Category: 20 days challenge

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Oh man. Blog and website favourites? This is not going to be easy.

I guess we’ll start with a couple of blogs that I always read ASAP when a new post pops up in my feed reader.

Blessing of Kings – this is one of the blogs I was reading back when I started blogging. Anytime Rohan writes something, I read it.

Righteous Defense – one of my more recent additions to the ol’ feed reader, sometime back in Wrath, Rhidach’s blog is where I like to keep mostly up to date on prot pally stuff. Protection is really my preference for an offspec on Madrana. Despite the fact I’m currently holy/holy (no joke), I occasionally enjoy tanking on Madrana. I haven’t actually tanked on her since 4.0 dropped, so I’m fondly remembering how OP I was in Wrath heroics wearing T10 tank gear… but I really feel like a failure of a hybrid if I don’t at least know the basics of another spec. I’ve never really liked retribution, although I did use it to level up in Cata’s beta and in live, too. It just made questing that much faster.

The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon – Ophelie is pretty awesome. I met up with her IRL back in January and I really enjoy reading all her posts. :)

I really do read a lot of blogs, but those are the three paladin-related blogs I run to read as soon as they’re updated.

For news sites:

MMO-Champion – Boubouille keeps MMO-Champion up to date on everything. This site is priceless.

Wowhead – I love Wowhead as an item database, obviously. Who doesn’t? But its news is getting to be competitive with MMO-Champion’s, especially with their relatively new blue post tracker. The amount of advertising is getting pretty obnoxious, though, which is a bummer.

For research, resources and help apart from the above:

Wowpedia – Everyone and their brother used to go to WoWWiki, but the Wikia hosting caused some major changes and most people involved with WoWWiki went to Wowpedia. Wowpedia is my choice of research sites when it comes to in-game information (lore, history and a lot of boss fight info).

Learn to Raid – A great new strat site with awesome videos. Some background: Learn to Raid was founded by two members of vodka, Killars (a rogue) and Kinaesthesia (a priest). Their videos are great and have been really helpful in forming our own strat variations in Apotheosis.

RaidBS – Raid Boss Strategies is an awesome site with images, written strats and generally high-quality info for the whole raid and each role within the raid (tank/heals/DPS). Not sure if it’s still being updated, though. I had to start going elsewhere (like L2R) for strats when Apotheosis hit Nefarian and the Raid BS info wasn’t up yet. (It still isn’t.) Still, some very helpful information here.

TankSpot – Ah, TankSpot. Sort of known as “the” site for raid strat videos. I used to really like the site. A lot. Ciderhelm was awesome. I still like some of the movies — Papapaint’s Heroic Chimaeron video, for example. But I can’t deal with Aliena’s voice. Drives me up the wall. I know her first language is not English and I’m sure she’s a great player, but I can’t stand to listen to her narration. Still, if you don’t have an issue with her narrating the vast majority of the videos, you may prefer TankSpot to L2R. There’s still good information, and plenty of it, it’s just not a “favourite” of mine. I list it here because of how good some of the information is, though. I wouldn’t ever go into a fight without having watched the TankSpot video at least once.

PlusHeal – A great resource for healers. There’s also a healer exchange forum if you’re seeking a new healer or if you’re a healer looking for a new guild.

Elitist Jerks – I don’t always agree with what EJ is saying, but it’s always good to be up to date with what the theorycrafters are muttering about.

WoWLemmings – Great site for recruitment!

Nothing to do with WoW:

MetaFilter – Great community blog site that is an integral part of my day. I visit it 4-5 times a day for sure.

xkcd – Awesome web comic. This one is my favourite strip because my best friend is a doctor and she was AMAZING at the “blow into the cartridge until it works” trick. I sent her this in an email and added “how on earth are you allowed into a hospital, much less an OR?” and her response was something along the lines of “hehehehehe”.

Ctrl-Alt-Del – Another awesome web comic.

And that’s enough for the time being!

Yesterday – Your First Blog Post
Tomorrow – Bad Habits and Flaws

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Truth be told, I’m a private person. I know, kind of silly, when you think about it, right? A blogger who posts fairly often who then claims to be a private person? Well, it’s true. I’ll talk about WoW until the cows come home — and I often do! — but I don’t talk about myself very much. At least, not about myself in a non-WoW context.

So, here’s my attempt to be a little more forthcoming.

