In the Kingdom of the Blind...

Sometimes, writing it down makes it easier to cope with.

It is taking time, but I am finally getting my head around what I've been given by the Pet Battle Gods.

At first the list of over 400 pets was, quite frankly, a bit much to cope with. Once I'd had a bit of time to sit and think, it occurred to me I needed a visual representation of what I had to consider, and so for the last hour I've written down every spare pet I'd have once I slim down my collection in Pandaria. This list represents my 'stockpile', I suppose, most of it unintentional over seven years of collecting. What it makes me realise is that there will be a vast 'range' of pets available once the Battle System goes live, and by that I mean distinct differences between pets purchasable on vendors or farmable in the wild, and pets 'caged' and sold by people like me.

As it stands we'll have the following:

• BoE Vendor Pets (e.g., Calico Cat, Red Moth)
• 'Caged' Versions of the same pets.
• BoE Reputation Pets (Sporebat)
• 'Caged' (and presumably reputation-free) Versions of the same pets.
• Festival Pets
• 'Caged' Versions of the same pets.
• World Drop Pets...
  
  

... you can see where I'm going by now. Yes, many of these pets will, over time, sell for coppers (I am sure) but in the first weeks of the expansion... anything in a cage is probably going to attract some interest. That could mean this list is worthwhile making if only to know what pets I should shift early and which should be laid down and allowed to mature...

There has been a lot of speculation as to the value of 'Rare' pets: you can find my list from Beta here but there is a decent chance this list will change when we get to Live, and currently there is no real indicator of what will get the Blue rating. Looking at my personal list, I'd identify the following pets as potentially decent sellers:

• Giant Sewer Rat (for the time it takes to fish)
• Strand Crawler (fishing dailies that not everyone cares to do)
• Bananas (CCG pet, don't ask why I have 2)
• Chuck (and indeed his compatriots from the 'Crocolisks in the City' quest)
  

These guys I think, considering how random they are to obtain on a regular basis, are going to sell because they are so damn rare to begin with, and started their lives Soulbound. The overriding advantage of this entire system with the cages is the ability to make something only you can pick up available to the entire population of your server with just two clicks, and as a result you shouldn't underestimate the value of anything obtained via those means. The lower tier of this are pets in the Darkmoon Family and anything obtained via a Festival, where time grinding is required to produce a result. However, with many pets freely available and bind-free, the difference between a caged version and a non-caged version is likely to be negligible. This is where, in a years time, I can see people simply playing pet battles to max level these non-wild pets so they can be AH-d for profit. It won't happen initially I think because the majority of people will want to keep their own pets in the first instance, but once you have your achievements... let's see if I'm right in a year from now :P

There are also other pets on my 'Rare' list that will truly deserve the tag, and are cageable:

• Mr Grubbs
• Tiny Shale Spider
• Baradin Fox Kit
  
  

The Fox Kit has become purchasable for 200 Baradin's Wardens tokens, so if you have an alt with a bunch it might well be worth your while grinding the dailies up to snag one. Mr Grubbs is a drop from having completed all the quests in EPL so if you haven't done the quests in that area again, might be worth a trip out before the Expansion. The Shale spider drops if you kill Jadefang in Deepholm: I'll direct you to the excellent WoW Rare Spawns site by Euphyley for that one, but with a 6-12 hour spawn window this one might also be worth a serious punt.

However, I will make one more point here: don't learn your pets if you get them, keep them in your bags for now. This is just to be careful, in case Blizzard decide to reduce the number of pets you can hold at one time come the Expansion. It's not that i don't trust Blizzard, you understand, its just that I just like to be careful. When the one eyed man is king, it can give you a false sense of perspective to begin with, and you can never be too careful when it comes down to pixels...

Giants, Dings and MOAR DIGGING!

Pretty certain you are not working as intended, Mr Rogue...

