Pet Battle Guide - by my other half.

A lot of people have been requesting my other half's pet battle guide that he wrote about leveling your first level 25 pet. It was on an old guild's forum and we have since left that guild and formed our own. He wrote this all, I take no credit for it, but I wanted to share it with you, with his permission. Enjoy!

Firstly I would like to credit the WoW forums and various other sites I have used to help me with making this guide and even helping me on my own pet battle addiction *clears throat*... ahem.. I mean journey. Without their advice I wouldn't know half as much about Battle Pets as I do today, but enough with crediting others, you are all interested on how to get your first level 25 Battle Pet and how to do it quickly. I have tried and tested this method myself so I know it works, but if you are having trouble with it then please feel free to leave comments and I will help you out.

Step 1: To get started I would advise getting two Mechanical pets either Uncommon or above quality and level them both up to around level 5 in any major city, I prefer Orgrimmar as there are two pet tamers close by that we will be using.
Step 2: Next you'll want to talk to the battle pet trainer to start doing your quests that will allow you to battle trainers all across Azeroth.
Step 3: Now that you can challenge trainers you should go to battle your first and second trainer with your two newly leveled Mechaincal pets, after these battles they should be about level 6.
Step 4: What you should do next is head to Deadwind Pass in Eastern Kingdoms, around the raid Karazhan there should be plenty of Arcane Eye pets. You will want to capture 3 of these pets, Uncommon or above quality, and set them as your new pet team all with the moves Focused Beam, Drain Power and Interruupting Gaze.
Step 5: This is probably the most problematic part of this guide but a bit of determination will see you through it. Go to Dragonblight in Northrend and look for the giant dragon skeletons, around these remains are the flying pets Dragonbone Hatchling, you'll need to catch about 2-3 of these pets and as usual make sure they are Uncommon or above quality.
Step 6: Last but not least, with your team of Dragonbone Hatchlings and maybe even an Arcane Eye thrown in for fun, go to Eternal Blossoms, just between Setting Sun Garrison and Mistfall Village there is a dried up river, around this area are plenty of Eternal Striders that stand no chance against your Dragonbone Hatchlings so just grind the last 3-4 levels of your pet and Congratulations! you have now got a level 25 battle Pet.

Some minor notes
When trying to catch a Dragonbone Hatchling, I would recommend trying to find a group with at least 2 flyer type pets in the group to battle as a combination of anything else can be a bit difficult.
Also as soon as you capture a Dragonbone Hatchling put him into your current team replacing one of the Arcane Eyes to help with those pesky Aquatic type pets.
When you are grinding experience for your pets in Eternal Blossoms I would suggest getting 2 Dragonbone Hatchlings to level 25 as you could then in turn start boosting a low level pet against Pandarian level pets, therefore in turn not having to go through the tedious effort of leveling again.


I hope you found this guide helpful, if you have any further questions or would like more pet battle guides, tip or tricks then simply write to me here. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope you enjoy your battle pet experience as much as I do.

It's getting glitchy up in here!

This morning has been pretty glitchy, I am sure you will all agree, I made a little video of my personal experiences, which I have to say made me giggle. Enjoy!

My Two Copper on Level 90 Boosts

Over the past few weeks I have thought long and hard about the level 90 boosts, trying to form an opinion on them. Now that I have I wanted to share it with you and pose the question; 'Have Blizzard gone too far?'

It is my opinion that they have and it's a desperate attempt to grab as many players as they can for WoD in order to combat their ever decreasing player numbers. Level 90 is currently the level cap and as such, until recently it took a long time of playing and learning your class in manageable steps to reach this level. Not to say that you know everything about your class at level 90, I am not so naive as to think that, but at least you have had the time to learn as much as you can before things like raid mechanics really kick in etc. Level 90 boosts, when given to someone who has never played that class before are negatively effecting the game play of everyone else (unless said person decides to practice and study up on that class until they really do know it.) Furthermore, it is even worse when the boosted person has never even played WoW before or has only played for a few months. I don't care that there are guides out there, including this guide by Blizzard , which isn't the worst but it's a good few months too late. No matter how many guides you read, you will not be able to play a class well from the level cap as a brand new player, no way!