1) My Keirsey Temperament Type is ESFJ – Guardian Provider.

2) I’m very good at remembering lyrics to songs, enough so that it drives me NUTS when others can’t. The problem? I can’t carry a tune.

3) I can, however, muster my way through some piano and clarinet playing, although I don’t get a chance to play much piano and my poor clarinet is in terrible shape and needs repairing.

4) I’ve been an online content provider, a web designer, a web coder, a marketing co-ordinator, a community moderator and a technical support/customer support specialist (at a local ISP) over the last 15 years. Also, a student. I’m just a couple of classes away from my BA in Sociology.

5) I love to write and I take part in National Novel Writing Month every year. In fact, two of my current guildies (and raiders!) are people I’ve known for years through NaNoWriMo. Having said that, I’ve only ever written 50k in November once and that was in 2003 — way before I discovered World of Warcraft. Curse you, WoW! <shakes fist>

6) I have blue eyes, like my brother, my father and my late paternal grandmother. Unfortunately, unlike my brother, my father and my late paternal grandmother, my blue eyes lean more towards various shades of grey/blue, rather than the piercing blue they all share. I am, occasionally, very jealous that my brother got the awesome!blue eyes in the family. (Shut up, Fog. Gloating doesn’t become you! :P)

7) Je suis plus ou moins bilingue. Mon français n’est pas tellement fantastique, mais je me débrouille assez bien dans des situations où je dois le parler. (Anche, parlo un po’ d’italiano. Ho preso tre anni all’università.)

8) Blessing of Frost started out as a recruitment avenue for Apotheosis, but it’s really evolved into its own little bit of fun. The hardest part about producing an episode of Blessing of Frost is not yelling at Majik as much as I’d like and, in fact, having to be nice to him. (We like each other quite a bit, but we prefer to show each other that affection by swearing at each other at length.) Still, I do quite enjoy it and it reminds me of working at my college radio station. Good times!

9) I’m fiercely loyal. Pretty much to a fault. One time, we were in Mount Hyjal, and one of the guildies was telling me, in a panicked whisper, she couldn’t find her vial from Lady Vashj. So I opened a ticket and started chatting with a GM through Kaz’rogal trash, saying “no, look, SHE WAS THERE. Do you want to see the logs?!” and stuff.

Here’s an image.

Can you guess what happened next? If you guessed “Kurn didn’t realize the boss was incoming and facepulled the boss and got ruined because she was debating fiercely with the GM”, you’re right!

One of these days, they’re going to close my account just because they’re tired of all the tickets I submit. :P

Yeah, my loyalty has its unfortunate downsides, but I care about my friends and my guildies. I don’t think I could ever be another way.

10) I have a pretty good sense of humour and can take some teasing, but when it comes to Canada, my sense of humour usually goes riiiiight out the window. I am passionate about my love for my country, which probably comes from living pretty much my whole life in Quebec and living through two separate referendums, and that’s basically where my sense of humour stops. I am proud to be a Canadian. I am proud to be a Quebecoise whose maternal side of the family has been here since the 1630s. I am proud to be a Montrealer. Those of you who have never had to live in fear of your country splitting up — you’re so very fortunate. At the same time, however, I wonder if those who haven’t had to live through that (and live through the constant threat, still!) don’t take for granted the peace and security they have. So take a moment. Appreciate your local, provincial/state and national governments if they’re democratic, if they’re reflective of your ideas and ideals. And if they’re NOT democratic, if they’re NOT reflective of what you believe, then work towards making sure your voice is heard in your government.

Uh. Right. Yes. I’m not really political. It’s just a Quebec thing. :) And dealing with the “Quebec thing” is what’s made me recognize how passionate I am about Canada, which is why the sense of humour that is normally pretty evident, just vanishes into thin air, if people start ragging on Canada. (And don’t get me started about people ragging on Quebec! I love my province too, you know!)

Yesterday – The Reason Behind Your Blog’s Name
Tomorrow – Your first blog post

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

When I started my blog, I knew I wanted a fun name. Blogs I read at the time were named Blessing of Kings and Banana Shoulders and the like.

I knew, though, that I didn’t want to focus just on paladin stuff. Sure, I was playing my paladin in raids, but my guildies still (mostly) called my Kurn and that was still very much my in-game identity (and still is).