You Know when There is New Content #312 when you zone into SW and get assaulted by a giant troll. I did as any attentive blogger would and took a screenie, not sure what was going on, until Navamie put me straight. According to The Daily Frostwolf: Druid Edition this is a Rogue using a Glyph of Disguise which is good to know, because if it were an actual Giant Troll Invasion Event I'd have looked a bit stupid just shrugging my shoulders and moving on.

Last night I sent ten people off to DS (which they destroyed with style, leading me to programme an alt run on Sunday and for the prospect of Heroic Morchok to become a distinct possibility) and decided to give Archy a proper look-over. I wasn't awake earlier in the week and didn't check the dig rate with sufficient care, and a Guildie last night asked me to confirm what I now know is true: Archaeology has been buffed pre-Expansion, to the rates I was seeing initially on Beta. That means you'll get six dig sites per 'area', which should be enough for everyone to get some holes filled pre-Pandaria:

No, you can't have the Pandaria data, its not ready yet!

I suspect this means, now I have my Warlock talented and doing a semblance of decent DPS, I'll have a real go at grabbing the Vial of the Sands recipe with her before the Expansion, as various people have (correctly IMO) predicted it could be a very good seller in the long term. This should mean some extra Archy Battle Pets as well...

Finally, very late in the day, I went and checked on my Paladin, who I'd left five bars short of 85. Needless to say, I got a bit of a shock:

Blimey Charlie!

If I was in any doubt how much XP has been reduced in the 80-85 bracket, this brought it right home. The next question was simple: where should I go to earn my 1 XP?

BIG SCREENIE, small XP gain :D

That makes it 12 85's pre-Expansion. I'll not have a chance to sort anything out with the Pally this weekend, as I'd totally forgotten OMG DARKMOON FAIRE this weekend and that's pets so I kinda need to sort out those people who don't have all their Grisly Trophies which means OMG TALENTS AND SPECS [FX: Head Explodes]

Needless to say, I'm going to need a bigger cup of tea... ^^

Calling a Spade a... er... Spade!

No, I'm not swapping my bow for this... ^^

A small but important change has appeared in 5.0.4 (quite apart from additional food and drink on Azerothian Vendors, which you can see in this photo album on our Facebook sister site) Skiining Knives and Mining Picks now have a basic +10 to their skill, and a new item has been added for herbalists: the Herbalist's Spade.

As it stands this +10 skill does not stack with the Gnomish Army Knife (which has itself been given a + 10 increase to the three gathering skills) It also appears that the Gathering enchant I have on my gloves isn't stacking either, plus the two Zulian Slicers I now have are rather less useful than they were pre-patch:

I see what you did there ^^

Stacking myself to 540 for skinning is a lot harder than it was pre-patch, and clearly this change is deliberate. I am wondering if Finkle's Skinner has also undergone a change... ^^

Farming Today: No Limits

Techno, Techno, Techno, Techno ^^

5.0.4 will be remembered for many things. For me, without a doubt, AOE Looting is 'up there' as one of the biggest Quality of Life improvements Blizzard have made. Farming is something I've done in computer games since Screamer Slices in Dungeon Master. I am used to repetitive grinding. Probably why the above song still has a place in my heart...

However I'd argue the best Quality of Life improvement isn't AOE-related, it's limit-based. Or rather, it isn't any more. There is no cap on the number of Daily Quests you can complete.

Oh how I love piles of loot.

The significance of this change only sank in this morning as I went hunting for some Knothide Leather. I go to Shadowmoon Valley by choice because the Netherwing Mines have really decent respawn rates and (unless you've done the Netherwing quests) isn't that easy to enter in the first place. This morning it registered: I can hand in the extinct for me daily quests without them mucking up my 'total' for any 85 dailies I might do later. I can gather extra cash by handing in stuff I'd normally just vendor (and in the case of Crystals make more money than I would doing so)

I suspect the potential for additional cash will already be at the front of many people's minds. Certainly Wintergrasp is one place I can think of where it would be worthwhile picking up the quests if I'm farming, but the sheer number of dailies currently available across the Old World will pale into insignificance compared with what you can make money with come Pandaria. I'm certainly not recommending this as a sure fire way to earn your fortune, but in situations like Netherwing where you are in a zone already, it makes sense to pick them up to add to your total gold farmed.

