Many Link Roundups! Handle Them!

Yeehaw! It's a link roundup! (This is still a WIP, though now that I've posted it, I'm likely never to finish it!)

Welcome to another edition of Link Roundup! I’ve been monitoring links throughout the week, and boy were you guys on a roll! Looks like I’ll have to break things down a little more than I usually do!

In this Roundup I’ve pulled out posts on Pandaren (where be the women folk?), Helpful Tips (Alchemists will want to check this out), Shaman (a personal favorite of mine), Musings on the Current, Future, and Past state of WoW (there’s some SW:TOR and Gnomes in there; you have been warned), NaNoWriMo (encouragements) and a few Silly Posts.

Hope you have the time to read through all this great stuff!

Pandaren

Holy Concentration explains her love of Pandaren and is really tired of your complaints about them.

Ratshag makes the very valid point that there are no female Pandaren in the concept art. I too hope that they put more time into the female Pandaren design. Maybe for the next race they’ll design the ladies first (as a true gentleman would do)!

Amerence ponders what class she’ll make her Pandaren, and also finds a possibly real concept image of what female Pandaren will look like! If it is real, I am pleased with the results. If it’s not real… it should be!

Is this the Pandaren Female Design? If not... can you make it be the Pandaren Female Design?

Helpful Tips!

Power Word: Gold has a warning for you Alchemists out there: Change specs now! 4.3 is bringing a new, more expensive way to switch your specialization, while taking away the old version.

Just My Two Copper talks about manually adjusting addons to get them to do just the right thing. While this post talks about more auction house related addons, you could apply the same ideas to other addons you use. Have you ever tweaked an addon before?

Shaman!

Interested in a MoP Shaman talent preview with a Resto twist? Totem Forest has got you covered.

For those interested in Shaman changes in the more near term future, Life in Group 5 wrote about the Shaman Tier 13 bonuses and the changes to our healing spells. I agree that changing Ancestral Healing to add health to your target isn’t the best idea (especially since it can’t be tracked!) And the 4-piece bonus for Tier 13 is something that I would probably never use; I hardly remember to use Spiritwalker’s Grace anyway (maybe THAT’S why it’s a bonus… to get silly Shaman like me to remember to use those new spells they gave us at the start of Cata).

Current Game Musings

Screaming Monkeys would like more games to allow your high level toons to easily swtich servers/factions to help out friends in need. What do you think?

The Grumpy Elf has written an interesting two part series on how DPS are just numbers. It’s a little introspective, and yes, a little grumpy I might add. But it does sum up the sad state of the world (of warcraft) that people think of tanks as tanks, healers as healers, and dps as the dps who did 13K. See the first post here, and the second here.

Restokin talks about Stat Inflation (you know, the reason why DPS numbers just keep on climbing to ridiculous heights). There are two solutions discussed; Mega-Damage and a Stat Reset. I agree that a stat reset would be best.

Upcoming Game Musings

Azuriel at In An Age muses that the upcoming MoP talents changes may not be so different from the old Vanilla/BC style…

In the more near-term future, Rades is not impressed with the looks of Death Knight Tier 13. I’m not either, though I haven’t liked many Death Knight Tier sets in general. Maybe because it just looks like the human is covered in construction paper tubes with drawings on it. Maybe it looks better on a different race/gender, like my lady Tauren DK Mourninglory.

While the armor still isn't the best, it looks way better on a Tauren. :3

In other news, Screaming Monkeys has a little story involving two game company employees discussing Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m a little surprised by their comments too.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Priest With A Cause remembers Karazhan, a place we both miss. I think I miss it more than my guildies; we spent a lot of time there. >.>

Alas remeniced about PvPing with a group of identical Gnomes… which has now spawned a Gnome Clone project. You can find more about the Gnome Clone project here, on its blog Revenge of the Gnomes. Even more details on the EU version were written up over at Spellbound.

NaNoWriMo!

I’m still hard at work at my attempt (which I may post about later), but Rades has been writing up a storm with his Letteres. Feel free to read about the silly Azerothians who waste their gold to store useless items and to wear matching clothing. Or would you rather read about ADORBS CRITTERS and how they SHOULDN’T BE FIGHTING EACH OTHER D: ? (I suggest you read both, and the other letters Rades has written so far!)

For those of you who are participating in NaNoWriMo, I Like Bubbles gives some encouragement.

Bika has a less flowcharty encouragement here.

On The Silly Side

The Grumpy Elf had lots of random thoughts. I must agree, coming up with names for your toons is pretty hard, especially so many of the ones that make sense have been taken!

I may have missed out on the #iwasanoob twitter hashtag, but Elfi didn’t, and carefully transcribed many tweets for your enjoyment!

