I'm back! Kind of...

What's going on everyone, I hope you all are having a great weekend! I know that I said that I was going to talk about any site updates I have on Fridays or something of that sort buuuut given all the fun stuff that was going on with it being April Fool's and all, that update got pushed to whenever it is that this will be going up. Along with the WoS updates I'm also going to pimp out a few different sites I think you all should check out and catch you all up on what's going down on my side of things, both irl and in game...yes, I said IN GAME!!


Blog Updates
- There is a new poll up on the right side of the page, please click as many buttons as your little hearts desire. I thoroughly enjoyed the results from the last poll. Many thanks to those of you who participated! Here's the final tally:

- My "Recent Achievements" feature is no longer a giant white blob! I'll get into why that is in a bit. Apologies about the temporary eye sore.

- As I said last week, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or anything else of that nature that relate to World of Saz or even just something random to ask, please don't hesitate! My email is under the About/Contact tab and I keep a close eye on my Twitter account for those of you who would prefer to contact me through that medium (the button is up top).


Things You Should Check Out
- Storm, Earth, and Fire (@StormEarthFire2) is a new podcast dedicated to the ways of the Shaman. It's run by Malozing (@Malozing) and Druzza (@Totemictimes). They're both still rather new to the world of podcasting, so please bear with them while they find their feet. Definitely look forward to some great things from this podcast!

- Learn to Raid is one of my favorite haunts. Not only is this site home to the Circle of Healing podcast, which is run by Dawn Moore (you may recognize that name from WoW Insider) and Kinaesthesia (from Vodka), but it also contains some excellent strategy videos plus and contains some very fun and still growing forums. Give 'am a look-see and if anyone asks, Saz sent you.

- Gaming Zone Forums are rather new, but I must say these guys have spunk. The goal of this forum is to provide a place for gamers of all types to come together to hang out. The fellas over there are super friendly, so feel free to swing by, make an account, and say hi. I have a good feeling about those forums, so go help make them epic!


Saz Updates
First things first, I must state that I have some of the best damn friends a girl could ask for. They're also my WoW friends, so all you folks out there who think real friendships via the internet are impossible, I'd really like to beg to differ. With that stated, I'll now proceed to go down my list of awesome (please bear with me...I'm not attempting to brag at all, I'm just incredibly excited about these updates and at the same time incredibly grateful).

- My Priesty friend who I've mentioned a few times here on WoS has done one of the most sweet things I think that anyone has ever done for me: she has sent me her old Macbook. This means that as soon as I get my mits on a new power cord, I'll be able to play WoW semi-smoothly...or at least well enough that I won't quite suffer from as much motion sickness that I currently do with my current poor quality machine. So. Freakin'. Excited! Also some love must be sent to Mrs. Priesty's husband, since he relinquished his hold on said computer, enabling her to send it to me. : P

- Along with that "new" Macbook came a prepaid WoW card, enabling me to play WoW for the next two months. While I may not have Cataclysm as of yet, I have managed to wiggle my way back to Azeroth. Seriously, my Priest friend is completely and utterly made of awesome.

- Due to the fact that I am now back to playing WoW, my Armory page will now show up. I've gotten a few messages from folks wondering why my Armory page wasn't showing, and here's why: after about three months or so Blizzard considers your account idle. Idle accounts are "hidden" and will no longer show the character's profile despite their name still showing up in the general search list. I'm sure it somehow saves server space for them in the long run or some such, quite frankly I'm not 100% sure why characters "disappear" when they're idle, but that's just my guess. Saz is back though, so please fret no longer! Hopefully soon she will be a sexy level 85 like the rest of you ; ) 

- Earlier this week (or was it last week already?) WoW Insider had a contest on both their site and on Twitter. The contest they held on their site was that of a random drawing for a D.I.S.C.O. loot card, and on Twitter they had entries explain why they thing they should win a Goblin Weather Machine. I entered both on a whim, and apparently they rather liked my answer on Twitter, and I won the Goblin Weather Machine! Thanks to the previously mentioned prepaid WoW card I was able to hop on and redeem this code last night. I kind of really geeked. I mean, not only is it a random item to use (I absolutely love random things that I can use whenever!) but it's also my first ever loot card. Soooo excited! So many thanks to WoW Insider for making me one very happy Shaman!