I feel the key to any successful farm is the number of items you can gather simultaneously, all of which should add some financial gain to your total exercise. If you're farming Old World mats in the weeks leading up to Pandaria, perhaps to level a profession or sell on the AH, don't forget that there could be some extra pennies to be had in the area you are farming. After all, every little helps :D

AOE Loot Contest Reminder!

Just a reminder: The AoE Loot Contest is now LIVE :D

For full details of the Rulez, go here. Prizes are ACTUAL AWARDS (trust me, they look AWESOME) courtesy of my Husband and as soon as they are complete I'll be sure to bring you pictures. The contest runs from August 30th and will then close on Wednesday, September 5th (at midnight BST) After that, the winners will be announced on Friday, September 7th.

Please send your Screenies to the following address:

I hope you have a Loot-Packed Weekend and am looking forward to seeing the fruits of your labours!

Pet Taming News Update!

Yes, you're reading that right.

Sometimes it pays to keep your eyes open.

About 10 minutes ago I saw a hunter with an odd pet in SW. 'Hmm,' I thought, 'that shouldn't be happening until Pandaria.' Curious, I took myself to Zangermarsh sharpish and yes, what I saw was true.

You can tame Water Striders as of right now. That's Boglash, there.

Why on earth would I want a water strider, you ask? They look so flimsy! I'm not going to fight with it, silly, I'm going to fish with it... :D

I will NEVER need a Potion of Water Walking EVER again... :D I'm also kinda glad that BM's being more and more useful every single day I'm specced into it :D

The Exotic Buff for this pet is actually pretty special, especially for a 5 man Group:

BRB, off to see if The Black Stalker is tameable in the Underbog... [UPDATE: Yes, yes it is :D]

A New Start :D

Click for bigness. Expect an LFR Loot Post later :D

Its neither big nor that clever, but this what I'll be staring at across my family come Pandaria.

It is not in all honesty that much different from my old interface, except everything has been shifted further to the edges of the screen. I like to have Raid Frames active regardless of whether I'm healing or dps-ing and ever since Blizzard introduced their own I've used them to cut down on the nimber of addons I am dependant on. Bartender 4 forms the basis of the UI 'buttons': mounts, professions and foodstuffs to the left, macros on their own bar to the right. My bags are hidden under Blizzard's Loot window because, quite frankly, I won't need to click on the loot until it arrives in my bags anyway. I'm using a default version of Sexymap to minimise the clutter and Recount/Omen sit up at the top left for ease of access.

My concession to gubbins comes with Titan, which I've reduced from two bars to the single transparent one at the top of the screen. Once Glamour is updated (assuming it is) that will find a spot in here but that's it, really. I don't want too much stuff around and as I fight new bosses I need to see as much of the action as possible. I'm quite pleased with this and although I suspect there will be tweaking, this is pretty good and I'm comfortable with the way it plays, especially in the chaos that is LFR...

[EDIT: as someone has asked, let me break the layout down a bit further.

This took me a couple of hours peace and quiet this morning to visualise, and involves the following top-quality addons (all current)

Shadowed Unit Frames
Sexymap
Bartender 4
Chatter
Titan
Decursive
Omen 3
Quartz
Recount
Tom Tom

It is using Fontain to change the default Blizzard font (not current but not causing any LUA errors) and Norganna's Slidebar. Raid interface is Blizzard's own.]

A Clean Slate.

I am SURE this wasn't here on Tuesday...

I'd like to apologise to everybody for yesterday.

It has been a while since my brain experienced that level of information overload: I am reminded of the days after the first TBC changes came through and I wandered about aimlessly for the best part of a week. Waking up this morning I've decided the best plan of action, before I throw myself into anything else, is to clean up my act. Therefore, we're going to start again from scratch.