For those of us who have played for a long time and do know our classes, the level 90 boosts can be valuable. I used mine as more of a realm transfer, creating a lock (of course) on a new realm. I already had an understanding of the class and I pushed myself to gear up and learn tactics before I jumped into end game content. A few of my friends decided it would be fun to boost a character they'd never played before to level 90 (against my advice) and instantly regretted it... but now, they have taken the time to learn them and are doing better... or at least one did, the other friend of mine refuses to play their character that they boosted as they really didn't enjoy the play style, what a waste.

One solution could have been to allow anyone to boost a class that they have played to at least level 60, not that it would have to be that exact toon. For example, I have a druid on steamwheedle cartel called fluffy and I get her to level 62 but now the boosts have come out and I want a level 90 druid on another realm. I have leveled Fluffy to 62, which is past the level 60 requirement, so I have an idea of the class, which is great, so I move to another realm... the sha'tar and blizzard lets me make and boost a level 1 druid called MewMew to level 90 because I already have a good knowledge of the character. Perhaps it only seems like a good idea to me, but I don't understand why Blizzard have been so rash with this. They could have done it differently, possibly how I have said here, or... OR they could have waited until Warlords was out and the it would have been okay because people would have a full 10 levels to try to learn their classes instead of throwing a lot of clueless people into end game content and effectively making their player base angry because even doing LFR is so much more difficult now due to call the people unable to play their class.

It's done now, it won't change of course, but this is my opinion on it. What do you think? Leave your comments below, I'd love to know other opinions.

A Little Break...

So this week I have been cutting down on my WoW time and playing other things. I just recently bought Minecraft which I am finding particularly fun. Just messing around, building houses and seeing what I can create makes me very happy and I needed a much deserved break from warcraft drama and the seemingly endless grind towards getting my Legendary Cloak. Some people I know don't understand why I play Minecraft, but I don't understand why people do lots of things, so that's okay. For me it's a creative outlet, somewhere I can use my imagination. The creepers, I have to admit are frightening beyond anything I could have imagined, as are the spiders, which seems dumb to me... I am scared of some pixelated beings haha!

Either way, I have not stopped playing warcraft, but rather, made room for other things. It's my opinion that playing the same game day in day out with no variety can cause issues if you are not careful and that certainly seems to be the case for me, so taking a break has been great. Sorry, this isn't much of a blog post about WoW but it's a personal update.

Name that toon!

It was hard to resist calling this post 'Name that toon!', forgive my cheesiness. As someone who has been on a lot of roleplay realms in the last I am mostly used to seeing names that have some realism to them, names that a mother would name their child for example. Since moving to Draenor I have seen more and more random names which are not normal names that you'd be giving to a baby orc at birth, but rather silly nicknames with perhaps an in-joke behind them *grins at a certain female GM I know*. This led me to think about what people consider when they name their 'toons'. Personally I am still stuck in my old way of thinking; each character has to have their own deep and meaningful name which seems normal and at least slightly lore appropriate. Sharing two of my main's name origins with you will show you what I mean.

Nazriana- This warlock, believe it or not this named after a minion that my very first alliance lock had. The succubus was called Nazriana and I loved it, so I kinda used it on this lock and also on a DK on my old realm :).

Shiraha- This is a Japanese word meaning 'white feather'. It has other meanings too, but that is the most common meaning and that is what I wanted. This was originally just going to be a roleplay character. I wanted her to have an obsession with white birds etc and her hair was white too and she only wore white (she was originally a night elf). While I know that Japanese culture doesn't exist in the game, I thought the name particularly suited her character.

As you can see, I probably put a bit too much thought into my character names. If you read this and feel like it, leave a comment below or tell me in world how you pick your names, it would be very interesting to hear a few examples.