 - Another note of major thanks may need to be added here, but first I must scold two little Shamans quite thoroughly. More on this later.

 - I feel like I'm missing something. If I remember it later you all may have to suffer through a double or maybe even a triple post for Sunday. My apologies for the excessive amount of me. I hope you survive the encounter.

If any of you all try to get a hold of me in game and I don't respond right away, I apologize in advance. Currently I'm sporting some terrible FPS (at least until the Mac is up and running) and sometimes it takes quite a bit for things to load. Also, in the rare event that I have a DND up it's because I have let my little brother muck about on one of my characters. He's rather fascinated by the game you see, and his new favorite pastime is to take my Shaman and jump her off of cliffs (I have yet to expose him to my Druid and the wonders of bird form). He also rather likes taking adorable screen shots for me, which I will end this post with. I hope that you all have a wonderful week! <3

Updates!

Once again two weeks have somehow flown by despite my being bored out of my gourde due to lack of internet time. Thankfully I've managed to keep myself semi-busy with a small list of WoW-related projects. Here's a quick run down of what I've been up to!

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First up we have articles. The first of several that I've been working on is posted below this particular post. How to Become a Raider is actually a three part article and I wrote it with a friend of mine in mind. Parts two and three of this particular guide will probably be up either tomorrow or the day after.

I have five total articles/guides in the works right now, though only three are "completed" at this point in time. I hope to have these all reformatted (I highly recommend to NOT use Notepad if you ever plan on transferring something to a different medium...it's not a happy time) with links active in the next few days.

Now, keep in mind that I have been working on these articles sans an internet connection or access to WoW post 4.0.1. If there are any mistakes or information I've missed, please say something! I'd like these buggers to be as useful and accurate as possible, and sadly I'm well aware of the fact that I'll miff something up along the lines due to my currently patchy online access.


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Next on our list of fun things that Saz has been working on is my video! Prior to leaving this last time I managed to transfer all of my old screen shots from my external hard drive over to my laptop (hey, if WoW can't fit, may as well stuff this shell with pictures right?!) and uh, let's just say that I have a few. 17,438 at the last count actually, with only a few duplicates. Honestly there would probably be a few more, but thanks to several viruses and one melted hard drive the number was lowered a bit!

Anyways, I wanted to do something with those screen shots, so I kind of did a memorial video. Despite a few minor formatting issues, I'm rather fond of it. You can go check out Reflection over on my Youtube page.

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The Jenesee Project - I've been doing some minor work on the Jenesee story line, but for now this project is basically halted thanks to 4.0.1. I'll explain why in a bit. Regardless of this project's temporary delay, I've been doing some much needed character development and will be doing some research during my stay.

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Milly Bays - No idea where this project currently stands. Possibly more on this later.

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The OA Project - Still on the edge of the recycle bin due to computer issues. This five part project may never see completion, especially since the original idea behind it needs to be completed before December 7th...I don't see this happening unless some sort of miracle happens. Sad day batman...sad day indeed.

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Mmm, that's it project-wise I think. So, this whole issue with me having to postpone or even think about tossing some projects out...simply put, my laptop and computer luck sucks. No lies. OA is postponed thanks to a blown CPU that isn't replaceable, Jenesee is postponed due to the fact that my laptop only has a 40g hard drive and thanks to 4.0.1 WoW no longer fits no matter how much I strip out of my machine (hence why I had been using Notebook to write my articles in instead of Microsoft Word, which would make things 10x easier. I had completely stripped out Microsoft Office in hopes to make a bit more room, but in the end it simply wasn't enough). It's rather frustrating to be held back by silly things like CPUs and hard drive space, but I'm resourceful, even if I am a bit tapped out at the moment. Much like how low fps has actually helped me in a weird way become a better player in WoW, I'm sure these set backs will somehow shape me into some more clever beast in the future : P

So yes, for now my in game experience is limited and there's unfortunately no time frame as to when I'll make my return to Azeroth. As I said earlier, if you have anything to add or correct to any of my guides, please say something. Thanks to my wonky circumstances I'm certain to miss a few large key points no matter how many times I reread these things or how much digging I do.