There's enough interface elements now current and operable for me to rebuild a new UI, enough elements broken or not doing what I want to make the cleanup a worthwhile exercise. After that, I will be rebooting all my resource trackers and 'starting from 0' (as far as that will be possible) New pages again will be filled in my various paper reference books, and we will start making some proper plans for what happens in Pandaria. I still have the list of inks I'll need to make the outstanding Hunter glyphs, after that it is the rest of my classes to do and then.... clean slate.

I have various 'things' after that which need to be addresses, and with no pre-Expansion event happening to worry about this time around, I'll have plenty of time to get myself ship-shape before the Expansion arrives. Without further ado, let's get to it!

Information Overload!

I could do without the STUPID QUESTIONS today... ^^

5.0.4 has arrived, and since lunchtime I've been trying to get my head around everything that's changed, ALL AT ONCE. This is where having twelve alts becomes a distinct handicap, and as has often been the case in previous patches I'm pretending eleven of them don't exist right now, focussing simply on my Hunter (who as GM I need able to raid and instance to help out other Guildies) Thus far, I have been able to establish the following:

• Gun looks good on my back :D
  

Looking FINE, Check!

• Thanks to the Wonders of the WHU, I have talents that work, a rearranged set of (mostly) functional action bars, a correctly specced pet and some stuff to get used to. Mostly right now its pressing more buttons, and watching more closely for my Focus Fire procs. We'll have to test it out in situ later to see if I'm properly sorted.
• I manually reforged myself to 7.5% Hit and 7.5% Expertise. I only changed one enchant on my gloves. GO ME.
• I went from having 181 pets to OVER 400.

Many Squires! HANDLE IT!

The pet situation is somewhat clearer than it was yesterday, and having merged all my characters it is apparent the 'three per account' limit is not yet in force :p However I am confused with the numbers of some pets I appear to have and as a result I'm not deleting ANYTHING cageable, however low the value, from my Journal until the system's clarified by Blizzard. Clearly however the Argent Squire is useless as I can't cage them, so deleting those down to just the one copy will be my main way to reduce my pet numbers initially. I'm also overjoyed that I have two Vampiric Batlings from the pre-TBC World Event. That pet alone could keep me in Yaks for a while... :D

Talking of pets, you should go buy your own Warbot if you're in the EU. You can get them either from the Toy Shop in Dalaran or the roaming vendor in SW:

Don't forget your fuel too :D I believe these guys can battle :P

Finally, my brain went into self-imposed meltdown with the sheer number of NEW ACHIEVEMENTS available once Pandaria arrives: Loremaster is back (I even got a spare tabard shipped to me in the mail) but suddenly there are more important issues to consider than talenting 11 other alts to a fightable standard:

 

I didn't realise how close I was to 10k. THIS MUST BE COMPLETED.

With the safeties off on Daily Quest Totals, this suddenly seems like a REALLY GOOD IDEA to complete before Pandaria hits... :D

There's so much I haven't done, and I've not even tried AOE looting yet, or naming my pets or lots of other stuffs... but I can already say that I declare the first 3.2 hours of 5.0.4 an unqualified success. Bring on the Pre-Panda Buildup!

Hints of What's To Come?

As I'm sitting here waiting for the last of our various machines to patch, I've been doing some digging around the 'transitional' Armoury. A lot is in flux currently: my Hunter only has two weapon slots (and a far higher ilevel than she had before the patch began) so I am aware that what I'm seeing may not be strictly accurate and subject to change. However, having read a number of comments yesterday about fluctuations in Achievement Points, I thought I'd better check where I was when I logged off last night. When I left P by the Hunter Trainers (force of habit ^^) she had 11650 AP. According to the Armoury, she now has 11560, a 90 point discrepancy.

Of course, I went looking for them :D

No longer completed, eh...?

My first thought was the World Events, and sure enough here I am, showing four events with points unawarded. My 'Long Strange Trip' Achievement remains intact however. So, what could have changed here?

