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Actually, that's an understatement. I'm so excited I'm giddy. So excited that, while watching various exotic pet videos or playing with new talent tree builds... I've actually clapped. Several times.
With two hunters, a shaman, a druid, and a pally all 70 and rip roaring ready to go spend their brand new talents... with a shadow priest and a second druid who will both enjoy the speeded up 60-70 leveling, and a warlock excitedly running around hoping to catch up with the rest of the gang... I am actually clapping-level excited.
Now, my shaman is my main. She's my WoW-love, okay? But she's actually the one I'm least excited about. Why? Because I don't know what she is anymore. I loved healing with her but it looks like it will be quite a while before she's called on to spend the majority of her time healing so... I'd respecced her back to elemental.
From her first talent point until she went healing those few months she had been elemental entirely. She leveled as elemental, lucky enough to duo every step of the way with an enhancement shaman. They were a terrific team and I don't know the last time I got to feel quite so amazingly overpowered as then. But elemental as a solo shaman come expansion will be a little trickier. Casting lightning bolts while mobs insist on beating you about the face ... well, it's a bit tedious just poking around on good ol' daily island so I can't imagine how tedious it would be trying to level.
So I've been tucking away some enhancement gear with that spec as my possible plan for Wrath-leveling. So what is she? Resto? Elemental? Enhancement? I've no idea, really. They all have such equal attraction to me right now that I just don't know what I'll be doing with her. So, as much as I love her and still consider her my main, it's just hard to get quite as excited when I've no clue what I'll be doing with her.
But the hunters? Oh my! I'm a dedicated fan of the Beastmaster tree. Always have been. I have the Horde and Alliance hunter both specced BM with only 1 talent point spent differently between them. But come tonight they'll both be losing the aimed shot I've enjoyed smacking on paladins for so long and tearing around Azeroth (and beyond) taming various things to play with.
The only shame is that my Alliance hunter has two pets she can't part with: her trusty crab, CaptCarl who followed her every minute from level 10 to 61, and Epic, the Winterspring kitty who has been there since CaptCarl (named for Phil Hartman's PeeWee's Playhouse character) simply couldn't hold aggro anymore and had to take up near permanent residence in the stables. Horde huntress made temporary alliances with pets until she was 19 and could tame a ghost saber. Poor, (still unnamed) ghost saber is still with her, leaving all the rest of her newly expanded stable space open for those exciting possibilities of hunter pet friends the patch brings.
Of course I'll be in Un'Goro with everyone else grabbing myself a big honkin' dino. Who hasn't been stomped by one and dreamed of using one for their own nefarious purposes? But a crocolisk? With that nearly AoE tanking? Ohhh, how I've impatiently waited to play with that. Coupled with a no-cooldown Volley? It's the secret!
And poor, nearly unplayed ret pally of mine? Could these new changes make her once again a viable interest outside of her daily transmuting duties? I've prepared a 0/8/53 spec for her that says "maybe so!"
And my newest 70 - my Alliance druid isn't too far behind on the excitement. I'd managed to get her uncrushable just in time to tank a few things before everyone disappeared with wedding and pre-expansion distractions. As one of many who had almost exclusively spent her time in cat form, I was just beginning to get the hang of the bear thing. And now it seems the hardest struggle - multi-mob tanking - may be a little less... struggle? Well, I don't mind so much the gold and time spent getting her pointlessly uncrushable. Now if I could just find a group to help me through Heroic Sethekk for epic flight form... /sigh
With all this excitement there is only one downer still lingering. Our guild bank was robbed.
I've mentioned a few times my associations mainly with two guilds: one, a tiny, almost exclusively Real-Life-Friends social guild, and the other, a less small, mostly social with ambitions guild. Well, the Real-Life-Friends guild has, of late, been only two "active" members. So when one of the not-recently-active members showed up about a week ago perhaps I should have been more suspicious when she didn't reply to my excited greeting in guild chat.
The thing is, though: if there is an "outsider" in this guild, it's me. The rest of the people in the guild are all people who live relatively close to one another and know each other from work or college or marriage. I'm the sole member who was brought in as the friend of one of these friends. Now, I've gotten to be friends with them as well, but this is why it wasn't too surprising when she didn't respond. She'd been gone a while and probably didn't know the character I was playing at the time. (Alt-aholics know this problem.)
And I was leaving in a few minutes so I didn't bother trying to explain. I left and hoped I'd catch her from a character she would remember later. I assumed she was back to try and get her level 66 main up to 70 in time for expansion.
Saturday night I found out how wrong I was when that only other actually-active member whispered me and said:
And indeed we had. Five tabs of items were gone. A stuffed bank of gear and potions and enchanting mats and gems and primals... oh, did I mention two of those tabs of stuff were mine? Ugh. All gone. All removed by that newly returned player. Guildmate called the owner of the account and it certainly wasn't them. (We knew it wasn't.)
Then the character in question came online... While the account owner and her husband were on vacation in Savannah... Without computers.
We placed a ticket and after a ten minute wait and a less than reassuring conversation later, "if the account is found to be compromised, we will indeed attempt to restore everything to how it was before the compromise occurred."
The confusing thing is that the account owner believed the account to be inactive. She hadn't been online in months. So how did this person get access and why now?
We've removed everyone's guild bank access rights if they haven't logged on recently. We've changed our passwords and I even have the authenticator finally, adding another tiny safety net of protection, hopefully. But locking the barn after the cows are gone doesn't make it feel any better. Sure, it was all virtual stuff that was stolen. And virtual stuff who's value is about to plummet further than it already had.
But knowing some random someone had poked their nose into our tiny little guild and robbed it blind - it's upsetting. And seeing that "someone" repeatedly log in and stand around in Hellfire Ramparts all night, well, that was just frustrating. I spent the rest of the evening whispering them whenever they logged in. Generally they would log out again as soon as I whispered. Never got a single response or got ignored. (You do get a notice when you've been ignored and you try to whisper someone, right?)
So, as you enjoy your new 3.0 excitement tonight, maybe give another thought to the security of your account and your guild's possessions. Nothing new in that suggestion, I know. We are hardly the first guild robbed and sadly I'm sure we won't be the last. But if an account without a single level 70 character can be keylogged (or hacked or whatever happened) and harvested - clearly they are desperate for anything.
On a less depressing note: How many devilsaurs do you think will be stomping through Ironforge tonight?