Fulguralis asks… What Would Star Fox Do?

And I think that’s all the links for today, folks! Thanks for reading!

A Wild Link Roundup Appears!

Yeehaw! It's a link roundup! (This is still a WIP, though now that I've posted it, I'm likely never to finish it!)

Happy Hallow’s End and welcome to the Link Round Up!

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I blame a lack of round ups due to me not reading other blogs consistently. However, I’ve recently been sprucing up my Google Reader and therefore started to read blogs again. This leads me to find interesting links to share with you in a round up! Let’s see if this trend continues, even as NaNoWriMo looms…

Today we have some thoughts on leveling, Pandaren, gold making, art, and storytelling. But first up is some Hallow’s End goodness!

• For those who are last-minute trick-or-treaters such as myself, Revive & Rejuvenate has a listing of all the candy sites in Azeroth!
• Need some extra gold this Hallow’s End? Cold’s Gold Factory recommends you check the chests in SM: Graveyard! He also mentions that the PTR has BOE Sinister Squashlings and recommends you hold onto them, just in case the PTR isn’t lying.
• There’s a nice little post on Just My Two Copper about wisely investing your time when playing the AH. I know I have trouble balancing my other WoW activities with playing the AH; it’s either too much or not enough!
• Priest with a Cause is reviewing zones from both sides, and has some interesting thoughts on Azshara and Ashenvale.
• Cynwise‘s Shaman alt, Cynix, tries leveling through PvP some more, and raises some questions about PvP XP gains. (Play-by-play of Cynix’s leveling experience can also be found there).
• Holy Word: Delicious has a nice post speculating about Monk Melee healing. I, for one, am looking forward to it. Several other games have the ‘do damage to heal’ classes and I’ve found them rather fun. You just need to think differently.
• Rades mentioned this post at Flavor Text that talks about why Pandarens might actually a legit reason to be chill.
• And speaking of Flavor Text, Cat has decided to start drawing some WoW characters, and one of them is mine! I’ll definitely be showing off the results!
• In that same post, Rades also asked for suggestions for NPCs with interesting stories to tell after the Shattering for his NaNoWriMo project, Letters from a Shattered World. You should submit some!
• The previous year’s NaNoWriMo letters project was Letters From Northrend, which you should also read:

I, for one, I’m looking forward to art from Cat! If I find some time, maybe I can return the favor…

Anyway, that’s all for this round up! Thanks for stopping by!

Link Round Up – Flashback!

Dearest Readers,

Yeehaw! It's a link roundup! (This is still a WIP, though now that I've posted it, I'm likely never to finish it!)

I have been slacking on my blog reading. Shocking, I know. It may have to do with the fact I’ve moved to a more open cube arrangement at work. Or perhaps it is because The SA and I have had company over for two weekends straight.

Whatever the case, there is suffering involved.

No no, the blog itself does not suffer from the lack of new posts (after all, it is merely pieces of data on a server somewhere).

And I’m sure you, dear Reader, do not suffer much from the fact nothing new appears here. After all, there must be something in the archive that you could delight in reading (again, I hope).

The real tragedy, my friend, is that my Link Round Up post has become horribly outdated.

How could this travesty happen, I hear you ask in a most devastated tone?

Let me explain.

A month or so ago, when I was keeping up with the blogs, I started to pull out what I thought was interesting into this very post. And I gathered a fair number of links, and I said to myself, “Self-” (as I am prone to addressing myself as “self”) “- you should take a break. Surely there will be no harm stopping your collection of links now and picking it up later. Obviously you won’t forget to check on your blogroll for a few weeks because you became ‘busy’ and then continue to not check them because you ‘don’t have the time’ to read all of the posts AND pull out the interesting ones into a link round up post. So go ahead and start checking your auctions!”

For some reason, my suspiciously specific denial came true. My blogroll has lain untouched for too long, as I would feel remorse for missing so many interesting links, and would have to possibly abandon these brave links that made it into the original attempt at this link round up post.

But no more! For now I present to you a flashback to the earlier days of March, where I pulled out the following links for you, dear Reader, to laud.]

