Community Spotlight

Posts I Loved

We’re So Heroic by Nicole Chartrand

Here are a selection of my favorite writings from other blogs:

• The Day the World (of Warcraft) Stood Still
  Posted just before the recent Presidential election here in the U.S., Rhoelyn provided a wonderful parody of the conflict between Azerothian “politicians,” Saurfang and Vargoth! Loves it!
• Despair
  Aendi provides an RP-based perspective on the recent zombie invasion. A must read for anyone who found nothing but aggravation in this world event.
• Moonkin Builds: Leveling to 80
  Don’t just take my word for it. If you’re looking to go Balance, Graylo has you covered with his recommendation of how to Laser Chicken on your way to 80!
• Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak
  Runycat shares her secret recipe for this very meaty Northrend delicacy that combines Rhino steak with Wyrm meat! Wash it down with some dangerous-sounding Kungaloosh!
• ThinkTank’s Bear and Cat FAQs
  Kalon has compiled two great FAQs for both Cats and Bears looking to enter Northrend in the coming weeks!

Druid Dance Revolution

Alice from Aman’thul (US) sent in a series of images from a recent Druid dance party in front of the Aldor bank in Shattrath. I especially like the obvious mixture of Tauren and Night Elf Druids. Like moths to a flame, so too are Druids drawn to /dance with one another, regardless of race or faction:

I wonder how many players instantly reroll Druids after bearing (lulz) witness to our delightful class cohesion. Thanks, Alice!

Comic by Eggo

This week, reader Eggo brings us a new comic about the upcoming nerf to Wild Growth, whereby they’re considering adding a 6-second cooldown. It’s enough to make me want to whip up some delicious Ghostcrawler Gumbo (+20 to “Class Balance”). Be sure to click on the panel preview at right to view the whole comic!

Blogs Both Great and Small

• Adventures of Desdarii
  Desdarii of Blackwater Raiders (US) mixes RP with out of character posts on this beautiful blog about her Draenei Mage!
• Casual WoW
  Byaghro is an “extremely competitive casual gamer” who happens to play a Restoration Druid on Hellscream (US).
• The Delicious Druid
  OM NOM NOM Druids! Cusper plays a delectable Restoration Druid on the Muradin realm (US).
• Furry Bear Ass
  I don’t name them; I just share them! FBA is written by Ylee and Steaky, a Feral/Resto pair from Terrokar (US).
• Healer Envy
  Ayeba of Earthen Ring (EU) is one of those Restoration Druids that dabbles shamelessly with a Priest, Shaman, and Paladin. Hopefully, it’s only to better learn their weaknesses!
• Holy Discipline
  Thoughts from Anea, a Holy/Discipline Priest of the Exodar realm (US).
• Kaliope’s WoW Crafting Blog
  Kaliope writes about all things tradeskill-related on this unique blog about the Crafts of World of Warcraft.
• A Moonkin and His Blog
  Macbook of Stormscale (US) (clearly not a roleplay server) managed to snag Moonkin.info for his home on the web. Look for lots of PvPing chicanery here!
• Screen Shots by Jezi
  See Azeroth as you may or may not have seen it before with this unique photoblog from Jezibel of Kilrogg (US)!
• Tree’s Blog
  Charlotta of Scarlet Crusade (US) like to fish naked in Orgrimmar, and she has the screenshots to prove it!
• Trials and Tribulations of Tree Form
  With the byline “it ain’t easy being green,” Emanee speaks to the difficulties of playing a Restoration Druid!
• World of Snarkcraft
  Joveta and Seri are two cynical Priests from Scarlet Crusade (US). Their blog is filled with information and tips for players of all types, not just Priests!

The Herbalist’s Bulwark: A Macro

Here’s a handy macro from Vreenash of Dragonblight (US) that incorporates three protective abilities in one, two of which are herbalist-specific:

#showtooltip Lifeblood
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Barkskin
/use Fel Blossom
/cast Lifeblood
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

A Peek into My Inbox

This is a look into my personal inbox, which I’ve integrated with my Resto4Life account. You can see that I make liberal use of colored labels to try to stay organized (this often does not work, but at least my inbox looks cheerful). Allow me to explain the various labels and what they’re for:

• Purple – Contact Inquiries
  These are e-mails sent either through the contact form on the site or to my e-mail directly. I try to get to these within seven days of receiving them, but sometimes they slip through or require more time to respond to (I’m looking at you, Silvergulch). I archive all contact inquiries once I’ve responded to them.
• Gold – Mailbag Possibilities
  These are contact inquiries that I flag as potential fodder for a new post. These typically have responses that I think could be valuable to more than the original sender. These get converted to contact inquiries and archived once I’ve used them.
• Orange – Community Spotlight
  This includes links to new sites, new utilities, artwork, and more. New sites to highlight also go into my Google bookmarks under the “Blogroll Possibilities” label. I archive all community spotlight e-mails once they’ve been posted.
• Green – Comment
  These are comments on a recent post. GMail generally does a good job of stacking comments from the same post together so that my inbox isn’t filled with them, but sometimes I have to prune duplicates. Once I’ve responded to all of the comments on a given thread, I delete these e-mails. You can see from the above that I’m way, way behind right now.
• Light Blue – Tree Shirts
  This is anything to do with the Tree Shirts store.
• Gray-Blue – Advertising
  This is anything to do with advertising on Resto4Life. You may have noticed that I’ve recently added some ads to R4L. I’m not entirely certain what I’m doing, yet, but we’ll see how it goes!
• Dark Blue – General Resto4Life
  This is stuff that relates to Resto4Life that doesn’t fit under any of the above categories.

I try to keep up with my email such that I don’t have more than 50 items in my inbox at any given time. Lately, however, I’m onto page 2 of my Gmail, so apologies to anyone who’s still awaiting a response. I admit that I was feeling overwhelmed until I came across this perspective-inspiring post from Lorelle, professional blogger and apparently all that running a large blog entails. I envy the fact that she makes a living completely from her multitude of blogs, but I admit that I don’t envy the overhead that comes with it!

Every now and again, I have to stop and take a look at the many “projects” I’ve accepted responsibility for (and I don’t mean the ones at work, which lately suffer more than they probably should) and pick one or more to politely withdraw from. This is why you may have noticed that my name no longer appears as the Druid moderator at Plus Heal, why my activity on the Blog Azeroth forum community has been intermittent, or why I don’t participate much on social sites like Twitter or the new gamer-equivalent, Raptr. It’s also why I’ve shied away from creating a Druid-based forum community, despite several visitor requests and an already-purchased domain.

Who am I kidding? Resonant post from Lorelle or no, I’m still feeling overwhelmed!

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