Gnotable Gnomes: Moxie Lockspinner

Battle for Azeroth is a welcome change with lots of gnomish flair and interesting gnew gnomes to meet. Moxie Lockspinner is a feisty gnome you meet in Stormsong Valley, and you can tell right away where her gnomish heart lies.

Jaina’s War

Every great war has a history that reveals how it truly came to blows. A spark, a match, years of suffering….and Jaina’s Proudmoore’s war is no different.

In this incredibly powerful animated short, the artists have outdone themselves in showing the true Jaina Proudmoore and everything that has culminated to her final warning “Beware of….me.”

One cannot understand Jaina’s state of mind until we go back to the turning point that broke her world apart – the fall of Theramore.

For the Love of Mage Tower Fashion

My Mage Tower scrapbook – excluding my Disc priest of all things because I was apparently too much in shock at the difference in difficulty between the Disc challenge and the healing challenge to remember to screenshot the moment. Doh.

A Real-Life Gnomish Profession for Me?

You know that big change I was talking about? Read on…

Six years ago, I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I decided to walk away from a field and specialisation I received my Master’s degree in to pursue playing piano full-time. Far from being something out of a movie, it was really just me deciding to do what I loved full-time and accepting the risks and consequences it came with. Back then, I had no idea where the path would take me career-wise, but I was determined to find out.

The journey so far has been filled with Bach, Beethoven, Brahms with a good dose of music history, performances, recordings and even artistic injuries. The question on my mind lately is where I want to go with it.

 

Over the last two years I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the rather geeky subject of tuning and historical temperaments. It’s really cool and interesting and the more I learn about it, the deeper I want to dig. At some point being able to tune my own piano sounds particularly cool. I could dabble in these historical temperaments, not be stuck with out of tune pianos whenever I visit India, and possibly have a “proper” I-can-pay-the-mortgage-by-myself type career with it. And, it does seem kinda gnomish doesn’t it?? The pianistic version of an arclight spanner is my hands! So, is piano tuning for me?

It’s a tough question for me to answer. Considering my colossal misjudgment of my Master’s degree, I’m being cautious about approaching this one. I’m applying to one of the best schools in the country for this (because there are a lot of scam ones around and anyhow, if you want to do something, might as well go all the way and do it right the first time). It however comes with a decent price tag – $25k for the year long program. I have no doubt of the schools caliber of education and prestige it’s name has, but 25k is 25k.

There’s a bit of an internal conflict inside of me right now:

“You should totally go for it! It’s a great way to continue your interest in historical temperaments while making some money!”

“Wat. No, you’re only considering this because you’re really just running away from performing. And recording. Because you hate an audience.”

“That’s not true! I like historical temperaments and all!”

“So keep reading those books! I mean really, do you like them 25k much?”

“But I’m ready to get a career and make some proper money and be independent.”

“But but it’s so far away! And I JUST got settled here!”

“You gotta take a risk if you want a reward! Don’t be a gnub!”

“Who’re you callin’ a gnub?? You’re the gnub! I’m the smart one!”

“No you’re the gnub!”

“No u!”

“No U!”

After a few hours of internal back and forth, we end up here…

I’m such a stressed out gnome. Partly because making decisions is hard. And also because this one’s such a big one!!

Resto Druid Mage Tower Complete!!

The best things often happen unplanned. This morning, I logged on just for fun and decided to give the Mage Tower a go over my morning coffee.

I made it to the last stage which wasn’t too bad but at some point I realised, this was going to happen! We were alive…and we were killing him!! I will not lie – my hands started shaking a bit, but it was a good clean finish. All those attempts and practice paid off!!

Here’s a closer look at this beauty!

Despite the frustrations that came with this challenge, I’m happy I managed to get it completed. And it’s because of those frustrations that it feels like something well-earned. I never did have a Benediction equivalent for my druid (closest was the swift flight form quest line?) – and now it feels kinda close.

I tip my hat to Blizzard for making challenging solo content for us playing who still like the mountain climb but don’t raid Mythics or whatnot anymore. It was fun, it was hard and it was a great feeling when I finally reached the top of the mountain!