I knew I wanted to talk about hunter stuff, about how I hated that Beast Mastery was all the rage and all you needed was to spam-click a macro to get stupidly good DPS.

I knew I wanted to talk about raiding and the trials a raid group goes through while pushing through bosses and progression.

I knew I wanted to talk about guild stuff and what my guild was doing, both inside of raids and out.

I knew I wanted to talk about dailies and pally stuff and healing and alts.

It was going to be conglomeration of whatever I wanted to talk about. The only thing tying everything together was that these were going to be my thoughts, my ideas, my opinions.

Kurn’s Corner seemed right. There was alliteration (which I do love) and there was a broad sense to it. I’ve never felt trapped by my blog’s name — this is where I write whatever the heck I want to write. No constraints in terms of expectations apart from “this is what Kurn is thinking about today”. While I’ve done a lot of posting about raiding and healing and paladins, I know that I don’t have to limit myself to these topics, and that suits me just fine.

So Kurn’s Corner is a collection of Kurn’s thoughts about the World of Warcraft and that’s why the name has stuck since Day 1. :)

Yesterday – Your Workplace/Desk
Tomorrow – 10 things we don’t know about you

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Before I started playing WoW, I sat at my desk and had a 19″ CRT monitor and a comfy office chair and a keyboard tray and speakers and everything.

I got a laptop. I started playing WoW. The laptop was miles beyond my desktop computer. The desktop wouldn’t even let me install WoW.

Thus began the era of Kurn-on-the-Couch.

I generally sit on my couch with my laptop on my coffee table. I also have a lapdesk that I use frequently if I want to sit back to relax or if I want to play from my bed (which I do, sometimes!).

I looked around for a picture of my desk at the height of my “this is my workspace” time, but I cannot, for the life of me, find it.

It’s all moot anyways — whole new setup coming in the first week of May. New computer, dual monitors, new speakers, everything. I will definitely have to do something about the TV situation, though. I’ve gotten used to watching hockey games (among other things) over the top of my laptop screen!

So tune back in then for a pretty picture of my new setup. :)

Yesterday – Favourite Items in the Game
Tomorrow – The reason behind your blog’s name

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Day 03 – Your First Day Playing WoW

What’s funny about this is I kind of have two “first days” of playing WoW. Somehow, before I went out and bought a copy, I had found an online copy of WoW with a private server attached. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what a private server was, no idea what I was doing. I just followed the instructions with the download and found myself at the character creation screen.

I created a human male warrior and then logged in to the world.

So there I am, level 1, standing in Elwynn, completely amazed at the graphics and level of detail and everything.

And then I decided to go exploring.

There weren’t any NPCs, no mobs, not a soul. It was crazy. I ran, I actually RAN, from Elwynn, over to Redridge, up through Burning Steppes and then I saw Blackrock Mountain.

I went into Blackrock Mountain from the south side and I have this very strong memory of running up the spiraling ramp and running up and down the chains.

But, there was no one there. At all. It then dawned on me that I was on a local server, not an online server, so I went digging around and discovered I needed to buy the game to connect to the real game servers.

It was over Canadian Thanksgiving that I did so, so that’s mid-October of 2005, and showed my brother the game. I had elected to roll a male night elf hunter, because I was trying to keep a low profile. As a woman, I’ve been harrassed a LOT in online communities by creepy guys, so I was prepared for that happening and decided to fly under the radar with a male night elf.

So my first day of playing WoW for real was me running around Aldrassil and Shadowglen, playing like a scrub. I’d shoot something once, it would come at me, another autoshot might get off and then I’d melee the mob down. Somewhere in all of this, I convinced my brother to start playing and he quickly went out and bought the game and rolled a druid. (He beat me to 60.)

My first real day of WoW play was pretty awesome. I loved dinging. I knew I wanted to do more of it. I really felt like a hunter, too, stalking my prey. I had no idea what it meant that a mob was red or yellow or green to me (both in terms of friendliness and level) and I was constantly getting lost by the spider tunnels.

I also remember that Shadowmeld got a lot of use from me right from the start and I was SO sad that I couldn’t move while stealthed!

Honestly, though, what I remember most about my first day of playing WoW is how gorgeous Aldrassil was. This lush, green place, a huge tree… it was really amazing. I was blown away by the graphics and I loved running around Shadowglen. And jumping. I loved (and still love!) the male night elf jump. Somersaults!