We know Brewfest has a L90 boss. If we (logically) assume that killing him will reactivate those 10 points, what's changed on those other three? Merrymaker has the Grinch in Alterac, which could also logically be updated to 90. In that case, why isn't the Lunar Festival showing a changed Omen (or indeed an updated Headless Horseman, which comes in November?) Maybe it is something more fundamental in the mechanics of the events... or it could simply be an Armoury glitch (as when you pick the specific events they all list as 100% complete) The only way I'm going to know for sure is to be able to log in and find out what is missing in game.

Now all I need to do is locate the other missing 50 points... ^^

Checks and Balances

Last night I threw caution to the wind and didn't spend the evening trying to catch up on anything that was likely to vanish. I took a deep breath, stopped panicking and actually went and did some useful faffing.... :D

I have a large number of recipes I hear you may be interested in...

I've had a modest 'stock' of Waterlogged Recipes sitting in the Vanity Bank for a while, it seemed high time that I spent them ahead of the patch. It also occurred to me that the number of Cookery Awards they give (five per turn in) could well be nerfed down when everything becomes an Epicurean Award. Such 'tweaking' is nothing new, after all...


I also made a visual record of all the important totals that matter to P as we go into 5.0.4:

We salute the wonder that is Titan :D

If I read all the various stuffs from yesterday correctly I'll end up with OVER 9000 JP's (and no means to get any new VP's BOOO), a decent stack of Epicurean Awards and still nothing useful to do with all those Marks of the World Tree :p Ah well ^^

I'm ready to go here at ALT: ernative Towers: machine is patched, latest addons are installed, but Eu maintenance means I'll be lucky if I see any action in game before 2pm BST. In the intervening period I'll be doing some faffing to the webby, downloading updates to GW2 (yes I will be playing it to see what all the fuss is about) and generally hanging around on Twitter trying not to make too much of a nuisance of myself... :P

Needless to say, as soon as I'm up and online, you'll hear about it :D

Fame At Last!

It appears that word is getting about, and today marks my scriptwriting debut :p

Click Here to visit The Realm Maintenance Website!

If you enjoyed reading my take on the 5.0.4 Patch Notes late last week, you can now hear the talented Rho of Alea Iacta Est on the Earthen Ring-US realm giving them a voice in his Podcast, Realm Maintenance. I've never been 'used' in this way before, so I'd like to publicly thank Rho a) for asking me first (amazing the number of people who never do) and b) doing a really good job of giving them the emphasis exactly where I'd planned it to be. Nice Job, Sir!

I also suffered a slight site meltdown last night, thanks in the main to the following Tweet:

Well OF COURSE I retweeted it... :D

When you have approximately 45,000 followers, that kind of message is going to leave a mark :p Thanks to WoW Insider for giving me a shout out, and as a result I'm in the process of getting some ACTUAL PROPER AWARDS made up for the Contest winners, pictures of which I hope to have available shortly!

I'm also hearing confirmed reports that the #mopreleasedate Contest Winners T-Shirts are arriving in the US and Canada, so hopefully everyone will be in possession of their winning garments shortly :D

We now return you to our scheduled Tuesday Faffing :D

The Last Days of Cataclysm...

Mr Flintlocke lays it down.

As I type this the US is about to go into 5.0.4, and I have a mere 24 hours of blind panicking organised faffing before the World of Warcraft changes forever. That'll be that, then ^^

There have been times during this expansion when it felt I was the only person enjoying themselves. The fact that so many people I know considered Cataclysm not only a chore but also a colossal waste of time should be enough of an indicator that yes, Blizzard got it wrong. Whether it was the appallingly-concieved Molten Front dailies (if it works once that doesn't mean it'll work on the ninth time around) or the Seven Circles of Hell that LFR has become for anyone with an ounce of common sense or the ability to feel anything, Cataclysm missed the target for a vast majority of people. I think my new Blogging compadre The GrownUp at Confessions of a Grown-Up Gamer sums up how this Expansion fits into the scheme of things quite well (via Blog Azeroth's Ice Cream Flavours topic) Cataclysm was French Vanilla: trying to be something it wasn't, struggling to taste familiar and ending up doing anything but.

