Do they have a little engine inside? Does the air flow through the bamboo and somehow propel them that way?

It’s probably for the best I haven’t gotten a player mount version yet. Otherwise I’d work myself into a tizzy trying to figure out how they hover midair.

But they sure look lovely gliding through the air.

Sometimes looking up at the sky can be a little less relaxing than clouds…

I’m not exactly sure where I was when I took this screenshot, but I bet a Sha was around.

Or I was dead. The spirit-realm sky has its share of freaky skies too.

Censor bars for Tauren – it’s the new thing!

At first I wondered if there was a ninja patch since last I played that was purposefully adding that… but then I thought better of it and assumed my copy was glitching out just a little bit.

(My first hint at that is when I got to the login screen and the flashing cursor marker on the password field was about 10 times as tall as it should’ve been. It looked hilarious but I wasn’t able to grab a screenshot as it flashed. Oh well, maybe next time).

The sky is often beautiful rendered in World of Warcraft. I suppose it should be, with all the flying done in and around it. But the clouds! *swoon*

My only wish is that I had been wearing something a little prettier in this shot, haha.

(Okay, two wishes — the second wish is that it would be easier to take screenshots while flying!)

You see, last year I didn’t realize Blizzard had added a new mount, the Swift Lovebird, to the Love Is In The Air event until after the event had finished. And alas, it was one of my favorite model/skins, the pink tallstrider Mazzranache (two of my many hunters use this as one of their main pets – Mamisha, my Tauren hunter, and Likal, my Night Elf hunter. Yet for some reason I had not gotten the Mulgore Hatchling pet until just a few weeks ago when I purchased it off the AH. Wait, I remember why — it has to do with dailies). As soon as I saw the mount I knew I had to get it.

Flash-forward to this year, and on the Wednesday before Love Is In The Air ended I remembered my deep desire for this mount. A bit late there.

Nevertheless, I carried on, and with the help of a few guildies and Jed from twitter to get into a farming spot, I got enough tokens to get my very own!

A fellow Tauren also got her pretty pink mount.

Even more excitingly, my Night Elf hunter Likal, who is on an RP realm, can use the Swift Lovebird as a way to ‘ride’ her pet bird, Kanoni!

Here she is with her pet…

Likal and Kanoni

And here she is riding her pet!

Likal riding her trusty pet and steed, Kanoni

I’ve even made a macro to assist in the mount switching, so two Kanoni’s don’t show up at once!

The ‘Ride Kanoni’ Macro

Here’s the macro text:

/cast [pet] Dismiss Pet
/cast Swift Lovebird
/cast [nopet] Call Pet 1

Sure, it takes a little longer to mount up, but it’s totally worth it!

(Especially once I get into RPing on the Alliance side again >_> ).

Yes, a greater responsibility. Now hand it over!

And after commandeering the farm, I immediately set about working on some work orders, due to my aversion of actually doing dailies (my dislike of quests is high enough that I would rather do this activity of farming than quest. Though admittedly the farm is pretty fun).

Come to me, oh sweet sweet rep.

And did you know the nice seed vendor now sells bags of seeds? You can throw them down in a targeted area, reaching a 2×2 square of plots. Faster planting? Sign me up!

Only downside is that they sit around, taking up bagspace. Of which I don’t have much. Because I never throw anything away.

(And when I do I regret it).

Merchant Greenfield shows off his new wares. I show off my incredibly full bags.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 28,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

(Bonus: Top viewed pictures is Thor shirtless. You know you wanna see that.)

—Misha

And here is a gallery of (most) of the images in the slideshow, if you want a closer look:

-Misha

How could I not? Neat graphics, but more importantly you could be a super hero.

Such was my introduction to the City of Heroes.

City of Heroes

I don’t remember if I had purchased the game right away or didn’t receive it until that Christmas (it was likely the latter).

Celt Paladin

I do know I never played it while school was in session; my parents wouldn’t allow it and I couldn’t afford it (money and grades wise. Given the choice between homework and fun MMO, I think I would’ve picked the MMO every time). But the times during the break I played a lot of CoH.

It was fun. My first character I made as a tanker, like my friend’s fire/fire tanker. Of course, I picked one of the worst combinations (Mace/Earth), but it made for a great character concept. Thus Celt Paladin was born; a knight out of time and place.