Yesterday – Why You Decided to Start a Blog
Tomorrow – Your best WoW memory

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Day 02 – Why You Decided to Start a Blog

I’ve been keeping blogs and journals since, well, I think it was probably 1998 or 1999. That was back before Blogger even really existed. My first blog was hosted on my own personal website and it was something I updated manually. Yup, designed it myself, coded it myself and wrote all the content into the HTML code. Having a blog was nothing new to me when I first installed WordPress here and made Kurn’s Corner. (Hilariously, my very first post was dated April 4th, 2008. More on that on day 9!)

So I started one because it was easy for me to do so. I had the web hosting for the Apotheosis site already and I made the subdomain for myself and installed WordPress.

What was I going to write about? Primarily, at the time, I wanted to write to educate people. When I started writing, we were about six or seven months out from the release of Wrath of the Lich King. I was getting frustrated, so very frustrated, by the idiocy of people I would encounter. I’m not talking about my guildies or my friends, but just the random people I’d bump into who were clearly doing it “wrong”.

I like to do things well. If I can’t do something well, I don’t like to do it. (Doesn’t mean I won’t, but I will always try to do it to the best of my ability.) So when I see other people trying to do something I know how to do well and I see they’re NOT doing it well, it drives me a bit nuts.

My second post on this blog was about jewelcrafting and explaining how to get all the different cuts. It was about educating people and telling people that an orange counts as both a red AND a yellow and that metas need to be activated.

Looking back over my first posts, though, I spend a lot of time talking about Apotheosis and Lady Vashj and then pally stuff.

Really, my blog’s purpose hasn’t substantially changed since I started it. I really started it to educate people and I like to think I’m still doing that. I quickly started to use it as a place to talk about what I was doing in-game. I’m definitely still doing that. :) I also used it as a place to ponder aloud about paladin stuff. Pretty sure I’m still doing that, too! If anything, my blog has brought in more paladin stuff over the last year, which is good, since it ties in with the educational slant.

I guess the short answer to this is that I started a blog to educate people and to give myself a platform to talk about stuff in the game that’s important to me and just to chatter a bit about what I’m up to in the game and because it was easy for me to do.

Yesterday – Introduce Yourself
Tomorrow – Your first day playing WoW

So I read over at Dwarven Battle Medic that Fannon is taking part in a blogging challenge that Saga of Spellbound came up with. I know I’ve been neglecting the blog lately, what with all kinds of other WoW obligations and some RL obligations too, so I figured at least this will get me to post daily. :)

Day 01 – Introduce Yourself

Hi, my name is Kurnmogh, but you can (and should) call me Kurn. Please do not call me Madrana, even though that’s the character I play on more often than not, nor any derivations thereof. Kurn is just fine, please and thank you.

I’m a female 30-something-year-old Montrealer who has been playing WoW since before I was in my 30s. I’m finishing up a sociology degree from a university here in Montreal and I do some contract work to do with web stuff, both design/coding and the online community aspect.

I’m the guild master and healing lead of Apotheosis, an Alliance raiding guild on the Eldre’Thalas (US) server and spend a lot of time healing in raids as a holy paladin. I still love my hunter to bits and pieces, though, but I realized at the start of Wrath that being a DPS doesn’t satisfy me the way playing a healer does.

I love to write in my spare time. Does this surprise the frequent visitors out there? I think I’m pretty much known for my absolutely epic-length posts (both blog and forum variety) possibly more than I am known for any paladin expertise I may hold. Sadly, I don’t get to do this as much as I’d like to, due to the aforementioned “guild master” title, but I am definitely a writer at heart.

I also watch a stupid amount of television, usually not at the same time as it actually airs. Current shows I’m watching weekly include, but are not limited to: Castle, How I Met Your Mother (a guild favourite!), V, Glee, The Big Bang Theory, Grey’s Anatomy, 30 Rock, Survivor: Redemption Island and I occasionally keep an eye on House and Desperate Housewives. I just finished watching Season 1 of Community and am trying to catch up on Season 2. I also catch as many Montreal Canadiens hockey games as possible, which is probably about 35% or so of them, primarily because they play a LOT of games on raid nights.

Anyways, I guess that’s sufficient for now! Much more and there won’t be a lot left for the next 19 days! :)

Tomorrow – Why you Decided to Start a Blog