Links From The Not-So-Distant Past (Unless You Are Reading This From The More Distant Future, In Which Case You May Ignore The ‘No-So’ Part)

• Around this time, the latest in the patch notes was that Shaman would be getting a Spirit Link totem. I had been holding off on the Shaman blogs, but I did find this interesting take in the Druid blogs. Since there was no news on a new cooldown for them, they worried that their new cooldown would be a revamped tranquility. Read the worries of Beruthiel of Falling Leaves and Wings, Jasyla of Cannot Be Tamed, and FeralTree of… um… FERALTREE.
• Glowberry wrote a nice guide about preparing for raids, regarding consumables for healer-types. But I’m sure the rest of you can appreciate this too.
• He Came From Shattrat had started a series of posts called PvPing with Thor. He records a battleground and then comments on his performance in the post. I haven’t watched the videos myself (probably had to do something with ‘being busy’), but the commentary, which is marked with timestamps, seems very informative. He points out both good and bad moments with a detailed analysis. Check it out if you PvP — here’s a link to the third post in the series.
• Speaking of PvP, it had apparently taught Ambrosine to hate you.
• And last but not least on the PvP front, He Came From Shattrat also reported on the WSG graveyard changes. It’s a pretty big deal, I heard tell.
• I’m a sucker for graphs and flow charts, and Glowberry provided a nice one on how they visualize search terms! They graphs! They’re so pretty!
• And Ambrosine of I Like Bubbles provides a different kind of graph in the form of a handy guide for melee dps against some sort of Council raid boss.
• Did you go to the twitter party Disciplinary Action put together? I didn’t make it, but I heard it was fun! And the DK twitter bird DA created is free to use.  Here’s one that was mashed up into a Sin’dorei version by He Came From Shattrat! It’s cute. I hope to see more of these float around sometime.

I hope you enjoyed this ‘blast to the past’. Now please remind me not to finish up my posts late at night.

Much Love,

Misha

The Return of the Link Round Up!

Yeehaw! It's a link roundup! (This is still a WIP, though now that I've posted it, I'm likely never to finish it!)

I’ve a conundrum, dearest Reader. Is round up supposed to be one word, or two? As you can tell, I’ve settled on two words, but The Internet seems to think it can go either way. Which way do you prefer?

This week, in a shocking turn of events, I’ve divided the list of links into three categories, as I found quite a few of them since my last link round up post. (Maybe that isn’t too shocking). First there is General WoW News, followed by Shaman and Healing, because Shaman and Healing go together like Peanut Butter and Brown Sugar (seriously — try it. You’ll love it, especially if you like sugar. And peanut butter). Lastly, there’s news from In The Blogging World. Those are items that are more related to the blogging community than WoW itself.

One or more of these categories may have been a little ‘forced’ in order to split up the links. >.>

And in case you haven’t heard from every healing blog in town (especially those owned by Druids and Shaman), there is an important blue post mentioning something about a ‘shaman healing buff’ and ‘awareness of need for life-saving cooldowns for Druids and Shaman’. I’m sure it’s old news by now, but I thought I’d bring it up, just in case you only read my blog. <snerk>

What, you want me to link to something? What do you think this is, a post for linking to things? No, no, there were far too many places talking about this, I simply cannot be bothered to find each and every one of those links.

Now onto the links I did bother with!

General WoW News

• Disciplinary Action wrote a post on how you can haz WoW on your iPad (at home). I might try it out someday when I have a reason to use something smaller than my desktop/Alienware laptop.
• A Hasty Experiment by Beruthiel at Falling Leaves and Wings talks about Dark Intent (mm, haste), which apparently should not go to Resto Druids. It’s a very informative post, especially for Warlocks and Druids.
• 

  Who -wouldn't- want to sheep something? I mean, look at it! It's a sheep! (Image from Wowhead)

  Beru also talks about CC, tanking, and why they won’t tank anymore.  I haven’t had any major CC debacle happen to me before, but I haven’t been tanking. The situation described, however, seems like it would be very common. (As for me, I’m usually not called upon to CC since I’m healing. But if I’m told to hex something, I’m on it! As long as you keep reminding me — paying attention to marks is not my forté).

• I Like Bubbles talks about the BWD Elevator Boss. A boss that is so threatening, it’s kill count will soon be recorded. Even Ratshag has noted the deadliness of this boss. Twice.
• Need to keep up with the latest hairstyling trends? You’re in luck! Kamalia wrote an excellent Barbershop guide (for the ladies). Just click through the ten posts to see screenshots of all the different hair styles and hair colors — it’s very impressive! Thanks to the MMO Melting Pot for pointing out this gem!

Shaman and Healing

• Shaman’s Chain Heal is apparently better with mastery than previously thought. Discovered by EJ forum goers (and what isn’t), both Totemic Grace and Totem Forest wrote up some posts on the matter. (Mastery, however, is still low on the Shaman’s stat totem-pole).
• Speaking of healing, Oestrus explains how the Mage talent Cauterize works, how it kills them (softly? with song? Nah, just FIRE), and what you (assuming you are a healer) can do to keep them from dying. I’d recommend reading it in case you group with a suicidal mage.
• 

  Minnesota, the state of hockey. And apparently, a mysterious Shaman element.