Adiutrix

I made many other characters there as well; Audiutrix, a healing/dark mutant who’s face is creepy enough that it’s always hidden. Snow Kitty, plucky young student who studies magic on the side. Madame Tempest, a government scientist harnessing the power of weather for good. The EPA – that’s right, the Environmental Protection Agencies own super hero (I don’t think I played on her very much, but the concept still makes me grin).

Oh the fun we had, joining exciting mission teams with others (CoH definitely encourages teaming with others, especially when your tank has trouble killing things or your blaster (or blapper, as they might be) keeps getting killed. Task Forces — a series of missions in a related story, likely to take down a named villain of some kind — were very fun too, if you had the time to sit down and do them.

Killing Hamidon

And my friend often did this thing called a ‘Hami Raid’ with the super group, that I only recently got to experience. That’s right, my friend was Level 50 long before I even got there, yet due to CoH’s innovative mentor/sidekick system, she could still play with me and vis versa. Few games have implemented a system like that, which easily scales your enemies and teammates to the appropriate level for the encounter. They later changed it to be even more convenient, something I wish other games would do even more.

Sorceress Silvae

And much of that took place before the City of Villains expansion, for which I was quite excited. I made Sorceress Silvae, Celt Paladin’s ancient rival who for some reason also ended up in the same future. Silver Tiger, a stylish ninja fighter who for good amongst the bad. Palandromic, the mastermind of symmetry, with her minions HannaH and TattarrattaT (and more recently, ReinieR).

Palindromic and her ninjas – HannaH, TattarrattaT, and ReinieR.

The gameplay still works great. The leveling can be a bit grindy, but the game has so many good bones that many other games have either copied or never picked up for themselves. Achievements? Please – CoH had badges since forever! Travel powers? Only other super hero mmos grabbed these, and not quite the same way. The enhancement/power system is still complex, with many interesting and challenging character builds available. I still get moments of awe and wonder when someone who has a powerset I don’t comes around and does an awesome ability/buff that makes me go ‘I want one of those! (Too bad I’m slow at leveling, because all the cool powers are the last you get)’.

And now we’ll never see this game again because a company doesn’t like the odd game out and isn’t making enough money from it.

This is partly my fault, in theory — I haven’t paid for the game in ages.

Celt Paladin hanging out with Detective Doom

I had just started playing again with my friend, having resolved the next time we’d play I’d start paying small amounts of money to reinstate my invention usage. And then out of the blue they announced they were shutting the game down. Just like that.

Obviously they aren’t going to change their minds about this, no matter the amount of protesting done. And no one wants to buy it (or could afford to), and they don’t want to sell. City of Heroes IP will be locked away and we shant see it again, the original and perhaps best super hero MMO, even though we’d like to.

What surprises me the most is that they just pulled the plug. The dev team was taken by surprise (I think), to hear that they’re somewhat profitable game was getting the can, along with, you know, their jobs. Apparently the people at the headquarters were just looking at some bottom line somewhere, that they didn’t even attempt to rework how things were going or cut the dev staff and development of the game (because I’m sure people would be alright with little new content, or less new content in general). Instead the whole game is just gone. Awful.

Hami raid is preparing to attack…

And CoH didn’t show the signs of an MMO that is going away, at least not the typical ones. The dev team was working away on a new release that they had been promoting just days before it was announced the game would shut down. There were no mentions of loss of profits, no desperate server moves, no doom and gloom talk making their way around the interwebs. Just one day it was said it was shutting down, with little reasoning nor fanfare.

There are many aspects of the game I will never get to see. I had not been playing when the Going Rogue expansion came out, and now I wish I had (of course). The Praetorian Earth storyline seemed really neat, and the ability to switch some heroes or villains to the opposite side seems like it would’ve been nice to try out. Plus many options that were available previously (such as becoming a Peacebringer) had been locked from those without paying accounts. Now with the store gone, it is impossible to try out these forms of gameplay.

But even with that there is still so many things to do in just a few short days. My friend and I are spending some time playing the game again, maybe as a way to say goodbye. I know it’ll be harder for her than it is for me. She’s been max level for a long time. The game — and the people in it — helped her through some tough times during college.

