Anniversary the Fourth

Yesterday, as it turns out, was this blog's 4th anniversary. Yay! Let's go back and see how things compare to my initial goals, shall we?

My Goals for The Lion Guard:

• 5 posts per week, on average, with at least 1 "meaty" post per week.

• Provide myself an inspiring means to exercise and develop my writing skills.

• Practice public expression. I tend to be one of those quiet, shy people in public. Perhaps this blog will help me become a more confident individual.

• Express myself. Most of the people I interact with regularly in real life are uninterested in WarCraft. I hope that here I can create a place to freely converse with folks who are genuinely interested in at least some of what I have to say.

And that's 0 for 4. /facepalm

Oh well. Here's to a better year 5!

Happy 2012!

Hopefully, the world won't come to an end...at least, not until I've managed to attract a 4th regular reader. =P

...And I feel fiiiiine!

Happy 3rd Birthday, The Lion Guard

Happy 3rd Birthday, blog. I was hoping I'd be able to give you the gift of a Ragnaros kill, but alas, things didn't work out last night. We had a bunch of great attempts, though, and made it farther than we'd ever gone before. But, close doesn't cut it, so there's always next week, or the week after. =)

Blizzard did, however, come out with a new Dev Watercooler - The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria blog, which I'm sure will be excellent blog fodder for the near future, so there's that. =P

Oh November

November is National Novel Writing Month. No, I'm not writing a novel, but I figure I may as well take this month as another attempt to revive this blog and get some actual posts done. For the most part, I haven't been writing due to some circumstances in real life seem less and less likely to change by the month, so I figure now's probably going to be a good a time as any.

Anyway, I have a fully written new post lined up for tomorrow, as well as some post ideas rattling around in my head for the upcoming week. Let's see how this goes. =)

Happy Birthday The Lion Guard!

Happy 2nd birthday, you neglected blog you.

New RSS Logo!

So, I've been working on some updates to this place to hopefully make it a bit nicer to visit. The first update? A new RSS icon for the side menu. For those of you who already subscribe via RSS, take a gander:

Whaddaya think?

I'm Not Dead!

...I'm just dealing with an avalanche of stuff in real life. I'm going to try to return to a more regular posting schedule, but it's quite possible that things are going to get hectic again in a hurry and cause things to get worse before they get better.

I'll let you all three of you readers know if I ever decide to close up shop. =P

New Year Resolutions for 2010

I have a pretty simple resolution for this year: post more.  That's it.  I know it's something I've been struggling with, and like most New Year Resolutions, probably one I won't keep, but one can dream, right?  =P

Time to get to work, I guess.  *Cracks knuckles*...

1 Year Anniversary!

Happy birthday, The Lion Guard!  This blog is now 1 year old!

Let's look back on the goals I set for myself and see what I've actually managed to accomplish.

My Goals for The Lion Guard:

• 5 posts per week, on average, with at least 1 "meaty" post per week.
• Provide myself an inspiring means to exercise and develop my writing skills.
• Practice public expression. I tend to be one of those quiet, shy people in public. Perhaps this blog will help me become a more confident individual.
• Express myself. Most of the people I interact with regularly in real life are uninterested in WarCraft. I hope that here I can create a place to freely converse with folks who are genuinely interested in at least some of what I have to say.

Wow...I didn't get anywhere close.  =\  Oh well, if at first you don't succeed...

Let's see what I can manage to accomplish for year 2.  ;D

The Lion Guard is Now on Twitter!

The Lion Guard is now on Twitter! Follow me via the side bar or at http://twitter.com/TheLionGuard!

The Lack of Posts

As I'm sure you know, I haven't been posting on this blog particularly frequently for the past few months, and part of the purpose of this post is that I figure I owe everyone who's bothered to take the time to subscribe to this blog an explanation of sorts. Since I'm sure you all probably have better things to do, I'll try to keep this post short and sweet.

There are three primary reasons for the lack of posts:

1. I moved, and in the process of moving I got lazy. Getting lazy resulted in not bothering to stay particularly organized, which led to misplacing the sheet of paper on which I had written down several sessions of brainstorming blog topics. Don't worry, I'll find it eventually. I know it's around here somewhere...
2. I became busy with non-WarCraft related things for a significant enough chunk of time to cause me to fall way behind on everything that has anything to do with WarCraft. Over the past few months, I've been trying to work my way through a massive backlog of news, blogs, forums, novels, short stories, comics, etc. etc. However, in the process of trying to play catch up, I neglected to keep moving forward with blog posts myself.
3. I haven't really been raiding progression content. Raiding is my muse—it's what motivates me to theorycraft and examine min/maxing strategies; it inspires me to read the WarCraft novels and play through the prior games; it pushes me to lurk forums and browse blogs; and ultimately it's what enables me to come up with things to write about and focus my thoughts and opinions into something resembling coherency. Lack of raiding, quite simply, led to lack of content.
   

As I mentioned earlier, part of the reason for this post is to provide the people who have deemed this blog worthy enough of subscribing to an explanation as to what's been going on. The other part is to remind myself that none of the above is acceptable, and to tell myself to do better. Now let's see if I can browbeat some actual content of myself. ;D

Achievement Earned: Level 80

Yes, yes, I know. I'm horrible at keeping New Year Resolutions. But isn't just about everybody?

