mode Freya. I would take Fire Orchid over Lady Maye. If you gem Luminous Monarch Topaz for the socket bonus Fire Orchid (with full raid buffs: Kings, ToL, Replenishment, 2% Int Meta Gem) gives you +4 spellpower and +11 MP5. If you don't need the mana and gem with a Runed Scarlet Ruby instead, Fire Orchid gives you +14 spellpower and +4 MP5. And just having that socket to give you that flexibility is a winning point for Fire Orchid in my book. Hope that helps Mammako!

~ Next, I wanted to comment on a comment/question Sunkist left on the Mana Trinket post. Sunkist has a somewhat new blog: Barkskining Up the Wrong Tree. There is not much I like more than new druid blogs, and isn't that the cutest name??? Their most recent post is about the controversial 72 hour ban. Well written, even if you don't agree with the point of view. So check it out.

But now I've gotten off topic. Sunkist asked: "One thing I was wondering is how much regen we would get by using Spark and one of the 100+ int trinkets since int and spirit work together to produce our mana regen." I skipped over this question at first because it is such a loaded question. Remember, when calculating mana regen you need to look at TOTAL spirit and int for passive regen and then add in any procs or 'special' things about the trinket. I made a spreadsheet to do this for 3.0 trinkets, but it was a lot of work making cells to compare every trinket combination so I wasn't planning on doing it again this time.

But maybe as a fast answer to your question... With no trinkets and only ToL and MotW as buffs my passive mana regen is 629/329. If I add only Spark of Hope is jumps +63/+31 from passive. If I add just Pandora's Plea it jumps +32/+16 (does not include replenishment). So if I add them together I should get +95/47, right? But insted I get +98/49. So I get a tiny bit more for adding both Int and Spirit. Again, this is all unbuffed and does not include replenishment which is a part of Pandora's mana return or Spark of Hope's reduction to spell costs which is its HUGE benefit.

Hope that answers your question! But the real answer may be, you are running with the two trinkets I would be using if I could get my hand on IDS! If you had any more specific questions feel free to e-mail me.

~ Finally, a quick "Why have a dropped off the face of the blogsphere?" - because even if I don't post, I normally comment on other people's posts. Some of the comments people were making on Keeva's post on hard-core raiders post got me really upset. I was, and am in some ways, still feeling a little embarrassed to be part of a blogging community who would treat another blogger like that. I don't mean the one's who respectfully disagreed with her, I mean the anonymous posters who just attacked and name called her. Wow, I'm actually crying right now. If it was my own blog I think I would be okay with it, just delete and move on. But its not like I can post "F*CK YOU GET YOUR OWN SOAP BOX" on Keeva's comments. Keeva is just one of the most mature, eloquent, selfless druid bloggers we have. How long has she spent working on her Grid/Heal-bot project to make it useful for the rest of us? How long does she spend answer questions about it? She hosted Azeroth day because she knew the community would miss it. She comments on every comment. "But Aert, you don't even KNOW her!" I know... but then why am I crying?

Want to Blog Less Suck Redux

Over a year ago I went through the process of making my blog suck less, so it included all the essential WoW blogger info. I think I did a decent job for a baby blog of 2 months old. Recently I have been undergoing another round of self critiquing trying to build a better blog. I would love feedback. Here are some of the changes I've made:

1. Text background color. I have gotten some comments about the purple behind the body of my posts being too bright, so I toned it down a few shades. I want it to stay purple, but I really really want to know if it is more readable. 

2. Font type and size. My computer at home and my computer at work have different font packages and apparently I was using an uncommon font. Heck, it's still showing differently in Google Chrome and Firefox, but it is less different. I also made the font size a little bigger for easier readability. It makes some of my old posts small, but I think I'm too lazy to go back and change all those. 

3. Flavicon! This was surprisingly painful to do and I still can't get it to show up in Google Chrome. Suggestions? But for Firefox I am very very happy with it. 

4. Cbox. These things are too much fun. I stole the idea from Averna's blog. Leave me a message!

5. Icon of my e-mail. It looks a lot better than the line-o-text I had buried at the bottom of the page and I put it in two locations for easier find-ability. I made it at Nexodyne.

6. Google Talk. Now you can chat with me through my g-mail account. You don't have to have g-mail to be able to do so. I figured this would be a nice option for readers who have questions but maybe don't feel comfortable leaving their question as a comment or want more instantaneous feedback than sending me an e-mail. 

7. Search, Most Popular Posts, and Topic. Self explanatory, so you can find what you are looking for faster. I had topics listed before but the list was a little crazy long. I condensed where I could.

8. Changes to my Profiles. I shrunk the picture of my character, because you probably don't need two massive pictures of my HoT druid. I also added an IRL picture of myself to my IRL profile BEFORE the despite the Paladin Schmaladin drama. I think I'm going to keep it up anyway, however, I have a better one in the works!

9. Blogroll! My blogroll was horribly outdated. I actually subscribe to almost 50 blogs. I picked the 20 I read the most (partially because they post the most) and found out there is a convenient "show 10" feature that allows you the reader to see all the blogs listed with one click if you wish. 