Celt Paladin’s ID – Level 50

It’s been a long goal of her to get my main, Celt Paladin, up to level 50 instead of sitting at the mid-fourties like I have for years, which was finally completed when I dinged to 50 this weekend after a two month-long effort to get her there.

It’s always been there as a backup, something to pull out and play again. Maybe that’s what makes it shutting down even more bitter. Not like an old console game you can pull out again to relive the memories. Once it’s gone it’s gone.

Will I boycott NCSoft? Probably not, unfortunately. I enjoy some of their other games, mainly Guild Wars. But will I forever associate them with this decision, to shut down a game before it’s time? Yes. And will I trust them not to be so callous with their other games? I don’t think so. Will I be the first to jump on their new MMOs and games, whatever they may be? I don’t think so, either.

Most of my City of Heroes characters, posing with their awesome costumes.

Further Reading:

Ten Things To Do In City of Heroes Before It’s Gone

A Mild Mannered Reporter: The Passion for City of Heroes

A Mild Mannered Reporter: The Cost of Closing City of Heroes

Jukebox Heroes: City of Heroes Soundtrack

Meta’s Verse: City of Heroes Innovations

A Mild Mannered Reporter: Potential New Homes After City of Heroes

Making Pandas… Later

First thing I thought I would do would be to make a baby panda monk on my main server. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a name that fit my naming scheme (must start with an M!) and I really didn’t want to just rush one together. Thanks to @_anea for suggesting Maizhu; that just might do. We’ll see.

I did like the look of the new character creator though. Pretty spiffy.

Also, what is up with hair highlights for Pandas? Weird, amirite?

Their technology and culture are so advanced that they can make hair highlights! I haven’t decided just how many of my pandas will get said highlights though… (It’s neat you can have black fur base with brown hair highlights!)

I Choose You, Lil’ XT!

So abandoning panda creation for the time being, I logged onto my main and made a beeline for the pet trainer. You know, to train battle pets. Then began the arduous process of picking out my favorite pets (like near half the list), then adding some more favorites to make sure I had a good cross spectrum of abilities there. And then the battles began!

Pet Battle – Capture That Dung Beetle!

And it was very fun! It’s a little repetitive if you do a lot at once, but it makes for a nice break. I kept switching my pets around so I would always have attacks that worked to my advantage (after the first disastrous battle in which I had the weakness!) It would be nice if you could save sets for your team. Maybe this would be a good addon… (and it turns out it is! Fancy that. Thanks to @vitaemachina for pointing that one out!)

I also love that I’ll now have another activity to do on my bank alts, or on my twinks/leveling toons while I wait for a dungeon. I have plenty o’ pets that could use some leveling, so I think it will last me quite some time. A much better mini-game than archeology, I reckon.

Only downside about it being account wide is that you’ll get achievements for collecting pets and winning battles on alts instead of your main. I know the achievements are account wide, but it bugs me seeing an alts name instead of my main’s name. Maybe because instead of them being “Mishaweha’s pets” they are now “Everyones’ Pets”. Obviously this means I’m going to need duplicates.

Sweet! An achievement! … on Methril? But Misha did most of the work!

Did I Mention I Dislike Questing?

Because I do. A lot. I’m not sure why; it’s probably because I prefer healing to dps. And if I’m not in the right mood for questing, it seems to take a loooong time and I get bored easily. I suspect I’ll get most of my leveling done through instances and not quests, and it will still take me forever. (I have a feeling my guildies are making bets as to when I’ll hit max level and are probably placing it sometime late October, haha…)

My Fugly Enhancement Gear. It’s mostly leftovers from raids. Turns out we didn’t have a lot of people wanting mail agility gear. Either way, I’m too cheap to transmog something that will be replaced soon.

But if the storyline is interesting enough, I’ll be more willing to quest. And while the Horde introductory questline is interesting, it really rubs me the wrong way, which is not good for my ability to keep questing.

And that brings us to the title of the post:

For the… Horde?

Because I don’t think I can support the Horde if they keep acting like real, actual bad guys.

As that is what they are most definitely doing with the introduction to Mists (Nooo Theramore) and the few quests I’ve completed (I haven’t gotten very far yet; I’m still in the first zone. Hopefully things change direction and I’m just jumping the gun here. But it bugged me that much!)