If you’re working on the Mage Tower challenge, fear not – don’t be discouraged by the sheer number of attempts. Mine took way more than 40 and that’s all I can say because I frankly lost count. I’ve updated my guide to include tips from my recent success as well as extra resources so check it out here!

Until then happy healing!

Moments of Highmountain

Mage Tower Notes: Resto Druid Style

So I finally got interested in the Mage Tower in the last two months. I know I know…late to the party. But in my defence, I didn’t even know about it until then. When I heard the appearances were going away, the resto druid one was the only one I was super excited. (Yes I already got the Discipline one but I wasn’t even excited about it. The whole thing was very meh).

If you’ve been following my rants on twitter, then you know that I have yet to be successful this time around. But I did make progress and make it consistently to the last two phases! There’s hope.

Regardless, I decided to write down my notes and thoughts for next time’s attempts and will update when I do actually finish the challenge. 🙂 And yes, I am considering maining a druid for BfA – but that’s a different post.

Mechanostrider Garage – RL Edition

After getting my driver’s license late last year, I’ve been wondering about what would be the perfect gnome mobile for this gnome. I found the one that has captured my gnomish heart in all it’s glory: The Fiat 500 Abarth.

It’s a car that’s just my size. But this decision didn’t come easily to me as I was overwhelmed with reviews of “better cars with more practicality”, “reliability issues”, or “get an SUV” instead.

Let me explain something about myself. I have lived in a city my entire life. An american sedan to me is a seriously big car. I nickname SUVs and Minivans tanks. They are huge. And frankly, at some point, they all look the same to me.

For me, driving is a particularly fun endeavour. As a kid, my grandpa let me change the gears as he drove us to school. He popped the hood one day and showed me how engines work and how efficiency of gears change. I don’t know if I understood it all then to be honest (I must’ve been 10), but I thought it was fun as heck. (Incidentally, this was on an old Fiat!) And his love for driving kinda stuck with me.

I’ve to come to embrace what I like about cars and what I need my very first own car to have:

• It needs to be fun to drive. And mind you, fun is in handling – not necessarily going over the speed limit. If you can have a blast driving your car without 450 HP, that’s the right car for you.
• It needs personality: Any kind of call back to the vintage cars of the 1960s will bring a smile to my face. I like a car with history. And that’s something I found sorely lacking when I checked out Civics, Camrys, Accords etc. Also partly when my hubby and I bought our first family car, I convinced him to get a Mustang. 😀
• I need to be comfortable driving it: The Fiat 500 is till date the only car where I’ve sat in it at the lot and felt like I could just drive off in it no problem. It’s small, the seat sits a little higher than the usual cars which is great for me. I swear I felt like I was drowning in the Mustang sometimes.

Haters gonna hate. It’s no different from the gnome jokes I’ve heard all these years when I play my favourite race. So it is with my car. I am going to embrace that despite living in a good ol’ ‘Murrica for a while, there’s a lot of preferences that are very much European inside of me.

PS: About the reliability issue, I called my mechanic Jim to ask him about what he’d seen at his garage. And he said, dont you worry – if you take care of your car, it’ll take care of you. The only issue he saw was when someone never bothered to do oil changes and killed their engine.

Thus begins my journey to get my very own Abarth – either new or used with very low miles (1k ish I’m thinking). I am SO excited!! Now the only decision left is whether to go manual or automatic!! VROOOOOOM!

 

 

 

 

The Price of Rewriting History

This is a post that sat in my drafts folder for about four years. Yep, four years. The entire time it’s been simmering since the Cataclysm at the back of my mind. Two things have propelled me to dust this one off and finish writing about it. The first was the announcement of Vanilla servers at Blizzcon in 2017; the second, taking a second look at the journey through Azeroth as I level my lightforged draenei paladin.

Blizzard took a huge risk back in Cataclysm when they decided to wipe the slate clean and redo Azeroth. It’s something almost everyone wishes they could do but can’t – and for good reason. We don’t get do-overs sometimes. They in effect, rewrote history by erasing some of it – and the question I have long sought to answer out loud: Was it worth it?

The New Heels

If you thought my love of heals and heels was limited to warcraft, then ha! I went on an inspired shopping trip the other day… and can I just say, they are so pretty! So here’s a little bit of rl heels for the time being while I work on real and “serious” gaming posts.

What. Pretty no? 😀