Friends on the Farm

I'm still really enjoying the farm aspect over at Halfhill. As a Harvest Moon fan, it would be awesome if WoW had more "active" rewards upon reaching Best Friends with each individual Tiller that are similar to how things are done in the console game. For example:

Old Hillpaw - Provides chickens. If chickens could be looted for Wildfowl Breast, it would really help with skilling up cooking or turning in the cooked dish for rep with Farmer Fung. They could even be looted for Farm Chicken, like what Sungshin sells and more higher-level recipes could have been added to use this ingredient for skill-up.

Ella - Gives you a cat. The cat could help chase off virmen and hawks from the farm. I can't stress how annoying it is to have two rows full of scavengers.

Sho - Adds an orange tree to Sunsong Ranch. The tree could yield a specific amount of oranges a day, say 5 or 10, and these oranges could be eaten like buff food that gives 150 to your top stat or something along those lines.

Fish Fellreed - Provides pigs. Perhaps these could be made into "truffle pigs" that root around and find the Shadelight Truffles needed for the cooking quest.

Farmer Fung - Provides a yak that could give a daily yield of yak milk.

Chee Chee - Provides sheep. Maybe the sheep could give a daily yield of wool fluff that tailors can turn into Windwool Cloth. 

Haohan Mudclaw - Provides a mushan. Miss Fifi could grab the tangled plants and pull on those for you.

Jogu - Could help make the pond on the farm deeper and wider so that it can be fished from. (Maybe this would be the type of project to help him sober up...)

There are a lot of players in WoW who don't really get "hardcore" so they do things like the pet battles and the farming to leisurely pass the time. If Sunsong Ranch could provide a more engaging environment where a player can really spend some time there, it might be enjoyable for the casuals and even for the not-so-casual, like myself, who might not feel like running LFR or heroics on some days. 

Rep grind updates

FINALLY managed to hit Revered with the Golden Lotus! I know it's partially my fault for not doing them every day like I should have been but when you only have 3-4 hours of playtime, you really don't want to be grinding rep that whole time. I've unlocked the Shado-Pan and August Celestials dailies now but I think I will pass on doing those with my paladin. Even though it's a real bonus that I can gather 10 mobs at once and not die, it just takes way too long for me to kill stuff as prot. Instead, I'll grind my druid to Revered (thank you, rep buff for alts) and do the Shado-Pan and AC quests on her since she's feral and can murder stuff faster. At least when I die in the process (who am I kidding, it WILL happen...) she wears leather so repairs will be cheap.

Today I also hit Exalted with the Order of the Cloud Serpent! My little baby hatchling is all grown up now and big enough to carry my shiny metal butt all over the world. I really like the models for these mounts. I'll have to hurry on my druid so I can work on SP and AC rep for the other cloud serpent mounts. I especially want that onyx one for my DK and the thundering august serpent for my shaman.

Working as Intended

Yesterday, I was in ICC10 with Tanmaya and some other guildies, trying to knock out the achievements for the mount. We had 7 people and I was wondering at first if we should just go for the 25-man achievements instead since 7 people could've done this back at level 85. I figured we'd go ahead with the 10-man anyway and just come back to do the 25 since these old raids gave us something fun to do together away from banging our heads against current content and the mind-numbing dailies some of us are still grinding out.

The achievements were all a joke, really. We killed everything so fast that none of the mechanics really mattered. We did all of the fights on heroic (except LK).The only fight we had to actually do anything "correct" on was Blood Queen for bites and Valithria for the portals. Everything else was just a zerg. So you can imagine that when we got to the Lich King, we were in high spirits. The only thing annoying about this fight was waiting for the plague stacks on the ghouls to reach 30. It took some time but as soon as we hit 30, we murdered Arthas. Cue in the resulting RP cutscene and as we all waited with bated breath for the achievement to pop... Nothing. Nothing nothing NOTHING.

If our characters had minds of their own, they would've been looking around at each other with confused "WTF?!" looks on their faces, telling each other "Hey bro, did YOU get the achievement? Because I sure as hell didn't!"

We got the Neck-deep in Vile achievement but not the all-important Been Waiting a Long Time For This achievement that we actually needed to get the Glory of the Icecrown Raider meta. So, in a fit of righteous indignation worthy of even the most devout of paladins, my husband puts in a ticket to find out what was going on. Here is the resulting conversation:

So this is a KNOWN problem and has been for at least 1.5 years, maybe even more, according to some of the old posts that my husband was able to dig up. If their so-called Quality Assurance team has been working so diligently on this issue, then how come it wasn't included in any of the patches and hotfixes that have been implemented in the last 2 years? Why is this achievement still bugging out for players if they really are making sincere attempts to fix the problem? This can't be such a difficult bug to work out that they STILL haven't been able to find a fix for it after all this time.

The dude advised us to "Wait until a fix has been posted." So he wants us to wait just like all the other poor schmucks before us that have been waiting for a fix for 1.5 years for the one LAST achievement that they likely need to complete the meta. If we are this frustrated about not getting it when we outlevel/outgear the place by two whole expansions, I can't even imagine how pissed off people who did this 2 years ago are that this still hasn't been fixed.

Nice work, Blizz. Working as intended, as per your usual.

Golden Lotus farming win

I wish I was talking about Golden Lotus rep farming but, alas, I'm still not revered with that faction. No, I'm talking about farming the plants. Literally. In my little plot of farmland with the Tillers, I have always planted 16 Enigma Seeds and used to get the occasional Golden Lotus. At the beginning of last week, though, I started to get multiple lotuses every day. I even got 13 one day; should've taken a screenshot of that epicness. Every day for the rest of the week, I would get at least 4 lotuses. I thought maybe I was just having a string of VERY good luck with my plants but my husband started getting some every day, too. I doubt it's just us that are winning with this. Anyone else noticing this buff to the chance for lotuses?

Above is what a typical farm plot for me looks like these days. Not that I'm complaining!

While we're on the subject, I would also like to give a big hug to whichever Blizz employee thought of the "profession plants." These plants come in especially handy for herbalists and miners since Blizz nerfed the amount of nodes that spawn in Pandaria. Totally wrong and unnecessary, in my opinion, considering how annoying it is to gather these nodes. How many of you have had your nodes swiped from under you by an inconsiderate player who snuck in while you were clearing mobs to said node?I know it's happened to me. A lot. And the ridiculous amount of nodes that used to spawn in Pandaria have made this happen considerably less. Not so much anymore, though. Que sera sera, I guess.