Pimp my Ride

In the WotLK expansion Blizzard has said it will be implementing a new method of carrying mounts/pets which will set them up into a dropdown menu-thingy and they will no longer be taking up precious precious bag space. This is probably the single biggest reason I will be buying the expansion. You might find that a little odd, but I carry at any given time 3-4 mounts and 5 vanity pets. That adds up, and in addition to all the raiding sets/trinkets/mariachi outfits/offhand fish/voodoo skulls I tote around on any given day, I'm usually pretty lucky to have 1 empty bag to farm with.

Incidentally, this simple announcement is probably the most brilliant idea Blizzard has ever had for a money-sink in this game, because now people like me will be buying 1 talbuk of every color to complete their collections. We have a sickness, and previously the only thing keeping it from turning into a full-blown addiction on the level of Pokemon obsession was the problems with bag space. Now I can fully indulge my desire for a talbuk ranch or a rainbow collection of nether rays. A drake for every day of the week? Why not! Tuesdays are blue days. I'll finally go back to Burning Ass or Searing Goat or whatever godforsaken zone had those little pet quests in it for the worg pup or spider thing and finish them. Sprite darters for all my alts!

Yes, I play this game for the fashion. I mean, I play for other reasons too...like raiding new content, or seeing how many offhand fish I can collect. Especially the offhand fish. But really at the end of the day it comes down to how does my digital barbie doll look? I can't tell you how incredibly pleased I was when I discovered not only does the new nether ray fry pet match my T6 outfit, but that the nether ray mount I have is same color as the pet. I am SO MATCHY MATCHY IT HURTS. Rollin down the street, sippin on conjured juice...laid back. Got my mind on my gold and my gold on my mind. Straight-pimpin'.

Speaking of straight-pimping, I finally joined the ranks of the Bear Cavalry last week during our latest ZA run. I named him Escalade, and he joins Sammy the Talbuk and Edgar the Mistsaber in my regular mount rotation. I'm proud of the bear mount, but my real pride and joy is Edgar. I got him back before TBC, before you could go to the draenei newbie zone and make nice with elves all the way into honored before you even hit level 18. I did it the hard way, starting in Darnassus (which as a mage, is not quite the smartest thing to do as there is NO mage trainer) and leveling in only elven zones so I wouldn't miss a single point of faction, then stuffing a crapload of runecloth into the quest guy to make those last few thousand points out of revered into exalted. Of course, not a month after me going through all this, Blizzard implemented a battle-cat PVP mount that was 10 million times easier to get, but c'est la vie. At least Sammy was a little simpler. Kurenai are whores for beads.

(On a side note, I found it more than a little amusing that Blizzard puts in this tribal society and then makes the major way of building good will with them a bead quest. Why not go all the way and put disease-filled blankets and fire-water in too while you're at it?)

My latest indulgence is building Theme Sets with outfits and pets. The mariachi outfit was easy, since the hat summons a big-ass wolf that's completely awesome. My summer flame theme took a little more work, because I had to collect a metric crapload of blossoms to buy the robe and pet and then complete the fire-stealing quests in all the major Horde cities to get the crown. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite so exhilarating as sneaking around a corner in Orgrimmar and running into a pack of warlocks from the top Horde progression guild just chilling out by the flightmaster, who then proceed to SERPRISE BUTTSECKS you for a solid 10 mins or so and would have camped your corpse several more times if you hadn't managed to get a ninja-portal off before they found you rezzed inside a hut nearby. Good times!