World of Warcraft

Yes, I admit it, I`m one of those 10 million+ subscribers to the game. I`ve been playing it shortly after the belgian release, and have been on the Moonglade server since it launched beginning of 2006... still with the same character and in the same guild of total awesomeness, Rhyme and Punishment since june 2006.

Okay, granted, it involved two luls of a years break and a short faction change to a blood elf, as well as a small stint to another server, but I keep comming back to the place and people I know... they are kinda like your family for the online generation after all ;).

Kills painting time though...

Since last week I`ve `gnomified` myself, as I just can`t seem to be able to focus on levelling another character, and `in the early days` I wanted a gnome, but it was my warlock human that reached 60 first and became my `main` back then.



Which leads me to a theory I brought up many times with my friends, and who now admit that `hmmm, it could actually be true...` namely Luck of the Gnomes. Blizzard denies it, but I swear, there is something with those little buckweeds that does something in the game when it comes down to rolls for epics, mounts or pet droprates and the likes.
Months I have been grinding for example for either a Schematic: Jeeves in Northrend (an engineering pattern allowing you to build a robotic butler) and fish for the sea turtle mount, in amounts people actually started to laugh about the time spent on those things.

Guess what happened when i did those once I had my character racial changed to a gnome... the fifth mob dropped the pattern, the third cast into a pool pulled out the turtle. Co-incidence? Who knows, this weekend I`m gonna put the theory to the test and fish after another nemesis of mine, the Dalaran giant sewer rat, something a many hours have been spend after as well so far.



But what is it that actually keeps drawing me back to this game and spend hours and hours playing?
First of all, it`s the cartoony style, I just like that. And then there is of course the humour and the references to older games, movies, songs, and the likes... like the old Blizzard classic The Lost Vikings is now in the game since Cataclysm:



But there is of course also the guild your part of. Rhyme and Punishment not only is a very old guild on the server, about as old as the server itself and one of the few `relics` still around on Moonglade, it is also very relaxed guild whose focus is not on calendar scheduled raiding, nor on performance and gear grinding quota. And the people are just special in a good kind of way. Love you all guys, really do!

Finally, some generics about my character, the level 85 Warlock came to be known as Lÿntaria `Locksie Hilton` DiMauro (also referred as `the one with that bloody ÿ in her name):

* Owns 121 pets and 102 mounts, including various Blizzcon and CCG ones.
* Has been around since the days when flying from Stormwind to Eastern Plaguelands, one stopped at Ironforge and had to take a fresh flightmaster ride to continue... no long afk flights back then.
* Has over 6500 achievement points without much from pvp and / or raids, meaning she spent hours on quite `uncommon` achievements like doing all low level areas, secondary professions, world events, etc etc achievement tabs.
* has at one time done about every main profession except leatherworking, before settling (for now) on Engineering and Tailoring (and really needs alt carebears to feed her metal bars for the engineering part to make it profitable).
* Was part of the Lakeside Bridge Smiley aerial picture.
* Her current gnome appearance is based on the gnome warlock I painted up in my `For Gnomeregan` entry in this years Lead Painters League



That`s it for now, ciao ciao all and off to the Firelands we go!