Of course, in financial terms, this game continues to be an unstoppable behemoth, but even Blizzard have publicly admitted they may not have hit all the targets they were aiming for. That means, when this first patch is applied, there will be countless changes not simply for the sake of them or because the developers felt they were needed. There has been an almost unprecedented amount of user input into this new set of talents, these new spec setups, even the way the game is laid out for people to take in. The question now remains whether all of this will bring people back to the game, whether it will go some way to repairing the fairly large amount of seething ill-will that still remains in large sections of the gaming community. For everyone who considers Warcraft a great game there are, it seems, almost an equal number of fervent critics or those who just stopped playing because it was just not fun anymore AND THIS WILL NEVER CHANGE. I sense Blizzard isn't looking at people like me with this new Expansion, I'm a given for coming back and learning everything for a fourth time. Blizzard's looking to the left for the haters on this one.

Something has changed in the last few weeks, that much is obvious. I've seen long-term absentees come back with enthusiasm, with the possibility of even longer term players who've been away returning for a look at how things are going to change. Undoubtedly a lot of this is tied to the quality of life amendments the game is now offering: a fair LFR looting system, more flexible questing paths, an immersive lore system that has already begun its work via the new Theramore novel. The upcoming Scenario we'll have to wait for that reveals this 'in game' is still a couple of weeks away, which in itself is actually clever planning on Blizzard's part. We've been given time to learn our new talents, to grasp mechanics and master rotations, rather than being thrown in at the deep end. That's a step forward, an acknowledgement that even the best player isn't going to pick this up straight away.

Cataclysm actually had a lot going for it: the changes to 1-60 quest areas is woefully overlooked by most people (mostly because Blizzard puts the best rewards in LFG, which needs to be changed) Firelands was actually one of the more tolerable reboots of Old World Bosses with some genuinely challenging fights (Ragnaros Mark 2 still gives me nightmares, and I never even saw Heroic Mode) and actually, those last two fights in Dragon Soul are a decent example of how an 'old' game can still bring a fresh new approach to the concept of the Boss Fight.  However, all this will soon be forgotten if Pandaria does what it is capable of and 'brings all the boys to the yard'. I have no doubt that, at least for the levelling portion of the first month, many people will come back on a monthly sub 'just for a look'. The acid test (of course) will be how many are raiding at Christmas and beyond, and whether Blizzard's gambit of radically redesigning pretty much every part of the post-levelling experience for the casual bears the vital subscription harvest.

Blizzard appear in confident mood: Blizzcon 2013's just been confirmed, and the level of anticipation around my part of the Blogsphere is palpable. Let's see if they can deliver the goods, shall we?

Not Today.

Sometimes, Real Life is a Git.

Today has been one of THOSE days and there will be nothing game related here as a result. Rest assured however, frantic panicking continues unabated and will return again tomorrow.

To those of you about to go into Maintenance and take 5.0.4 by the gonads, we salute you, wish you 'Good Luck' and REALLY hope they're not removing Old Skool Scholo with this patch... ^^

Important 5.0.4 Battle Pet Changes!

With thanks to @NevAHAddict on Twitter, it appears that there's been a quiet change to the status quo Mumper promised with pets come 5.0.4. This blue post appeared yesterday:

When Patch 5.0.4 goes live in the next week, we will be implementing systems that prepare characters for the Pet Battles system that is coming with World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, and bringing account-wide non-combat pets to the game. During the patching process, non-combat pets will be migrated among your characters, with the final result being all of your non-combat pets available to all of your characters. This initial adjustment to your catalog of pets includes several changes that are worth noting.


1. There will be a limit of 500 pets, per player, that can be carried going forward.

• Players will be allowed to go over the 500 pet cap during the 5.0.4 migration.
  
• The migration will not convert more than a total of 1500 pets for a player.
  
• Unique pets will be merged, so there will not be more than one unique pet on an account.

