The WoW Factor Show

I got up a little earlier than usual this past Saturday to catch the second WoW Factor show on my home server, Proudmoore.  I am so glad I was able to make it, not only was it a lot of fun, there were some amazing transmogs, and I walked away with 15k!  The WoW Factor shows were started by Keelhaul, who hails from Proudmoore, and they have grown into a fantastic community event, held on different servers every few weeks.  Info on the shows, and a complete write up of this one can be found at WoW Roleplay Gear.  They are an amazing resource for transmog outfits.  I really want to thank all the people who hosted the show, and the live-stream, along with the judges, especially Tmaralee who really rallied for me to win in Round 3.  I've never been involved with server-wide events, and for the people who worked so hard to put this together, I appreciate the opportunity.

I started the morning in my pally's blue templar mash-up set.  I found a spot in the circle and waited patiently, hoping to be noticed.  Listening in to the live stream, I was amazed by the judges attention to detail, and knowledge of gear.  Some of the outfits they really liked were just off by one or two pieces, which ended up happening with mine.  They liked the look, but felt the shield was off.  The ensuing conversation about how maybe I should have used the Royal Crest of Lordaeron, but no, that's too orange... was pretty entertaining given that's how I started this post.  In the end, they passed on me for round 1.  I thought about bringing in Drainee in her Ice Ice Baby set, but as I was talking to a friend about it, the judges were looking at another person in frost resist gear.  One of the judges said she liked the use of fr gear, but because it stood out so much, it gave her a feeling of 'I've seen it already'.  I decided since I had finally gotten Despair to drop from Kara a few weeks ago, I needed to just go with my very first transmog outfit.

The winning look.  Photo from The WoW Factor.

I ran off to Stormwind to finish mogging my dps gear, and to buy a sword to mog into Despair.  I made it back to Ironforge while round 1 was still going on.  I caught the judge's eye again, but found out I could only be judged once per round, per outfit.  "Don't worry though Draynee," one of the judges said, "we'll be back."  And come back, they did.  I think I was like the second or third person they picked for Round 2.  It was really awesome to hear them say such nice things about my outfit.  One even said that I lived up to the guild name, Pretty Fly For a Draenei!  Of course, as they were giving me my winnings, it had to be pointed how 'so wrong, so wrong' my guild tabard really is.  It was a good laugh.  The guild tabard is meant to be ridiculous, I mean, why in the world would they make that a tabard graphic?!  Someone later commented on the live stream that "the boob tabard won," lol.

Pandamonium!

Official Female Pandaren Reveal

The Vacation Panda Island, I mean, Mists of Pandaria Beta is live, and without an NDA!  This means all sorts of juicy data-mining and screenshots are popping up all over the internet.  My favorite new information is the release of the female Pandaren model.  I am crossing all my fingers and toes they don't pull a fast one on us and switch it out, like they did the Worgen models before release.  These little panda ladies are so cute!

I must admit, I was completely skeptical about Mist of Pandaria.  I was sure the pre-Blizzcon hype and "leaks" were just to throw everyone off the trail.  Thanks to an amazing friend, I got a last-minute ticket to the first day of Blizzcon.  Luckily, I only live about 10 minutes from the Anaheim Convention Center, so even though I found out I was going about an hour before it started, I was able to make it out for the opening ceremony.  I sat there, completely dumbfounded, as they announced the next expansion, and previewed Pandaria and all things Pandaria-ey.  Blizzard had spent the past however-many years telling us that Pandaren wouldn't be in game, and that they were some sort of un-funny joke, that it was surreal to me that it was actually happening.  Well, also being at Blizzcon was sort of surreal.  I tried to keep an open mind the rest of the day, through even more ridiculous announcements like the talent-tree overhaul, Pet Battles, and removing hunter minimum range.  It wasn't until later that day, during a dev Q&A, when I got to see Chris Metzen get really fired up that I started to accept the panda-ness.  Some goob in the audience questioned the motives behind Pandaria and mentioned to Metzen about the Pandaren being a joke.  Metzen was P-I-S-S-E-D.   The guy's got a lot of passion for the game, and seeing as he could have wrote it off as a cash cow long ago, I guess you can't fault him for it. So, cool, Pandaren, that rocks Mr. Metzen, and so do you!