10. Blog Azeroth, Twisted Nether, and WoWJunction. I've been listed on the Twisted Nether for a long time (I did not submit my blog), but never advertised for them (which really was just rude of me) or did anything with my wiki page. Well, I fixed both of those. I also added an icon for Blog Azeroth and added myself to that page. The WoW blogging community really is an awesome community and I need to show my support more. Finally, WoWJunction is a new list of WoW sites. It has some nice search features and you can create an account and save sites to favorites. 

This is Not a Post About New Druid Forms

These are:

Tauren

Tauren

Tauren

Tauren

Tauren

Elf

Elf

If you are looking for alternative reading may I suggest:

How To Blog 13 Points

How To Blog 10 Counter Points

Nom-tastic Flow Chart to Druid Spells

Intro to Druid Stats for Raiding Restos

Dear Blizz, Please Don't Do It To Nourish Too!

I just have nothing to add to the conversation and apparently don't really care about feral forms... I think I will care if they update tree form. I love you all and I will keep reading! Me and my feed reader are just feeling a little spammed by that same picture of 6 bears right now...

Reasons I Love My Husband?

Look up. See that gorgeous new banner?

Last night I made Yakra watch the Yu-Gi-Oh movie with me, which I had to pre-view for my students' Japanese Animation and Culture Club. Yeah... It was pretty lolbad. After we did some shots to recover our sanity, Yakra spent two hours with me sitting over his shoulder going "Move the tree a little to the left" making me that beautiful banner. That is true love!

Why the new banner? Well... I never was particularly happy with my old banner. I threw it together the first day I made the blog. I was going for the gritty natural feel with all my pictures back then, but that didn't last long. Sadly, the gritty banner stuck around. And then in a very short period of time both Bell (4 Haelz) and Keeva (Tree Bark Jacket) made adorable little thumbnails of my banner to place on their blogs. Next to all the other nicely polished thumbnails I felt like mine looked... generic... and like crap. So this might fix my problem for any future thumbnails!

Also, this will double as my guild forum sig and I used the new banner as an opportunity to widen the size of my blog's main body, something I have been wanting to do for a while. 

So Who's it Gonna Be?

Think about all the stuff you learned from Phae... Did you make a list yet? (Syd did!)

Now can you imagine all awesome stuff she is going to teach to her little one? Pretty lucky kid to have Phae as their mom!

I don't have any kids (yet?) nor do I have a 10th of the subscribers Phae has, so I won't pretend I 'understand' the choice she had to make. I do, however, feel bad bothering her with one of my projects when she was probably only a few weeks pregnant and for, in general, giving her more resto druid stuffs to read on the internetz. 

Keeva has already cleverly illustrated what we are all feeling. My question is who will really be our replacement Mommy Tree?

Syd (World of Matticus) was my initial thought - she is a serious raider, raid officer, and writer. The huge majority of her posts are "druid info summery", similar to Phea's heavily read "Blue Post Posts". Syd already has the huge reader base from WoM, so when someone says 'Syd' everyone knows who they are talking about.

But... Syd is part of something bigger. WoM is the go to place for HEALERS, not for DRUIDS. When you want info on Druids at WoM you have to weed through all of the general healy stuff to find it. So I feel Syd is part of something bigger and more generalized right now, and she is already helping to fulfill a different WoW need out there on the interwebz. 

Well, then the next very obvious choice is Keeva (Tree Bark Jacket). Her blog went from brand new baby to polished resource center over night. She has her 3 Drakes healing movie, her Grid Guide, and now she is taking the mass amounts of time to compare all the different healing UIs. Informative posts, some of which are geared to healer druids just starting off, was definitely one niche Phea filled. Keeva also does a lot of blue post summaries and the community over at Tree Bark Jacket is positive and welcoming - Keeva said she may try to do community spot lights too. I'm sure her subscriber base is huge by now. She is listed on almost every druid blog's blogroll. 

Now Keeva admits she isn't a crazy number cruncher. I don't blame her, I always relied on Phea to work the numbers for us. (Keeva, go get good at number crunching so the rest of us can rely on you, imo! - Kidding!) But this brings me to my third thought...

Raaff (Druid Heal!) has been on top of the mana regen numbers and built a mana regen calculator right into his blog. Phea didn't update her's for the 3.1 changes (Obviously she has WAY more important and fun things to do, like nursery set up!). Raaff also knows what he is doing when it comes to a website. Most of us just fake it. Maybe Raaff will be our go to person for numbers, calculators, and such? He also has his easy to use guide, and keeps it up to date. 

Part of me wants to be all sentimental and community-ish and say that lots of blogs will fill different rolls that Phea used to fill in one place, but I think the community will want a one stop shop. And someone, over probably not a very log time, will shake out to be that druid blog - the new R4L. 

Phea will NEVER be forgotten by the druid blogging community. She set an extremely high bar and extremely welcoming welcoming committee for us all. Its been heartwarming to see that community seeing her off to her bigger, better, baby filled future with well wishes, promises to uphold the ways of druid blogging, and lots and lots of love!