Regardless, I finally hit level 80 late last night (or this morning, if you want to be technical), which is great because now I can hopefully begin working on some higher-quality content for this blog. If you're wondering why I haven't been writing posts with more—oh shall we say "substance"—prior to now, it's because I find it very difficult to begin wrapping my mind around end-game concepts when I'm still leveling. I think it's probably because I'm one of those people who enjoys the journey more than the destination, and so eyeing end-game gear lists and stat weight scales and such just takes the fun away from the present.

Anyway, at the time I hit level 80, I had completed nearly every quest available to me in Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and Grizzly Hills, as well as gotten just under halfway through Zul'Drak. (If you're wondering why I said "nearly", it's because I skipped the torture sequence in Borean Tundra.) I have to say, the early quest zones in Northrend are incredibly interesting to me, as both a gamer and a lore fanatic. Learning about the ancestry of the human and gnome races, as well as the battles within the various dragonflight, giant, dwarf, and troll factions was/is absolutely fascinating. Also, it's pretty much impossible to dislike a quest titled "Kickin' Nass and Takin' Manes", even if it is from a group Gryphonheart doesn't completely trust...

Happy New Year!

2009 is finally here, and with it comes a batch of New Year resolutions. My resolutions for The Lion Guard are (in no particular order):

• Post more often — the internet problems I still continue to face really put a damper on my posting habit. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon and I can meet the goal I originally set for myself back in early November.
  
• Update site graphics — I'm currently experimenting with a few graphics design programs, and hopefully I'll be able to spruce up the site a bit and possibly even add some original artwork.
  
• Add additional pages/features (such as blogrolls, helpful links, character profiles, etc.) — I've been planning to get this done for quite some time now. May as well add it to the resolution/to-do list, right? :P
  
• Be more positive — it feels like I'm doing (or at least wanting to do) a disproportionate amount of ranting on this blog, and that wasn't my original intent. Time to get back to the basics and find something more constructive/useful to say.

Happy 2009, everyone! Warmest wishes of health, happiness, and prosperity in the year to come!

Internet Troubles

Doing much of anything online these past few days has been extremely frustrating. You see, I'm "home" for the holidays, but my internet connection here has been incredibly unstable. I seem to only be able to stay connected for anywhere between 15 minutes to 2 hours at a time before something eventually goes amiss and the connection inevitably gets lost.

Essentially, this means I have a relatively short window of opportunity to actually get stuff done online, like leveling Gryphonheart past level 74, completing as many Feast of Winter Veil achievements as possible, reading blog posts and webcomics, and reading and moderating the PlusHeal forums (not necessarily in that order of priority). As you might imagine, I am getting extremely frustrated by now—to the point of wanting to play offline or console games rather than continue my World of Warcraft-related activities.

To be honest, I was really hoping to get certain things done (such as completing the Aching Feet story, get Gryphonheart to level 80, etc.) by the end of the year, but the internet's shenanigans are making things downright intolerable. So until I manage to get back to my real home in early January, I probably won't be posting much unless something has me excited enough to deal with the incessant disconnects, and for this I sincerely apologize. :(

Anyway, take care, and may you have a safe and happy holiday season. :)

A Quick Update

I was planning on posting some theorycrafting comparing Blessing of Kings to Blessing of Wisdom yesterday, but I got caught up with follow-up theorycrafting addressing some of the issues brought up (or neglected) by the first aforementioned theorycraft. Since it's late and I'm completely exhausted from a day full of traveling, I think reformatting my original theorycraft to work on the blog will have to wait until I wake up.

If you just can't wait to see the results, feel free to check out PlusHeal.com, as I've already posted it there. Night!

New Header Image

In case you haven't noticed, I am slowly (but surely) updating the look of this blog as I go along. Creating graphics for this site is, unfortunately, taking much more time than I had hoped, primarily due to the fact that I am away from my normal computer and must make do with programs that are different than what I am used to. However, I'm still chugging along, as those of you who have visited this site recently might have seen. ;)

If you are one of those people who, like me, digest blog content primarily via RSS feeds, I've included the blog's new header image at the top of this post. It's not quite the way I originally envisioned it (different images on either side of the text, a background behind the text, and slightly different font), but I think it came out rather nice, regardless. :P

I may update/redesign it once I've found a program easier to work with, but for now I'm satisfied. In the future, I hope to add a footer image as well, in addition to some graphical content along the side bar. I'm also slowly working on a blogroll and a couple other pages, such as a compendium of useful links. Hopefully, everything will be ready before the New Year, although I sincerely doubt it.

And since it's almost upon us, allow me to be the first to wish you a happy (and filling) Feast of Winter Veil this year!

On the Sporadic Posting

Once again, I apologize for the lack of posts recently. What with the holidays coming up and my ISP and router waging war against each other, finding the time (and active internet connection) to post has become a real challenge. I will endeavor to post when I can, but until I get home (likely in early January), I probably won't be able to post very often.

AFK for Turkey Day

Due to traveling plans and the like for Thanksgiving, I won't be posting anything new until Monday. See you then!

Apologies

I'd like to offer my apologies for my sporadic posting this week. I've been feeling a bit under the weather recently, and have spent most of my free time this week asleep. Thankfully, I'm feeling much better today, and so I hope to return The Lion Guard to a more normal posting schedule as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. :)