2. Pets that can only be used by characters of the other faction will be greyed out.

• Such pets can only be summoned by characters of the proper faction.
  
• Examples include: Balloons, Moonkin Hatchlings.
  
• There are certain pets that will not be account-wide. Examples include: Guild Page, Guild Herald, Argent Squire, Argent Gruntling.
  

3. Players should not see more than one of any unique pets. Examples include: Lil' KT, Murky, and Frosty.

4. All standard pets will be merged, with a limit of three per type. Players who currently have more than three of the same pet across their characters will see a total of three after the migration. Examples of standard pets: Orange Tabby Cat, Brown Prairie Dog, Crimson Whelpling.

Source.

The key here is the number of pets we'd have in our 'storage' once the merge took effect: previously it was specified that many more than three copies would be allowable, this has now clearly changed. This is not good news for anyone (like me) who might have multiple alts with multiple (rare) pets and who might have been considering selling them off come Pandaria. It also makes me REALLY glad that I've not been learning pets from Fishing Dailies etc in the last couple of weeks but instead storing them in my bags. This position has now also been clarified in the same thread:


Pets that your characters have learned are going to be merged, and will be account-wide thereafter.  

Pets that are items will be unaffected.


Finally the position on caging pets has been made clear prior to Pandaria:


Caging and trading caged pets are Mists of Pandaria functions. You'll see some mention of it after the 5.0.4 patch, but you won't be doing it until the expansion.


So, if you're planning to spend the last month before the Expansion collecting additional pets for sale in Pandaria itself, please bear these things in mind :D

Mog Post : Red Alert!

Me and the boys :D

It was time for a Mog Change.

I've been playing with the idea of one for a while, as I've been wearing my 'main' mog since Azerothian Mog Madness arrived. With Pandaria coming up it seemed like a perfect time for the switch, and I've been considering a number of factors which would contribute to what the Mog entailed:

• The spec I'd be using to level (and by extension what hunter pets I had to utilise)
• The fact that, for 5 levels, I'm restricted to a ground mount
• The fact I ultimately lose my melee weapon and gain my ranged weapon on my back
• The desire to use Bloodmail Legguards as a base for the Mog

As a result, I've faffed for several weeks, waiting for the moment when I had the outfit to my satisfaction and I could gather the mats for the two crafted items I'd chosen as key pieces. Last night, I was in a position to do it, and even though the melee weapon becomes redundant on Wednesday, I mogged anyway.

With dragons a theme for Pandaria, the Dragonbreath Hand Cannon is a no-brainer...

When I lose the staff next week, there will no longer be the worry about a glow ruining the look of my main weapon, though ironically the green agi enchant goes very well with the general 'feel' of the outfit, and looks particularly good when I'm sitting on the ground mount I've chosen to use as I'm levelling in Pandaria, the Fiery Warhorse's Reins:

Am now even more depressed I lose my melee weapon :(

Mogging has stopped being just about an outfit for me: pets are just as important (hence the matching Core Hounds which not simply bring co-ordination but also utility in my BM with the Ancient Hysteria 'Heroism/Bloodlust' buff) as is my mount, and I will be spending some time once my mounts become a 'central repository' next week in matching mogs to vanity pets and mount for each 85. This has become another factor of gameplay, as important for me as doing dailies or PvP. It is going to be fabulous having so many mounts and pets to mix and match amongst the family, giving everyone a chance to show their different aspects of class and race.

It has taken a lot for me to remove Precious' Ribbon, still the only shirt in game to offer a debuff. I think the loss entirely justifies the final look.

• Shoulders: Drakesfire Epaulets
• Back: Bloodmoon Cloak
• Wrists: Illidari Wristguards
• Melee: Frenzied Staff
• Ranged: Dragonbreath Hand Cannon
• Feet: Bloodmail Boots
• Legs: Bloodmail Legguards
• Waist: Felstalker Belt
• Chest: Felstalker Breastplate
• Hands: Scarlet Gauntlets