So, this latest patch brought us a new Eclipse bar and some UI improvements.

The new bar looks more night & day themed, and one side glows light after you get the Eclipse proc. The graphic is really neat. Even your spells on the bar are highlighted (Lunar Eclipse has moonfire & starfire light up on your bar. Solar Eclipse has wrath & insect swarm light up).

I think it really looks good. Here’s some pictures! (click on each one to see ..read the full article

Okay, so at this point, we’re deep into the pre-expansion rut. People’s focus has shifted from current raid content to Cataclysm content that isn’t yet available to us.

Guilds who killed Lich King long ago have attendance problems, and guilds who haven’t yet killed the Lich King are still feeling the pinch.

As members get bored, frustrated, tired, or just burnt out on the game, it becomes harder and harder to get together a group of 25 people to run ICC in ..read the full article

So, the graphic that I posted for effloresence (the healing lava) didn’t last very long, and so last night I took pictures of what it looks like now. They took away the green ground-covering effect, and left a circle ring of leaves & such that spring up around the edge of the radius:

So, now it looks less deadly. I still have to convince people in instances that standing in it is good, but that’s going to be a problem for ..read the full article

So, the Moonkin Repository is a forum designed for moonkin to post on (as the name implies), and moonkin of all types (pvp, pve, experts, novices, newbies, alts) come to the forums to discuss, well, anything related to being a moonkin! If you are a moonkin and haven’t been to the moonkin repository, you should check it out!

Recently (as in late last night, or early this morning) I got suckered recruited into being a moderator on the Moonkin Repository’s forums, ..read the full article

Will you be going to Blizzcon this year? If not at least viewing it could net you some impressive in-game items for both Starcraft II and World of Warcraft. If you’re not aware by now, Blizzcon is a 2-day event where the developers reveal the latest news and releases. For those attending, or the World of Warcraft subscribers who are watching online, you recieve Deathy. Deathy is a baby murloc reskin made to look like Deathwing, the main antagonist of ..read the full article

If you’ve played World of Warcraft before the expansions, Azshara will no doubt be the last thing you care about, but not anymore! The goblins have exploded onto the scene (literally) and made an impact that not even the cataclysm could leave on the zone of Azshara. Blizzard recently did a Q&A on Azshara, the new zone for World of Warcraft: Catclysm and revealed some more information on the ideas behind it and some of the changes. For one this ..read the full article

So, my other MMO is Lord of the Rings Online. I have 3 characters, all of which are way below the level cap (under level 40 out of 65 max). I dabble in it some, and keep it active mostly because I enjoy their housing system so much (and it’s nice to play in a game where I don’t already know every little detail of it). In all my time, I never hit end-game in it because, well, I just ..read the full article

Okay, so for most of people’s raiding experience, they have been trained to move out of bad looking stuff on the ground.

However, in Cataclysm, they have moved to a system where there is going to be positional healing, and you’ll have to stand inside of “good” ground-covering effects. However, Effloresence’s graphic is a little bit over-done, so now it looks like a slime puddle, especially if you have more than one stacked on top of each other.

Also, Effloresence is down ..read the full article

So, I’ve been focusing a little too much on Restoration druids lately, and I think I owe moonkin a post to go along with the latest beta build. Unfortunately, this build has a lot of crashing problems, making testing challenging at best. Also, resto is harder to evaluate this build because some things look like obvious bugs (or not so obvious bugs), but without confirmation on what is intended or not, it’s hard to tell. So, balance is just easier ..read the full article

So, we have a new blog theme that Lavata/Malchome put up on my blog today. We kept the same banner art, but we moved the location of the pages to go across the bottom of the banner, instead of being in the sidebar. The theme had to change to take advantage of some of the new wordpress features.

One of the neat things that it does is it allows me to be able to actually use blue post text coloring a ..read the full article

So, a lot of stuff happened while I was off at the beach. I had to split this into two posts, to help concentrate the good announcements that are improving druids versus the continuing discussion on AOE/raid healing. So, these were the announcements related to everything else:

Moonkin Form Ghostcrawler’s post (click here):

At first we were trying to make it more of an option, so that cuddly-hating Balance druids could choose the spec without the shapeshift. After much discussion ..read the full article

So, Ghostcrawler replied to my post about druid raid healing in Cataclysm. While I responded some directly in the thread, I wanted to take some time to post directly here for everyone who hasn’t read all 20+ pages of the thread…

Resto discussion about AOE/raid healing in the forum threads by GC (click here):

As far as the AE healing goes, it’s definitely something to keep an eye on, but we’re not worried about it ..read the full article

So, I took a red-eye back from California, and I’m finally home! However, I’m behind on things like e-mail, forum reading, blogging, beta testing, guild forums, and actual school work. So, I’ll probably have to wait until tomorrow to comment on all the activity that has been happening in the official forums with blue posts & such. I was in San Diego & Irvine – visiting family & friends, and I got to attend a friend’s wedding over the weekend. ..read the full article

Cataclysm is a huge event. Will Homeworld ever be the same agai.. what? Oh God. I’m showing my age. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is in its Closed Beta and so the Escapist have done an entire issue about it. Relevantly, Boy Wonder Quinns wrote a piece about his experiences playing the opening of the game again, in all-messed-up-by-cats-o-vision. And since he’s deep in the pit of Gamecom, I’ll post it for him. He starts by saying things like…

Up goes the ..read the full article

So, for my birthday last week, my fiance decided to take the restokin banner art to make me some t-shirts & mugs. Since they were a gift to me, we’re not currently selling them. However, since I’m out of town this weekend and needed a quick post, I wanted to show you guys how awesome the mugs came out.

The art was done by Ginny @immamoonkin on twitter.

Have a good weekend!

I interrupt this dead time in Lissanna postings while she is traveling with news from MMO-Champion concerning the latest Beta Build.

As the title indicates Idols are now removed from the game, they have been merged with Relics, Totems and Librams of the Death Knight, Shaman and Paladin classes under a general heading of Relics.   They now have normal itemization and fill the role of stat stick like Wands for the caster classes and ranged weapons for melee or the ..read the full article

Warning: This post is somewhat spoiler-filled, due to describing quests in Cataclysm.

One of the things that happens when people start raiding is that they have to learn situational awareness (being able to move at the right time & pay attention to your surroundings).

One of the Deepholm quests helps teach situational awareness. During this quest, you fight a dragon called “Aeosera”. This is one of those things where paying attention is going to matter. Instead of just allowing you to stand ..read the full article

Resto druids on the forums seem to be having problems looking at the bigger picture of how restoration healing will work in Cataclysm. Most of that is because resto druids have such HUGE changes coming that it is hard to really put together what the bigger picture will be for resto druids in Cataclysm, and this is something I’m still struggling with.

So, lets take a moment to step back and look at the bigger picture of resto PvE healing in ..read the full article