I <3 feedback.

I suppose that's all for the moment. More to come after I've slept a bit!

Patch 4.0.1

Ahhhh patch day. How I look forward to all of your changes, yet dread how much space you take up.

That's right, today is officially patch day. The new talents system goes live, as does reforging, the changing of stats (ArP -> Crit, Sp -> Int, etc), our spell books will look completely different, we can track multiple things now, and our new glyph system will come into play...along with a very nice list of other things that are being implemented.

While this is all incredibly exciting (really, I think as soon as I can I'm going to go pet farming on my hunter), I'm sitting here wondering about what I can strip from my laptop's memory in order to fit this rather hefty patch. Most of my images have been backed up, so I could easily dump most of that, but I doubt that alone won't come close to giving me the space this patch may require. So far I've pulled out Warcraft III and Warcraft: Frozen Throne (I was nearly finished with Frozen Throne >.<), and even that hasn't given me enough download room. Microsoft Office, I think you're next. Back to the days of relying on Notebook! Sigh. I wonder if there's anyone else who runs on horribly outdated machines (not by choice) that are having to scramble to try to find somewhere to put these epic new changes. Ah well, such is life!

In other news, I'm still online (obviously) and this has let me do a few things. For one, I've been tinkering a bit with Project Jenesee. I haven't been doing any writing in the past few days, but I have kind of worked out how I'd make Jenesee and her sister, Gypsy, look for the story. I'm not 100% on their gear yet, and that may change later on depending on the different gear/gear sets I come across, but I am rather sure on how they look facially in game at least. I've also managed to get Gypsim up to the massive level of 5 in my free time, so I'll have a rather useless armory link up for her in the Jenesee blog soonish! In hindsight I almost wish that I had rolled these two on a role playing server just for interaction with other characters, but Hyjal was just too convenient. Hopefully I'll be able to get some more work done on these two prior to having to finally go offline.

So yeah, babbling. I do it a lot.

Here are the current images of Jenesee and Gypsy. Think more of later on in the storyline, where the actual juicy and entertaining bits will finally come into play!

I really love both of these item sets. I may go for an old(er) school set of 'lock tier for Gypsy, but for now the current tier 10 works well for her I think. I'm sure the gear will change as the story progresses, but for now these are my "official" placeholders, I guess you could say.

Yes, they're gingers. Learn to love it! How can you have a warlock that isn't a ginger? (Ginger love!!!)



*Ahem* Anyways...yeeeah! Hopefully if all goes well, more on the Scepter quest line later on tonight! If not, well, just know that I will be a sad panda. A very, very sad panda. Those book pieces are reeeeally heavy, and by that I mean they take up too much space in my already limited inventory after all. That, and I'd love to see the end of this quest line, pronto ; )


Okay, enough almost pointless babble. Time to strip!
...by that I meant this laptop. Dirty people.

Projects

I had promised that this blog would not only be able my random babblings and adventures, but also about my many projects. So here's a bit of a teaser of what I will be working on while I'm back in the world where internet ceases to exist, and what you may possibly come to expect sometime in the next month or two.

First off is Project OA. I'll leave it in it's cryptic form for right now, since it is faaaaarrr from finished. This was the project that I had originally intended on getting the rest of my material for during this past week, but sadly due to a CPU issue on the computer I normally use for WoW, I got zero of the screen shots needed to complete this rather large, four part video project. Perhaps if the computer gets repaired this project will be able to be completed prior to the Cataclysm release date (which was the intent), but if not, this particular project may see a full revamp/re-imagining or will just be scrapped.

Next up, I'd like you to meet Jenesee. I will soon be starting a project that revolves completely around her, but as to what that project really is...I'm going to be leaving you in the dark on that one till I launch the start of it ;)

I'll also be starting up a few minor writing projects over the next few weeks, though they probably won't be WoW related, thus a bit out of place here in this particular blog. If it's anything relevant though, I'll be sure to share it.

That's about it for this particular update. Nothing was accomplished in game today, other then some good ol' sitting around jabbering with friends. Now it's time to hit the road, get "home", and get to work on some of these projects. More hopefully in a week or two!