Going To Hell...Who's Coming With Me?

So when I got a bit of extra money (thank you, erotica readers of Amazon and your willingness to spend money on weird tentacle smut) I commissioned a picture (rendered in Blender) of my brewmaster monk, relaxing in a bath.

The original reference I gave the artist was Geralt of Rivia, but Pandaren are not proportioned like that, so some adjustments needed to be made to the pose due to the stubbiness of panda legs. Also, the image was cursed, start to finish, with weird weight mapping issues, absolute chaos with the fur particle systems, and my monk just generally proving he's a troublemaker in all things.

However, in the end it was all worth it, and I have a gorgeous 3D render of my monk in all his scarred-up glory, relaxing in a bath while looking like the happiest damn panda you've ever seen. ( Behold, the wonders of Pandaria. (SFW) )

Also, see that lovely paw pointing at the camera? Belvane, the artist, had to sculpt and texture the pads on it, because in WoW Pandaren don't get bare feet, their sandals are part of their texture. Then she took the original sandal texture and put his sandals on a keg in the background.

She also did some amazing detail work on the artifact staff from Legion, seen leaning against the wall in the background, but alas, the room is steamy and in this render you can't really appreciate it, so someday I'm just going to have to commission an image of my monk in combat, beating something over the head with his keg on a stick.

Like the WoW forums.

The current nightmarish horror that is destroying WoW forever is the possibility of fat humans as a playable race.

...to pick the fight, and then get killed by a panda in a Santa suit.



This musing brought to you by the goblin hunter who went from "killing all the NPCs in Stormwind with impunity" to learning that you can shoot a brewmaster monk in the back, and he will still wreck you with repeated kegs to the face.

(I don't even PVP, but if you are GOING to repeatedly attack Stormwind, I am damned right going to flag and do my best to take you down.)

When you're trying to find an image Pinterest suggested, and then denied the existence of.

In this case, it's an 8" Chen Stormstout action figure. Which I want, but, you know...not $80 worth of want.

Just look at the assortment of brews on his belt, though! *hearteyes*

But OMG BLIZZCON HYPE!

And in spite of the UTTER BADASSERY of Anduin performing a mass battle rez in that trailer (priest/pally hybrid OP as fuck, plz don't nerf), in spite of the fact I bleed Alliance blue, the plans for next expansion make me think I really need to level up a Hordie so I can see both sides of the story. (Also, the Banshee Queen going full-on banshee was kind of hot.)

But the Headless Horseman? Oh, yes, I will take those instantly-popping queues tanks get, thank you VERY much.

20 minutes for Team Hunter (aka DPSx2) to get in to kill the Horseman. Instant for Team Monk (aka tank+healer) and Team Baby Monk (aka level 107 tank and 105 healer).

And then I keybound my insta-cast flying mount and took my max level tank out to Undercity, prepared to die for the honor of the Alliance as I doused the Horde wickerman while PVP flagged...and there was no one there. I can't remember another Hallow's End where the Horde weren't lying in wait for people who came to douse the wickerman. Most years, it's been a matter of creeping around as a ghost trying to find a spot where I wouldn't be noticed until dousing fluid was thrown and then corpse running my way out, but this year...nothing.

Guess everyone is on Argus.

But Pinterest informed me that I had already pinned all but one of the images of Varian Wrynn I was browsing today.

"It's not that I can quit anytime, it's just that I'm being cockblocked" is too long for a tag, alas.

Then last expac I installed Deadly Boss Mods because raiding is a pita without it.

Now, somehow, in an expansion where I've raided TWICE, I have wound up installing an add-on to modify the mob nameplates from Blizzard's current "late 80s unadorned healthbar" aesthetic back to the actually informative nameplates WoW used to have. I still have DBM, of course. I have an add-on that's supposed to make tab targeting work (but tab targeting is still really fucking broken). I, gods help me, have done what I thought I would never do and installed a custom UI add-on (I will never be able to go back to the default UI).

And since I started maining my tank, I have installed an add-on to make my stagger % easily visible at a glance, and WeakAuras so I can track the duration of my Ironskin Brew, which Blizzard hides up in the corner with the other buffs.

Did I mention I'm NOT EVEN FUCKING RAIDING? *facepalm*

(I mean, yes, I do hope to start tagging along in raids with queenoftheskies's guild, but even if I do that regularly, it won't be as a tank. I don't know what I'm doing.)

Oh, and on my hunter I have an add-on to shriek an alarm at me when my pet's health gets too low, though 9 times out of 10 the correct answer to that is "fuck Mend Pet, I'mma let it die and use Heart of the Phoenix to re-summon it at full health."

...that darthneko had never seen Charlie the Unicorn. This had to be rectified, to explain why I started laughing over an Easter egg in WoW. (In Azsuna there's a cliff with a Devious Sunrunner and a Sinister Leyrunner, who are standing over the body of a dead Sunrunner. Hover over the corpse and you see its name is Charlie. You can loot the Enchanted Sunrunner Kidney from a chest at Charlie's feet once the other unicorns sunrunners are dead.)

Because Warlords of Draenor has been a crap expansion that broke several core elements of the game that I enjoyed (crafting, you fuckers) in the name of "level cap as fast as humanly possibly and go raid and don't you dare do anything else". *ahem* But they didn't ruin Brewfest, and so darthneko and I resubbed for a month so that we could race rams and throw beer steins at dwarves and get Brewfest clothes for all our low level characters.

And then, yesterday, we successfully got our last few characters their clothes, and took them, one by one, to a quiet spot by the path up to Ironforge.

Screencaps followed. So many, many screencaps.

And then my lovely wife spent tonight doing this:( cut for image )
You can also go see the image on Deviant Art here. For the record, I had to feed Hardwire something like 30 Alterac brandies from my Alterac brewpup before we finally got him to puke.