  Back to more Shaman news! This one is from Kaelynn, at Shades of Kae, called The Essence of a Shaman. It’s a great lore-type post explaining all about Shaman; talking about the elements, races, and other things of Shaman goodness. I especially liked the mention of ‘The Wild’ spirit, which I assume is related to hockey.

In the Blogging World

• MMO Melting Pot occasionally spotlights blogs they recently found, as they did a little while back. There are quite a few good blogs in that post, but one that stands out in particular is Bigger Than Kologarn. The posts are hilarious! I especially liked the one where Varian has a plan.
• Did you know you can follow Magmaw on twitter? Glowberry knew — see their post on how you can follow everyone’s favorite* raid boss! (*Disclaimer: Magmaw may not be everyone’s favorite raid boss).
• Happy Blogoversary, Apple!
• Redhawk’s Gaze mentions ‘must read’ gaming webcomics. Webcomics? Must read? Yes please! I do enjoy me some webcomics — some of the gaming-related one I read are on links to the side!

But wait! There’s more! What kind of blogger would I be without blatant self-promotion? Here a link to my most recent post about the Orgrimmar Auctioneers and their dislike for a certain holiday. I’m rather proud of the post, especially since it takes a lot for me to stop being lazy and write some ‘real’ fiction, so go check it out!

Already read it? Click the link anyway! Not sure you want to read a long post? Sure you do — there’s chocolate!

Mmm, chocolate.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MmoMeltingPot/~3/Av9M7D7ctmQ/

Link Round Up!

Yeehaw! It's a link round up! (This is still a WIP, though now that I've posted it, I'm likely never to finish it!)

Upon realizing I have not that much to say, and a lot of you folks do, I decided it’s time I start ’rounding up some links’, as it were. A common practice around the blogosphere, I know, but hopefully you’ll find a few new things to read (and if you don’t because you already read them, you can feel cool that we read the same things!)

My strategy for collecting these links is to dump them randomly into a post as I find them and, once there are enough, attempt to pretty them up with some words to make them fit for human consumption. We’ll see how well this goes, or if these posts will turn into some sort of Frankenstein link monstrosity.

This was going to be some kind of anthropomorphic link, but it was much easier to draw a Frankenstein with links for stitches instead.

And without further ado, here are the cattle links this round up produced!

• A few bloggers chose to hang up their blogging hats last week. Two of my favorite blogs, Righteous Orbs and Through the Eyes of Death, have closed shop. Those links go to their farewell posts. I shall miss them both; Tam and Chas were a cornerstone of the WoW Blogging community, and Arren’s blog helped to introduce me into the wild world of WoW RP. Their writings will be missed.
• In case you don’t follow Auction House type blogs, I should have you know that The Undermine Journal is back online, as reported by nearly every single Auction House Blog (yes, those are all separate links — start clicking!). It’s worthy of the press, however. The Undermine Journal is a nifty tool that scans all of the US realms’ AH data and displays it in nifty charts charts and graphs. You can search for specific items or sellers. Even if you don’t play the AH, I would recommend checking it out. Even a casual buyer (or seller) could benefit looking at an item’s listing history.
• There’s been some interesting posts on Shaman, mostly from a Resto Shaman perspective. Totem Forest explains that certain design choices drag down our ability to heal. Totemic Grace brings up similar concerns when they discuss recent Shaman changes. And Live In Group 5 talks about how Shaman are the last vestiges of a utility class. All of these are good reads for Shaman.
  • And what’s a Shaman without totems? Oh My Kurenai gives a list of totems and what buffs they overwrite/are overwritten by, to help the responsible Shaman drop the right totems for the right group. Check it out!
• Speaking of healing, here’s a nice healing pep talk from Healer Aggro: Healers: Never give up, Never surrender! The pictures really tie everything together.
• Joseph Ducreux Explains Eye of the Storm, by He Came From Shattrat. I believe the title is self-explanatory. (I hadn’t heard of this meme before, actually. You learn something new every day!)

While I’m talking about links, I’m pleased to inform you that I’m finally working on piecing together my blogroll. Once I’ve rebuilt it in Google Reader (don’t ask why I have to rebuild it), I’ll write a program to harvest the links in a nice list format to put on the blog. Sure, it will probably take me another few months or more to actually put the links on the blog, but I’m sure I’ll let you all know when it happens.

In the meantime, if you’d like to make sure your blog appears the blogroll (I’m quite sure I’ll miss some by accident), please leave a comment here or ask me on The Twitters. And then soon you’ll see your blog on the blogroll! Magic!

Are there any links you’ve been fond of recently? Share the link love here at the Link Round Up!