It’s a little rough, coming in with a Manifest Destiny attitude to an obviously well developed and lived in land (did we not see those ANCIENT RUINS and this VILLAGE WITH PANDA PEOPLE IN IT?) when throughout the rest of the game we have been Heroes of the Horde. Suddenly attacking (presumably) defenceless alliance because Garrosh made angry faces at us? Not a heroes style, certainly not my character’s or mine at any rate.

Sure, I can understand that in theory, a good portion of the Horde is following Garrosh. But I’m presuming the majority of players are definitely not with him, and not having a voice — in-game — to voice a dissenting opinion is a little annoying.

And I know the Horde and Alliance have fought in many places throughout the game (*cough*Battlegrounds*cough*), including the destruction of town in Cataclysm itself (excluding Theramore), but for some reason the current expansion’s initial entry to Pandaria seems more direct and generally more unpleasant. From the sounds of it, I can only expect it to escalate the rest of the expansion.

Even the Pandaren we meet early on seems to question the Horde’s idea to “paint the continent red” – why are we fighting? (Wait that sounds familiar…)

You’re preaching to the choir, Gi-Oh. Preaching to the choir.

At least we (probably) get to kill Garrosh later, which should smooth things over a bit (I hope). But how can I, in the meantime, support the Horde like I have in the past OOC like when we are obviously the bad guys now? The Alliance can always hold this against us forever, so then I have to be all apologetic all the time. What a pain.

Unless the Alliance do something equally as horrible as what the Horde does, at which point we can both just put our atrocities behind us and be friends. Right? RIGHT?

Post Them Glyphs!

Anyway, all this ‘killing alliance because we can’ business got me down (and the infinite mob spawns that were swarming me got me down too, but nevermind that), so I decided to check my auctions for a bit.

Glyph sales have actually stagnated for me a little bit, from the 15k in one day high it was when the patch first hit. I’ve had a little more competition than I usually have had (Ysera has quite a few people who post glyphs); usually I see a decrease in my sales when someone new joins the fray or I happen to get caught posting right before my competitors do.

However, I think sales will pick up as people start leveling more, maybe later this week or next week. Either way I think I’ll stop refreshing the auctions every day and go back to my two-ish day cycle for awhile.

Cancel/report glyphs every day? Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Leather, Glorious Leather

Inspired by the auction house and incredibly fast mob spawns, I logged back onto Mishaweha and started farming leather from the cats in the first zone. Mmm, leather!

One of our guildies always used to say “Just leaving money on the ground!” when there were leather mobs unskinned (and unlooted. She would always call out to the people who didn’t lot their skinnable mobs so she could skin them!) And boy, is there a lot of money on the ground! I followed a few people around and skinned their kitties (and helped them kill them too, once I knew they weren’t going to skin them. That’s the one thing about skinning other people’s mob – you wait until they leave the kill site before going in the skin them, lest you steal their skin!)

I got a little over 3 stacks of the base leather, which isn’t too shabby considered most of the leather was sha-touched. Still haven’t decided if I’ll sell it or use it for my LW. I know you’re supposed to sell it but I hate buying mats off the AH because I am cheap. And I’ll need about 300 leather or scales to level LW up, too! Sounds… fun. XD

The Leather – It is Exotic! Also, check out those prices! Let me waffle on selling them until it is too late.

Running Dungeons

The last thing I did was run a dungeon with a mostly guild group. I was skinning while we waited for one person to get his iLvl up high enough to run the instance.

We got the brewery one. I had a pretty fun time, though I didn’t get a chance to really read anything that was going on because my guildie tank is definitely of the ‘gogogo’ mentality (also, he’s good at tanking and I’m good at healing so no problem there).

However, we did hit a little snafu at the first boss when I and two others followed the monkeys out of the boss’s room and then got locked out. Whoops.

So that just left the tank and the pug dps fighting the boss. Needless to say they died. Whoops.

Both a guildie on vent and @NicolaiGrunnet commented that this was a fairly common occurrence, even in beta, so I feel a bit better. I felt even more better after I got to ride around on barrels during the fight itself. Whee!

But the rest of the instance went well. It was pretty fun, actually. Like the part when you heal while drunk (in-game). Whoo! Blurry screen!

So how have your pandaland adventures gone so far? Let me know in the comments!

Ah, this is much more pleasant than staring at Deathwing’s face.